6 o’clock news

My son is a good man. My son is the spectacled, gawkish apple of his preschool toddlers' eyes, the champion of homemade brownies and frosted holiday shortbreads at PTA meetings, the bringer of band-aids and anti-bacterial spray, extra crackers and juice boxes, tissues and shoulders to cry on. My son is the well-spoken, well-liked leader of his less child-oriented peers, miraculously playing the roles of the smart and the funny and the dashing one all at once, and he is notorious among the giggling fourth and fifth graders for his famously dimpled, toothy grin. My son is popular among even the younger mothers -- single or not -- for his benevolent, seemingly sincere nature, his kind, soothing words, and his perfect, perfect smile.

Three cranial fractures. Fourteen stab wounds. I can only wonder why his smile was plastered over the grisly details of the end of the missing child.