Does no one else find it incredible that Hailey has been missing for almost a month and still we know NOTHING about HER? We know all sorts of things about her mother and boyfriend and ex-husband but can anyone name a favorite friend/best friend of Hailey's???
Hey Billie! Who is your daughter? What does she do? What does she like? How does she behave? What makes her happy? What makes her sad?
I cannot get even the slightest sense of who she is. Even after a month of her whole family (left and right divorced or not) talking about her!
I agree. Haily seems totally unreal to me, a ghost. We know she went to school, was a cheerleader, played in the band, one or other things. And that's it. I have two little ones, and I could provide more info concerning their likes and dislikes, preferences and oddities, default settings and fears in under a minute than we've had about HD in a month.
It all goes to information. I'm agnostic about who did what in this case, but I can think of very few like it -- instead of a steady flow of info, at least about the child we're searching for, we have these oblique glances into a family but none into her life. It is very odd -- and I agree that she's very likely gone. It's almost as though this whole process has been a form of erasure, with BD and SA and the whole supporting cast milling about while their focus has exited quietly with no one the wiser.
I have nothing in particular to add to the sleuthing, except that I think that whatever happened to HD was likely opportunistic and not premeditated. I suspect it began as a confrontation, perhaps a struggle for power in the family setting, and took an ugly turn. I think there was an attempt to cover up, and luck was with the perpetrators. I don't expect that it will be long now.
There's a story by Alice Munro, called "Open Secrets." It borrows its plot partly from Picnic At Hanging Rock. It feels like this case, sadly.
best,
s