What a horrific case. It mobilises all those it-could-happen-to-anyone shudders, because we've all been in the position of making the decision to trust someone and hoping it will work out OK. I think that's what the text is about: what are the odds that I will send this text
and actually turn out to have been abducted for real. She sent it as a talisman. If I say I'm being abducted and I'm not, this will become a thing we can all laugh about over a glass of wine next time we're together. I can almost feel that sick pit-of-the-stomach fear she must have been trying to ward off. Poor woman. And her poor mother.
I agree with people who have said she seems to have been in an odd place professionally and personally. She seems to me to have been someone who had made a few false starts and perhaps felt
this time she'd finally found her niche. Three years is a long time for a Masters. Maybe she wasn't thinking to return to the US. Maybe, rather than planning to practise immigration law in the US, she was hoping to practise in Russia smoothing the business and residency pathway for US citizens. She looks happy in the youtube video. I can see that if you're in that space where you feel things are finally working out, you might embrace the idea of trusting life, and make choices that look reckless to the outside eye. Maybe she finally felt blessed and as though nothing could go wrong.
