Told her boys his age sometimes leave and come back.
Told her not to panic too early.
No Amber Alert was issued.
No search teams flooded the streets.
No one treated it like an emergency.
Just a report.
Filed.
Set aside.
And a mother left standing in the middle of something no one else seemed to see.
Days turned into weeks.
Weeks into months.
The calls slowed down.
Then stopped.
People who had once said “we’ll help” stopped answering their phones. Tips dried up. Leads went nowhere.
But Marlene didn’t stop.
She couldn’t.
She printed flyers with his face until the image blurred in her mind. She drove across neighborhoods she had never been to. She followed every rumor, every possibility, no matter how small or unlikely.
Because somewhere underneath all the noise, there was one thing she couldn’t shake:
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