Just one day — my mother concealed me from my father. I can’t imagine 12 years.

On Tuesday, September 30, after a search that spanned the continent, Sabrina Allen and her mother, Dara Llorens, were found in a small apartment in southern Mexico. In 2002, Dara, disliking the custody order in her divorce from Sabrina’s father, Greg Allen, took Sabrina into the night, hopping a bus to cross the border.

I came across their story around 2004, and could never exactly figure out why it so moved me, but I hung on to each monthly update Greg posted on his website, findsabrina.org. I even thought I might have seen Dara and Sabrina when I was on vacation, but it turned out to be just another alleged sighting that didn’t pan out. I was so moved by Sabrina that I based a character in my play, “The Feast of Jovi Bono,” on her — a teen named Katalina, who confronts her mother after figuring out she’s been lied to for years, and chooses to return home and allow her mother to disappear into the night, alone. This was my wish for Sabrina and Dara — that Sabrina could come home and piece together her life with a loving family and that if Dara wanted to stay on society’s edge, she could.

Questions abound from those trying to see the other side. After all, the girl was with her mother — how much danger could she be in? Maybe the mother was escaping abuse. Perhaps the court system had screwed her over because the father had more resources.

From all the evidence I’ve seen, it’s fairly clear that in this case the mother, due to organic and acquired mental illnesses, chose not to or could not act in her daughter’s best interest.

It happens. I’m not saying mental illness was Dara’s fault. It wasn’t my mother’s fault either. Sabrina’s return has made me realize why I studied the case with such relentlessness, and why I was so moved by her plight. It’s because a little piece of that situation — a mother concealing her child from her father — was mine when I was fifteen.

I’m not comparing my situation to Sabrina’s. But being kept from my father and not told the truth for one day has affected my ability to trust so pervasively, I can scarcely imagine the devastation it’s had on a girl who’s experienced it for over a decade.

We all walk the earth wounded in some ways, and people believe my human-wound comes from my mother’s death just before I was seventeen. Losing her, and the way she died, were not great to say the least, and I miss her. But it was the time before that has actually changed the way I relate to others, the way I’ve raised my children, the way I’ve conducted myself in relationships, and the way I became very cynical and suspicious very early and very quickly.

It’s the fall of 1986. I live with my parents in a big, brick house just south of the high school where I just started 9th grade. It’s been our home since I was four. We’d finished the last, golden summer of our family with a trip to western Canada. It’s Saturday night and my parents are going out to a retirement party for one of dad’s colleagues with another couple. I could have my friend over — she lived just across the street in our neighborhood where when I babysat for the family next door, Mr. McCline walked me to the end of his driveway and watched as I walked into my house.

As soon as my parents leave, I call Jim and Tim (really their names) to come over. No, I was not allowed to have boys over. No, I didn’t actually care. Anna was uneasy with the situation, but went along with it. I had it all figured out — we would hear the garage door opening and Jim and Tim could run out the sliding door, across the deck, through the back yard, and out to their car parked on the side street before my parents came in the kitchen door.

I forgot that my parents rode to the party with the Johnsons. When they saw Jim and Tim leaving, they glared at me through the window of the front door as they worked their key in it. Anna slipped by them and ran home. This was the most trouble I’d yet been in — even though clearly everyone’s clothes were on and no one was drinking, smoking or carrying on. I was ordered to just go to bed. There was some other fury hanging in the air that made me uneasy, but I ran downstairs anyway and pulled the covers up over my head.

The next morning, dad was gone to National Guard and my mother sat in the kitchen in her pajamas. As I began pouring myself a bowl of Frosted Flakes, she said, “You’re going to spend the day with the Orsons. I have some things to take care of.”

That was a strange punishment. Robin and Todd were among my dearest friends, their house was great to visit, it might be warm enough to go out on the boat on the Missouri River, and even if not, their house was always sunny and fun. Mom must be working on a doozy of a creative punishment, I thought. I was more curious than frightened.

That afternoon, Mrs. Orson came in not with warm, homemade cookies but with a warning. Actually a series of missives and a tone that was completely out of character:

“I don’t want any of you to answer the phone or the door. Amy should not go outside either and should stay away from the windows. Maybe you can watch movies in the basement. If someone does call and you answer, don’t tell them Amy is with us.”

Robin was indignant. “What on earth for?”

“I cannot tell you much, but there is a problem with Amy’s father and until we tell you otherwise, you’ll do as we say. It’s very important.”

