Bonnnie Henry: Will I live?

But all is quiet here in Joni Perrin's kitchen and in the rest of the house.

Only the pictures in the living room tell what was once here. A husband. A daughter. Smiling. Laughing. Celebrating life.

On June 16 all that was taken from her when husband, Joe, 42, and daughter, Ashley, 15, were killed in a fiery crash on Interstate 10 east of Indio, Calif.

The two were accompanying speedboat racer Lance Matty, his son, Daniel, 14, and daughter Christina, 17, to a race that weekend in Chowchilla, Calif.

Only Christina survived.

Although the accident happened at about 10:30 that evening, Joni did not learn of it until almost 24 hours later.

"Joe was very good about calling. He told me he would give me a wake-up call at 5 the next morning," says Joni.

There was no wake-up call. Joni tried Ashley's cell phone, getting only her voice mail. "I said, 'I know you guys are probably real busy but could you just give me a call? Please?'"

All day at work, Joni worried, trying to get through. She had no other numbers, including any from other Matty family members. "I only knew Lance, and Daniel and Christina."

After work that Friday night, Joni phoned the highway patrol - first in Arizona, then California. They had no information.

"Then I started calling people in Chowchilla, anyone I thought might be a boater who knew something."

Finally, she logged onto the Internet, where she got the name and number of boater Dave Lipinski off a boat racing site. It was Lipinski who was storing Lance Matty's boat in Modesto and was expecting them at 5 that morning.

"He told me, 'Joni, they are all dead. Joe and Ashley and Lance and Daniel.' I kept screaming in that poor man's ear, 'No! No! No!' "

She called the highway patrol again. This time they confirmed four fatalities.

A detective wanting to establish a timeline called her. So did the coroner's office the next morning. Could she send dental records to help identify the badly burned bodies?

"My sister got the dental records," says Joni. Her sister and mother both live in Tucson. "I am so thankful for them."

It was Joni who first met Lance about five years ago while working at a glass supply house. He owned a glass installation business in Green Valley.

"He would come in with all these trophies. He would say, 'I run a boat, come watch me.' "

So she and Joe did, watching Matty race his flat-bottom, dubbed "King Kong," at a race at Firebird Lake, near Phoenix.

Joe, a mechanic with Empire Machinery, was hooked. Soon, he was volunteering on Matty's racing crew. "Joe would take off work to go. Ashley would hear about it and say, 'I'm there, too.'"

One of the pictures in Joni's living room shows a grinning Ashley standing on the rump of a horse. Asked why her only child would do such a thing, Joni answers, "Because someone told her she couldn't."

Ashley, says Joni, was "a very determined child. She knew what she wanted out of life."

As a freshman at Immaculate Heart High School last year, Ashley played on the girls' volleyball and softball teams.

"They retired her number and jersey on the softball team," says Joni. A scholarship has also been started in her name.

Joe was as quiet as Ashley was outgoing. "The more you got to know him, the more he started opening up," says Joni.

They were high school sweethearts, Joe and Joni, he class of '82 at Canyon del Oro, she class of '84.

Not long after Joni graduated, they were married. "People wondered if it would last."

On July 13, they would have celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Instead, Joni, her mom and sister spent mid-July watching Joni's nephew graduate from Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego.

On July 16 - which would have been Joe's 43rd birthday - Joni visited Christina in a nearby hospital. Then she, her mom, sister and nephew drove to the crash site.

"We did a memorial there," says Joni. They erected a plaque in memory of the King Kong racing team stretched across four crosses - one each for Joe, Ashley, Lance and Daniel.

Christina says her dad was driving that night. Joni harbors no blame, no bitterness.

"There's no use blaming anyone," says Joni. "Lance was the most unusual person I ever met. He had a wonderful personality - the way he dealt with his problems. I admired him."

Since the accident, she's gotten to know the Matty family. Not long ago, she attended a Matty family barbecue. "We all played volleyball. It's the first night I slept good."

She was there at the airport when Christina Matty came home last month after almost three months of burn treatments in California. And she was there at the memorial held for Lance and Daniel last weekend. Afterward, she hosted a reception for more than 120 people at her house.

"I've gotten a little better with faith," says Joni, as she glances around her now-empty house.

A crescent moon hangs low in the sky as she escorts a visitor through the yard and past the gate. Lingering as if to stretch the moment, she acknowledges the memories she will always have of Joe and Ashley, then adds:

"And now I have the Matty family."