Molly Bish, one year on:

Creepy as it seems to obsess over one of "the children who never made it home," the synchronicities are getting to me. It's easy to treat it as fodder for gags in poor taste...

...until I see this, which is just plain disturbing: a letter, written by Molly Bish some six years before her abduction, to the family of Holly Piirainen, who's on the list linked above—#990 with a bullet.

"My name is Molly Bish. I am 10-years-old. Some day I would like to come see you. I am very sorry. I wish I could make it up to you. Holly is a very pretty girl. She is almost as tall as me. I wish I knew Holly. I hope they found her."

Molly signed it with love and several X's and O's for hugs and kisses and enclosed a picture of her family...

“I wish I knew Holly,” she wrote. In the end, perhaps she did, better than anyone else could: the two of them, bound in a weird sort of sisterhood. A sorority of victims.

I wish I knew Holly.

Why do I have Emily Dickinson’s lines in my head...?

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me

Maybe Molly Bish found what she was looking for, when she stepped off the path and out of the world, thumbing down Death on a country road, with Holly gone ahead to blaze the trail: now they walk, cold hand in cold hand.

I wish I could make it up to you

I wish I could make it up to you.