People disappear. It happens all the time. They leave to pick up bread or soap or cigarettes or AA batteries, and they never come back. Their families are left to wonder. They can’t eat toast or wash their hands or smoke or use the remote control without it coming back to haunt them. Kids wander off at the playground or in grocery store parking lots or waiting for the bus, and they’re never seen again. Their parents plead on the news, put up posters. They’re dead, she used to think. Do they know, or are they delusional with hope?
