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 at my sister, whose hands were shaking so badly that tea was going over the edge of that tray onto her own carpet.

“Roz. What’s under this room?”

“Nothing. Just foundation.”

She would not look at me. Not at my face, not at Birdie, not at the floor.
PART 2

I am not going to write much about the next ninety minutes.

Most of it is not mine to write. Some of it is in four statements and the rest of it belongs to a nine-year-old.

I rang 911 from that front room.

With my daughter on my hip, and my sister standing about four feet away saying my name over and over — not stop, not wait, just my name, about eleven times.

I did not go looking for a hatch. I did not pull up a floorboard and I did not go into that garage.

I want to say that plainly, because about four people have asked me why not — two of them with a particular tone.