But I never stopped asking the question that was shaped exactly like it.

It did not fit the man.

That was the splinter I could never work out.

An accident can happen to anyone, yes — but an undercurrent that catches a man who reads the water like a book, that swamps a boat captained by someone who had memorized every treacherous channel in it, that takes four lives when one of the four was fanatical about the very safety gear that keeps people alive in exactly that situation?

Every time I laid the explanation against the man, it came up short, by an amount I could feel but could not name.