That morning was like any other. Victoria Sands rushed her two boys through breakfast and out the door to school and blew a kiss to her husband, Robert. “Miss you already.”
Seven years later, she’s still waiting for him to return. He disappeared that day on a field trip with the private boarding school where he taught. It was as if he drove away and simply kept going. The school’s headmaster had spoken to Robert that night but didn’t notice anything unusual. The police had nothing to go on: no leads, witnesses, or even Robert’s car.
Victoria’s left with her sons, caring for a mother with memory issues, and grappling with a mountain of unanswered questions. Where was her husband? And who has been sending her roses every year on her birthday—the same kind her husband always sent? And who planted the yellow iris bulbs that have been blooming every year since his disappearance?
Victoria’s facing pressure at every turn to move on. Her best friend is pushing her to rejoin her job as a flight attendant. The school’s headmaster urges her to re-establish her life for her boys’ sake. The man she’s been seeing wants them to be a family. Her son’s best friend’s handsome and wealthy father professes his love for her. And Victoria’s mother is nagging her to get married again.
With no funeral and no answers, how can she fully commit to someone else when Robert could walk in the door at any time? As the pressure mounts, Victoria’s plagued by suffocating nightmares.
A packet of photographs of a pretty woman and young children is found at the back of a drawer in her husband’s former desk at the private school, making one of her nightmare scenarios seem distinctly possible. Did her husband have another family—and he’d chosen to abandon her and their sons?
When her youngest son disappears on the same annual field trip as her husband all those years before, Victoria is terrified—and furious. She refuses to accept that no one has the answers. Her refusal to move on may push her and her family closer to danger.
With just enough creepiness to make you second-guess everyone, author Penny Goetjen delivers a great story fraught with enough red herrings to fill a lake. The Woman Underwater is her sixth novel.
You can find out more about The Woman Underwater and the author on Facebook: @penny.goetjen.author, Instagram: @pennygoetjenmysteryauthor, Twitter: @pgoetijen and at www.PennyGoetjen.com