That would be so hard to deal with as a parent... I mean, part of you wants to strangle the person that lost your kid, the other part also wants to strangle them, but realizes that you'd have to figure out a good place to hide the body, and then that just creates all kinds of complications... And then, if they find the body someplace and pin it on you, then they think that the kid was your doing too... And then maybe they stop looking for the kid... Which is, of course, counter-productive.
Dude! You should totally do an X-Men Special Edition variant of this strip. The X-Books just finished a two or three year story ark about a kid named Hope that was destined to be the Mutant Messiah.
Talk about conflicted...