I have a cousin who's been missing for 2 1/2 years. Missing as in, no one knows where he is, why he went, what happened (to him), or if he'll ever come back. He didn't take his wallet or his keys or his cell phone. He just...vanished.

Because he fell in age right in the middle of all us girls cousins, he was always the groom when we played wedding on my grandma's front lawn. I remember him also having a certain zeal for the 1988 Olympic gymnastic team and for Patch and Kayla on Days of Our Lives. When he and his sister Amy used to come to our house, we would all sing along to the Footloose soundtrack.

The last time I saw him was right before I moved to Memphis in 1999. He seemed like the kind of person I would be friends with, but alas, as these things do, the cousins had all drifted apart over the years, and we only saw each other on Christmas Eves at Grandma's house.

I had a dream last night about him. In the dream my sister Kristin, cousin Aaron, Amy, and I were going to his apartment near Disneyland (he's never had an apartment near Disneyland, though Amy did work maintenance there one summer). When we got to the apartment, we were all sitting on the couch and talking when it dawned on me: Aaron was back. He was there. I'm not sure why it took so long for me to realize it, but when I did, I started frantically signaling my sister to make sure that she noticed, too.

Then I woke up, to the sound of dumpsters being emptied in the middle of the night.