I'd been a new mother for five months and 27 days on the horrible night Jacob Wetterling was snatched and disappeared. I held my baby girl tighter after that and, for years, I secretly searched for him. At gas stations. In parks. On family trips out West.

I did it out of equal parts grief and guilt, realizing even then that I had been granted the simple gift of watching a child move through every normal milestone while another Minnesota mother stared, hellishly, into emptiness. Year after year after year.

Naively, I thought I was the only one. I was so wrong.

Last Wednesday, our newsroom got wind of a potential break in Jacob's disappearance. Backhoes were unearthing chunks of grass and dirt from a farm property about a half-mile from the Wetterling home in rural St. Joseph. Reporters, photographers and videographers flew into cars and headed up. Others, some who have covered this story since Day One, grabbed their phones to call longstanding sources.

It was not an over-reaction. By Thursday, our online coverage had generated about a half million page views. It's an extraordinary number for our website, but fitting for an extraordinary story.

Nearly 21 years have passed, and Jacob Wetterling remains "our" Jacob. He lives inside all of us, sometimes still a sweet-faced boy of 11, sometimes an age-progressed man of nearly 32, periodically popping into our collective consciousness as we raise our children, teach them to trust, struggle to let go.

And as hard as it is to admit, we struggle to let go of Jacob, too. Since Jacob's disappearance, investigators have chased more than 40,000 leads across the world. No one needs or deserves closure more than the Wetterling family, but the rest of us also feel a visceral need for an answer, please.

The cruel reality, though, is that closure may carry a colossal cost: the end of hope.

Jacob's mother, the steady and gracious Patty Wetterling, drove past the scene Thursday morning and then told reporters she didn't know what she wanted from the new search near where her son was abducted at gunpoint by a masked man. Investigators had given her a heads-up that they would be returning, but the sight of them, and their massive digging machines, was understandably jolting.

"Do I hope they find something? I'm not sure," she said. "Do I hope they don't find something? That's not good either."

What we want is for Jacob to come home, alive and safe and, at this juncture, there is no reason to abandon that dream. Officials said no new tips sparked their search, that it was initiated by two young agents with fresh eyes and fresh vigor for trying to crack the state's most riveting cold case. They bandied about phrases for the media: "A shot in the dark." "A hunch."

And yet.

Several dozen local and state law enforcement officers, with the help of the FBI and cadaver dogs, managed the scene as six dump-truck loads of dirt were hauled away. Investigators seized several items from the Stearns County farm onto which they first descended in 1989. There was quiet talk, too, about advances in DNA technology that might assist investigators in their hunt for clues possibly missed after Jacob was abducted on Oct. 22, 1989, as he headed home with his brother, Trevor, 10, and best friend, Aaron Larson, 11.

It likely will be weeks, maybe months, before we know anything more. So we wait, all of us, as we have for more than 20 years, for our Jacob to come home, or for that 11-year-old boy to be found and set free.

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350 • gail.rosenblum@startribune.com