The reservoir dropped forty feet that summer, and the old town of Hesper rose up out of the water at last. My crew got hired to map and catalogue the place before the floods came back in fall. On my first dive, my lamp swept across a kitchen. There it was: a table still set for four, the plates rinsed perfectly clean by the lake.

Instead of filming, I followed the kitchen out into a hallway. My lamp found a staircase going up, the steps strangely free of mud. Most of Hesper was buried in silt, but not this house. Something kept it clean. I started up the stairs to find out what.

At the top of the stairs I found four bedroom doors, all shut. Three had handprints pressed on them from the inside, small and large. The fourth door had nothing. I reached for the clean one, because clean meant safe. Or so I thought.

I opened the clean door. The room was dry inside, actually dry, no water at all, like the lake refused to enter. A family of four sat on the bed, smiling, holding hands. The mother patted the empty space beside her and said, clear as anything underwater, "We saved your seat." The door swung shut behind me.