Free Lost Girls by George D Shuman Page B

recently returned laden with sundries from the islands, beaches, and marketplaces.
    It would soon be the dinner hour and a reggae band played poolside as guests filtered below, transformed from beachwear to tuxedos and evening gowns, rising to collect in cocktail lounges, waiting for their appointed seating in one of the ship’s many ballrooms.
    By 8 P.M . they were sitting at the captain’s table, the room aglow with white candles. Golden champagne effervesced in delicate flutes. All around were smiling faces, teeth white and skin burnt red as they recounted their adventures in the Dominican Republic. It was a trouble-free place, this floating palace. The world was held at bay for thirteen days at sea. There were no frantic knocks upon their doors, no letters from the government or attorneys in the mail, no middle-of-the-night wrong numbers to set your heart aflutter. Temporary though it might be, for two weeks the ship was a sanctuary from the trials of an unforgiving world.
    Or so Carol had thought. It would hardly have seemed possible for this ship to be the setting for the worst moment in a person’s life, but that’s what it had become. That’s what it always would be.
     
    “Mom?” Carol looked up from the dinner table to see her older daughter standing at her shoulder.
    She admired her daughter’s dress. “You look beautiful, Theresa.” Theresa had four other dresses packed, so had Jill and her mother, all bought last April in Bloomingdale’s or one of the boutiques along Oak Street, overlooking Lake Michigan.
    Carol reached to touch Bob’s arm, to direct his attention to Theresa’s dress, when something on her daughter’s face stopped her.
    “What is it, Theresa? Are you okay?”
    “Have you seen Jill?” Her daughter looked distraught.
    Perplexed, Carol looked around the dining room, last at the captain, who was talking to a waiter in a tux. “She’s not with you?”
    “She left me in a bar by the marketplace in El Conde. She wanted to buy a wraparound skirt. We’d been looking at them earlier.”
    “El Conde?” Carol repeated. There was the slightest flutter in her stomach.
    She forced a smile, taking a deep breath, convinced she had heard it wrong. Theresa must have misspoken. Theresa had meant to say a bar near the ship’s atrium. Jill was shopping for a wrap in one of the ship’s stores and Theresa had been waiting for her in one of the ship’s bars. That made more sense. And Lord knew it wouldn’t be the first time Jill hadn’t been on time. She could be so irresponsible at times. She could so easily get distracted.
    “She could have gotten it tomorrow,” Carol said, disappointed. “I told her this was important. Your father wanted you both here. So did I.”
    “Mom”—Theresa’s eyes pleaded—“she never came back from the marketplace. I waited in the bar for an hour. Finally I thought I must have been confused about what she said. You know how she can be, so I came back and showered and I guessed she was out with you.”
    Theresa’s lip trembled.
    The flutter in Carol’s stomach took hold and the icy fingers of providence marched up her spine. She turned away from the others at the table, tugging at her daughter’s arm, pulling her close and bringing her lips to the girl’s ear. “What do you mean she never came back to the room?” She tried to keep her voice under control, trying not to be overheard by the others, trying not to scare Theresa. “Never came back from where?” Her fingers were leaving white marks on Theresa’s arm and she quickly let go.
    “She left me in the village, in a place called Bo Bo’s, a bar near El Conde. We were having a drink.”
    Carol was only able to nod at that point, her imagination running wild.
    “She wanted to go back and look at a skirt,” her older daughter said. “It was one of those street markets, just around the corner.”
    The sounds around the ballroom were suddenly dizzying. “Go on,” Carol said. Her voice sounded