The Mystery of the Missing Cousins

I have three cousins who disappeared. From time to time, I wonder what happened to them. The oldest was about fifteen when we saw them last: nice, shy, the kind of guy I might have had a crush on if he hadn't been my cousin. He had a pet snake and some other reptiles, geckos maybe. He found a grass snake when we were walking outside once, and picked it up to show it to us. The younger two were eight and six, blond, serious, oddly fragile children. They had an intensity about them that I think is a family trait. During times of stress it merges into irritable brittleness; in happier times it's like being lit up from within. In my last images of them, the oldest one is truculent and lonely, being shipped off to boarding school; the youngest one is helpless, buckled into the back seat of a white van, straining to see out the window; the middle one is taking matters into his own hands and running away from his own mother calling his name. It's fifteen years later now, and the crisis in which my memory has suspended them is long over. I wonder where they are, and if we'll meet again.