The desire to believe provides the psychological infrastructure for a deception to persist.

The family’s situation also played a role.

Beverly Dollarhide was not in a stable, comfortable position from which to process the return of her son skeptically.

She was living with years of grief and uncertainty, in difficult financial circumstances, with the hope that her child was alive and had come home.

The psychological cost of questioning whether this was really Nicholas — of entertaining the possibility that the relief she felt was based on a lie — was enormous.

Sometimes people believe because believing is the only thing that feels survivable.