The investigation into Kayla’s disappearance centers around the Willamette River, which flows through Portland. The river symbolizes the persistent possibility that Kayla is dead. Even the psychic, Elizabeth Lamb, describes seeing Kayla’s body in the water.

After Kayla’s car is found abandoned near the water, police quickly develop a theory that Kayla was murdered and her body disposed of in the river. Gabie goes down to the river and plunges into it, trying to understand what Kayla felt, but emerges still certain that Kayla is alive.

In Robertson’s chapters, he plans to kill Kayla and dump her in the river so that he can kidnap Gabie. He describes the act of putting her body into the water as “[releasing] her from her troubles” (44). When Elizabeth Lamb calls up Kayla’s spirit, she claims to have felt “water rushing past me” (176), implying that Kayla’s dead body is in the river.

Throughout the investigation, Gabie has dreams and visions of Kayla in many situations—in a bare room, disappearing around a corner, behind a pane of glass—but she never sees Kayla in the water. This distinction symbolizes the truth Gabie knows and no one else believes: Kayla is still alive and in need of rescue.