My 6-year-old daughter pressed her ear to my sister’s floor and whispered, “Daddy, Tobin is crying down there.” My son had been missing for 14 months, and everyone told me she was imagining things — until I heard three faint taps beneath the hardwood.

And then there is the rest of it.

And then there is the rest of it, which is worse, because there is no putting three things in a drawer.

My son asked me not to go to that farmhouse three separate times that spring.

The first was in the March. He said he did not want to go to Grandma’s at Easter.

And I said of course he did. Four words, cheerfully, while doing something else.

The second was in the April. At our own kitchen table, in front of his mother.

He said: do I have to come?

And I said yes. Because his grandmother had been asking after him. Because there were twenty-two people coming. And because a child not coming would have been a thing that four people had to discuss.

And the third was on the ninth of June. The morning of.

He sat on our stairs, fourth step from the bottom, with both shoes in his hand and not on his feet.