Story 1: Disappearances Summary

An eighteen-year-old mother retrieves her four-year-old son from social workers who have taken him from his foster parents. The boy misses his foster parents, considering them his real parents, and rejects his biological mother. The boy runs away in the night, falls and injures himself but not too badly. The police find him and call for the mother. She takes the boy home, and during the drive, she intimidates him physically and psychologically to obey her every command without complaint or the police would take him away and kill him.

The young boy starts wetting the bed, a problem that he had grown out of with his foster parents. The mother, who works as a waitress at a truck stop and has a nametag with Sarah on it, complains about her poor tips and how the boy neglected to turn off...