“You Are Always Just a Kiss Away From Me My Beautiful Boy.”

In Boston, there’s a place known as “methadone mile,” a stretch of city blocks lined with methadone clinics, needle exchanges, food pantries, and shelters for the unhoused. Every day, people come there full of hope, or desperation, or both. They’re searching for their loved ones who, while struggling with drug addiction, have gone missing. Annalisa Quinn follows a handful of these seekers, including a woman named Kristie, who is looking for her son: We trailed through the usual spots: the parking lot outside of the Woods Mullen women’s shelter, outside the Mobil station with the locked bathrooms, and the church whose congregants step over prone bodies on their way to services. It seemed like everyone had seen Kody, or thought they had. He had been in the men’s shelter, maybe. On the corner, by the McDonald’s. A woman working at a methadone clinic wasn’t allowed to tell Kristie anything because of patient confidentiality rules, but she couldn’t stand to watch her crying. Yes, he’d been here, she said. Two hours later, I saw him. A blue baseball cap and stringy hair, all angles.