The Funeral Was Ready to Start… Until the Man Everyone Buried Walked Into the Church Alive.

Chapter 2

Daniel told the story in the church because there was nowhere else to tell it, no practical way to say let’s take this somewhere private when you had just walked into your own funeral and interrupted it.

He told it to the congregation, which included his family and his colleagues and his friends and the Alvarez family from next door who had come because they were the kind of neighbors who came to things, and he told it standing at the front of St. Augustine’s because the pastor had gently suggested the pulpit, which was the only elevated place available and also the place where the acoustics were best.

He had been fishing.

He had been fishing on a Saturday morning with three men from the firm, a trip they had planned for weeks, on a boat that belonged to his colleague Warren. The weather had turned faster than the forecast indicated. The kind of fast that didn’t give you time to debate — you were suddenly in it, the water coming over the sides, the horizon gone, the engine losing purchase against the current. He had gone over the side and been immediately separated from the others by the force of it.

He had swum.