Nicholas Barclay was in the system as a missing person, his photograph was in the databases, but active investigation had essentially ceased.

The working theory — that he had run away — remained the default, and no evidence had emerged to replace it with anything else.

His family’s situation during these years is not easy to describe without acknowledging the complexity of how grief and uncertainty intersect with already-difficult circumstances.

Beverly Dollarhide lived with the not-knowing that is the particular torture of families with missing children — the inability to grieve definitively because there is no death to confirm, the inability to move on because there is no resolution, the suspension between hope and despair that can stretch for years.

Into this suspended grief came a phone call from Spain.