After all, if I could still see her, hear her and text her, was she really gone? If Facebook reminded me annually of her birthday and calculated the passing years into her current age, then her death wasn’t a period or an end but more of an ellipsis, and I could still imagine the “…” of a chat bubble popping up at any moment.

When someone you love disappears, there’s no finality of an autopsy report or the closure of a funeral. All you have is a lack of presence. You can piece together the mystery like in the Nancy Drew books you used to devour, but there’s no memorial service to confirm the truth. And that’s the problem: The promise of possibility, however faint, is harsher than any certainty.

It has now been five years since her disappearance, and I still fantasize about an alternate outcome. That senseless hope is hard to smother, the off-chance that someday I may see her face in a crowd, as familiar as my own reflection. I’ll run toward her and save her this time.

I have this dream a lot, intruding on other dreams, bullying them, demanding to be heard. Several years ago, my mother suggested we delete my sister’s Facebook account, wondering if it was inappropriate, the way her online life is paused with her random thoughts and photos on public display.

Ultimately, we decided not to. It brings me too much comfort.

As the years pass — I am now the age she was when she disappeared — I have come to know her better from the quotes she posted in her bio, the songs she queued in her iPod, the comments she left on her friends’ photos. It’s like getting to know someone through glimpses in a window, but it’s better than nothing.