They experienced a specific form of cruelty that is difficult to name precisely but that is real and significant.

They had spent three years with a missing child — with the particular torture of not knowing, of living with the suspended grief that families of missing children describe as one of the most difficult forms of loss.

Then they received a phone call that offered hope.

That hope was met and embodied: a person appeared who said he was their missing child, and they brought him home.

For however long they genuinely believed — whether that was hours, days, weeks, or months — they experienced what felt like an ending to the three years of suspension.