They did not give up.

They scaled back, which is a different and more honest thing, the recognition that the odds of a find had crossed from unlikely into vanishing and that the resources had to go where they could still do good.

The kind man who told me was close to tears himself.

He had searched for my family as though they were his own, and it cost him something to come and say the words, and I have always remembered that the ending of the search was delivered to me not with a form letter but by a man who had to look me in the eye to do it.

I understood.