He knew better than to say things that were not true.

He just sat.

That was enough.

That was, in those years, the only thing that was enough.

Nora was born in February, which seems important to say because Nora was a February person in all the ways that February is difficult and worthwhile.

She was stubborn.

She was persistent.

She had the specific quality of cold months, the quality of endurance without warmth, the ability to continue when continuing required something.

She was also funny in the way that people are funny when they are not trying to be, when the funny is just the way they see the world.

She had been funny since she was three years old.

Since the morning she told Michael that she did not like the way he made eggs and that she would be making her own from now on, and she was three years old and she could not reach the stove.

She was funny and stubborn and persistent and she had my mother’s eyes, which are dark and very specific, the eyes of someone who is always thinking about something other than what they appear to be thinking about.

She was sixteen.

She was going to get ice cream.

The investigation in the days and weeks after she disappeared was thorough by any reasonable standard.

The local police, the state investigators, eventually the FBI all took the case seriously.

The beach was crowded enough that day that witnesses were difficult to identify and interview, but attempts were made.

Security cameras from nearby businesses were reviewed.

The ice cream stand at the far end of the beach was investigated multiple times.

The employees who had been working that afternoon were interviewed individually.

None of them remembered seeing Nora.

There was a gap in the security camera coverage on the path between where we had been sitting and the ice cream stand.

Approximately forty feet of path with no camera angle.

Forty feet.

The investigation concluded, eventually, that Nora had most likely been taken during those forty feet.

But there was no evidence of how.

No witnesses who saw anything unusual.

No vehicle that could be identified.

Nothing.

She was simply gone.

In the first year, the case received national attention.

Her face was on the news.

Her photograph was shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media.