Her name is Marion McCleneghan and she’s been “missing” since Februray 6th. Fliers have gone up on lamp posts all over Park Slope and her relatives and police are frantically trying to track her down.

How does someone disappear?

Was she murdered? ? Abducted? Amnesia? Did she do herself in?  These are the questions that come up again in again in conversations around the Slope.

People go missing every day of the week in a big city like New York. But in Park Slope it’s a rare occurrence so people are, of course, taking heartfelt notice.

Who can ignore those lamp post pictures of the beautiful woman with her dog?

Rumors, information, a jumble of both abound: She was at a party the night she disappeared in the South Slope (on 14th Street to be exact). She was drinking. She was fighting with her boyfriend. She told someone: “You won’t be seeing me anymore.” Her journals and computer are missing…

Rumors. Hearsay. The curiosity thickens as the days pass. With magical thinking, optimism I surmise: maybe she decided to change her life, to move somewhere new, to start over, to reinvent herself.

Hasn’t everyone had that fantasy more than once?

In darker moments I see her on the Staten Island Ferry taking the leap unable to go on in this life, the pain and desperation too much to bear.

In darkness I see her as the victim of an unspeakable crime…

Then there are the things I can’t even imagine.

Her name is Marion McCleneghan. People go missing every day of the week but not in the Slope.

Where oh where can you be?

If  anyone has seen or has information about Marion please contact the 78th Detective Squad at 718-636-6483, Case #109, Complaint #445, Detective Gibbons assigned.