My son has been missing for eighty-six days

Dear Delyara, My son is twenty-one. He left home after an argument and never came back. The police say adults are allowed to disappear. They say there is no evidence of a crime. They ask whether he used drugs, owed money, had enemies, was depressed. I answer every question and feel like I am betraying him with each possibility. His bedroom is untouched. A glass of water is still on the desk. Dust has settled around it. I change his sheets every Friday even though no one sleeps there. People have begun speaking to me in the past tense without realizing it. “What did he like?” “What kind of person was he?” Was. I correct them every time. My husband thinks our son left because of me. I think he left because of my husband. We no longer argue about anything else. Every unknown number makes my heart stop. Every body found in the news becomes my child for the length of the article. I do not know whether to pray for him to come home or simply to be alive somewhere that is not home.