THE FIRST INKLING in the Cassol home that something might be wrong did not come until Sunday evening, when the boys hadn't returned. It had been raining for a day and a half, but Jan Cassol didn't think much of it. She called around, hoping for information. No one knew anything. There was nothing to do but wait.

On Monday night, following Larson's radio report from Coltrell Flat, word was passed to the families that the boys had been found. It was a huge relief, and Jan went to Ronny and Bobby's room to lay out their pajamas. But by Tuesday morning there was nothing more. Jan called the boys' father, Pete (they were separated), and they drove up to Rose Valley together. Lion Camp was in chaos. Men from the sheriff's department and the Forest Service milled about. Frank Donato's parents were there, too. But there was no new information. Go home and wait for news, the authorities said. Deflated, Jan and Pete headed back to their car. Before they got in, Jan stood on a bluff over the raging torrent of the Sespe. She had never seen water look so powerful or move that fast.

Back at home, Jan tried to control her fear. They'll have such stories to tell, she thought. Later than night, she switched on the 11 o'clock news. George Putnam, a local broadcaster, was reporting on the floods. An image of a man on a stretcher filled the screen. It was Eckersley, on his way to the hospital. "One by one we all slipped away," he said to the camera. Then Putnam read the names. That was how Jan learned that her two sons had died in Sespe Creek. Even after all this time, the memory charges her body with grief and anger.

The next day, the authorities finally called to say they had found a body. It was Bobby. Jan wanted to see him one last time. "I don't think you should," the coroner said. "It wouldn't do you any good, and they lose all the color in their eyes when they drown." So that was it. Bobby was gone. "Bobby was one of the first to go," Jan says. "And that means my Ronny had to watch his brother die."

Ronny was never found. His jacket was picked out of a tree, 14 feet up. In fact, the flood was so fierce and the area so wild, only six of the ten bodies were ever brought home. (The last, Eddie Salisbury, was discovered almost two months later, more than 50 miles downstream.) This is perhaps the cruelest legacy a tragedy in the wild can bestow upon a family; lack of finality is an insidious and unrelenting form of torture. "What if Ronny was alive? What if Ronny was lying there hurt?" Jan says, her voice breaking. "I'll never feel closure because of that."