My brother was kidnapped for 3 hours when he was 3 years old. The implications haunt me.

Our family was visiting this park in Maryland for a family reunion, which has a playground area. I had just turned 12 and we also had another brother who was 12 that day. There were plenty of other cousins. I am not sure how we ended up losing sight of our brother, but I suspect we were too busy fighting over who got to go on the seesaw first, or which one of us got to push the other on the swings. It was the middle of summer, it was 90 degrees with humidity and it was the middle of the afternoon. Hot. <br><br>After what felt like an eternity to my parents, we were called over from the swings and asked where our little brother was. None of us had seen him since we were on the slide. He was just gone. We searched everywhere around the park. No sign of him anywhere. We were in a panic. We looked everywhere we could. My parents called the police.<br><br>Three hours later, we were sitting at a McDonald's restaurant. I was drinking on a giant ice cream cone my father had bought for me to drown my sorrows over losing my brother. This was the 70s and we didn't have cellphones or anything, so I have no idea how the police were able to track down my parents to a McDonald's restaurant. My brothers and I were sitting at a table eating our burgers and fries when a uniformed cop walked through the doorway with our little brother. I was so happy to see him. We all ran over and hugged him. There were plenty of tears. I think my mom came close to fainting. My dad was so happy to see his son that he could barely contain himself from hugging him so hard.<br><br>When we got home, my parents asked him what had happened to him. He said he had been walking around the park and then realized that he didn't know where he was. He said he didn't see us anywhere and started to cry. He was taken away by a man with a beard and a hat and sunglasses who said he knew where we were. The man put him in the car and took him away. He said that the man was very nice to him and asked him what he wanted to eat. He said he was hungry and wanted candy. The man bought him a lollipop and they ate lunch at Wendy's. The man was still very nice to him, he said, and he had been too scared to run away from the man. I think I remember him saying that the man drove him away from the park on a series of country roads and then onto an interstate. After a few hours had passed, the man took him to a police station. He said the police officers at the station asked him questions and wrote down his answers in a notebook. We didn't ask many questions after that. After a while, everyone just sort of dropped the subject. We didn't bring it up again other than to ask my parents if they were worried that there was a kidnapper out there who may have wanted to abduct our brother. <br><br>My parents are both deceased now, so I will never be able to know the details. I don't get much out of my brother when I ask him about the details since he was 3 years old and doesn't remember much. But there are many unanswered questions that still linger in my mind to this day. The first is that if this man knew where we were, why did he drive my brother away from the park. Second, what were the police doing when they took his testimony at the station? How did they not track down the kidnapper? What did the kidnapper say to the police? How did they not track down the kidnapper from his license plates? Where did they get the idea to drop him off at the police station? Was this the work of a child abduction ring? The questions go on and on. <br><br>I don't think I ever want to know the truth.