That day began. I wondered if my father was dead, but then why on earth would I need to hide. I wondered if he had gone crazy at the National Guard base, but that was so strange. I wondered if he had hit Mom or threatened us, but that would be such a departure from his very nature, I couldn’t possibly picture it. I was quite possibly my father’s best friend, and unconcerned as to whether that was normal or appropriate. We had an extraordinary mental, intellectual and even spiritual connection. My gut told me dad was okay and I wasn’t sure about Mom. But as my life with them both had been nearly perfect to that moment, the attitude that began as evening fell that day and stayed until I was about 23 was, “What the hell!?!”

“We’re going for a walk,” Dr. Orson said after our supper of pizza and deception. I learned later they walked the half mile to my home, and when they arrived at our doorstep they were met by two police officers who were just leaving. My father let them in and they told him I was with them. They apologized profusely and were teary with remorse when they found out what my father had arrived home to — a note.

“Chuck, I have gone for help. Amy is in a safe place.”

Panic didn’t begin to describe my father’s evening and as he called around to friends who all denied knowing anything about my whereabouts or my mother’s, frantic didn’t even begin to describe his “What the hell?” Two doctors had lied to him — Dr. Orson, who had me, and Dr. Paulsted, a bone specialist turned addiction guru who was counseling my mother.

Dad gave the Orsons a ride to their house and I ran into his arms when he showed up. He looked pale, tired, and unlike the rock he’d been to me since the very first day we met — at the agency when I was three weeks old.

The Orsons went to the Paulsteds and by that time it was very clear my mother had decompressed. She made a not-well-thought-out attempt on her own life, and the doctors drove her to the hospital to consult with a psychiatrist about admitting her. I was never angry with the Orsons or the Paulsteds because they saved my mother’s life that day, and they were deceived into their deception before they really knew she was off.

I, however, cannot imagine telling a lie to a parent frantic about their child if I could ease their suffering.

My parents were never again together after that day. My father didn’t throw her out because she was in the hospital for mental illness after that anguished day. He threw her out later for a lot of other reasons. I don’t agree with him or hold him blameless; I don’t blame her or feel she deserved what happened. If I’m unhappy it’s that I came to know so much about their marriage that I didn’t need to know as both of them confided in me as though I was an adult.

Unchecked mental illness destroyed the home and family that had been so joyous for most of my formative years. My mother, a counselor, was shrewd about telling the professionals what they wanted to hear — when it came to her treating physician and therapist, she was worlds smarter and more professional than they were. I’m sure she feared what would happen to her if she was found with a serious mental illness.

As she wasn’t diagnosed with anything much, I don’t know what label of illness fit. My recollections lead me to wonder on borderline or histrionic personality disorder, on a major depressive disorder because of or in addition to the terminal heart ailment she’d dealt with since birth and had hit her in earnest from the time she was in her late 20s, on bipolar disorder with a personality disorder.

She left the hospital, moved in with a friend, my parents’ divorce was a big, stupid mess, and ultimately I didn’t speak to her for weeks on end because it seemed like everything I did or said was wrong and I wasn’t allowed to find out what the hell happened to her or why our family had burned to the ground so quickly. I was angry that she was in group therapy because it seemed like she talked to them more than she talked to me other than to nag me.

I wouldn’t live with her — all this might have changed had I been brought in to learn more about her mental disorder, what would help and wouldn’t, and how to protect her — I needed a mission, damn it. I had protected her from prying eyes and phone calls when she’d collapsed from her heart condition; I was oriented to protect her and would have smacked down anyone who would make her issues worse, if only our common enemy had a name and an antidote.

Group therapy ultimately saved us. One of her cohorts told her one day, “Just enjoy your daughter. You talk about all she does and doesn’t do, but she’s a human being, not a human doing. Enjoy her for exactly who she is.”

So she called me and told me that’s what she would do from now on. Which, as it turned out was only a few more months. But they were amazing months. They gave me the ability to think on what was noble, on what was honorable, on what was good, on what was love. They gave me the day I sat between her and the boy I dated through 10th grade at a local production of Camelot, and the recollection that once we were in our own personal Camelot and that an empire of happy ever aftering could rise again.

Sabrina can have her happy ever after, too. My hope for her and her family is that all that’s built up can be released and she can see past it to the love that’s waited for her to come home. It’s not as easy as that, and life seldom gives us easy gifts. But the most valuable ones are the ones worth struggling for.