Finding Keith

Finding a missing boy.

Finding Keith

Her daughter belonged to a small circle of crafters who met once a week to share coffee, laughter, and the small comforts of creativity. One evening, one of the women arrived pale and trembling. Her nephew—sixteen, maybe seventeen—had not come home the night before.

When her daughter heard, she hesitated, then said softly, “I know someone who might be able to help.”

That someone was her mother—who, years ago, had been struck by lightning. Since that day, she carried what some called an unusual gift.

Later that night, her daughter called, her voice edged with worry. “Mom, could you try? Please?”

She had a hard time saying no to such requests, though each one left a scar. Too often, what she saw wasn’t rescue—it was loss. That kind of truth didn’t fade; it settled deep and stayed. But she couldn’t turn away from a family desperate for answers.

“Give her my number,” she said at last.

The next morning, the boy’s uncle called. His voice trembled between hope and dread. She warned him gently. “I can’t promise good news. Sometimes what I see isn’t what people want to hear.”

“I’d rather know,” he said. “Not knowing is worse.”

He told her the facts: his nephew had been expected home after ball practice, around five. He didn’t drink. Never caused trouble. Friends hadn’t heard from him. It was too soon for the police to act.

She asked for a photograph. Moments later, his senior picture arrived in her inbox—a smiling boy, full of promise.

As she studied it, her chest tightened. The image shifted in her mind, the background blurring until she saw something else entirely—a boy asleep in a green four-door sedan, head tilted against the window. He had left a party, exhausted, maybe drunk for the first time. Later, he woke and tried to drive home.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the scene unfold: a circular driveway, headlights swinging right when they should have gone left. A curve missed. A road that ended at the edge of a cliff. Then silence—broken only by the soft hiss of water below.

The car had plunged into a river, the back end barely visible above the surface. The boy had never woken.

When she told the uncle what she’d seen, he went quiet. Then, slowly, he admitted there had been a party after all. He had already searched the expected route home, but never thought to look the other way. No one wanted to believe the boy had been drinking.

That night, the uncle traced the area she described. He found the car exactly where she’d said it would be.

When he called her back, his voice broke. “You were right,” he whispered.

She felt no triumph—only the familiar ache of sorrow that came with seeing what others prayed not to. Each time it happened, it hollowed her out a little more.

A month later, a card arrived in the mail. The family thanked her for helping them find their boy, for giving them closure when hope had already slipped away.

She wept as she read it. Finding a child like that was never a gift. It was grief wearing the disguise of peace. Yet, in the quiet after her tears, she held on to one small truth: even in tragedy, knowing was better than never knowing at all.