Grief doesn’t always arrive all at once. For nearly a year after my sixteen-year-old son Daniel vanished, it settled into my life like something permanent but invisible. I still worked, still answered questions, still walked past his empty room every day, pretending the silence wasn’t changing me.
His last morning was ordinary—too ordinary. He tied his shoes, kissed my cheek, and walked out the door like any other school day. I remember watching him turn the corner and thinking nothing of it.
I didn’t know that was the last time I would see him as I knew him.
The Search for Answers
At first, I told myself he would come back. Then I searched—calls, schools, police, anything that might explain where he went. The only lead was a girl named Maya, who had been seen with him before he disappeared.....