I think about that a lot actually. Somehow it really has an impact on me when I hear the residents of this very small neighbourhood saying they never get strangers hanging about, or break-ins, or thefts, .. and this very small town where everyone felt comfortable and everybody looked out for everyone else's children, and I see all of the huge community spirit they've got going on there (I see they have a lot going on when i look at their Chronicle newsletters), and it just kind of floors me when I think about... here is all of that.. and then, out of the blue.. come these visitors from 4 hours away, and within less than 24 hours, the community and town's entire persona is forever messed up. The kids can't walk to school any more, they changed the bus route, people are watchful now, kids can't kind of grow up with the independence that they used to be able to grow up with, such as riding their bikes to school. It's really just sickening. And to think that two years later there is still no resolution, this black cloud still hanging over this community.
It just seems like such an impossibility to me, such strokes of lightening bolts and clouds colliding with sun and moon and stars, with SO many things lining up for this perfect crime. And none of it seeming to have had even the remotest possibility of being planned, and on so many levels, such as.. who would know the jogging mom would happen to drop off her kids a few minutes early that day and go for her run somewhere else, and who would know the neighbour's daughter went on that day only, to go and have coffee with her brother instead of her mom, and what kind of predator would think that a woman unloading groceries from her car while her young child is in the house would NOT see him, and who would know the exact time that the neighbour would have felt like mowing his lawn that day, or what time Mrs. W would choose to venture out for groceries, or even that these out-of-town folks would arrive maybe 15 hours earlier than expected, or that they would happen to take their eyes off their child for 5 minutes to create this one and only window of opportunity. And nobody sees or hears a thing, even though to see something would be unexpected and noticeable for this particular neighbourhood/street, and even though the neighbourhood is basked in silence where anything odd sounding would be noticed. Who would take the risk that nobody happened to be looking out of their windows? And the missing boy is reported to not be a wanderer, and he's playing not alone, but with his sister. And dad just happens to be gone out at that very time. And top that all off with that this case is hindered by privacy legislation so that not all of the facts can be published and a veil of secrecy seems to fall over this case.
That is why I can't help going back to something different happening, like somehow falling into FGM's septic tank or some crazy thing. Or perhaps even an outcome more common to a child's sudden disappearance - the kind of thing that is perhaps on some peoples' minds as being the most basic explanation, although unpalatable... but yet these things have all been ruled out. Crazy-making. And tragic indeed.
