The TV in the waiting room had the news playing. It was the story about the tragic young cancer patient that had been lost off a cruise ship. That had been two years ago today. The news seemed to focus on her story, harping on the tragedy of the cancer patient with less than months left to live, dying at sea. The news loved tragedy. The video from one of the ship’s cameras showed the young woman standing at the railing, and then suddenly went blank. The cruise line claimed it was some sort of malfunction in their recording equipment, but Sam rather doubted the convenience of that.
For a moment he wondered if the girl he’d rescued could be her, but immediately dismissed it. That girl was lost at sea two years ago. It had to be a coincidence that Cassidy Hunter had the same initials as Carly’s locket. No one could survive out there that long, and then wash up hundreds of miles south of there, two years later.
When they showed a school picture of her before she’d been terminally diagnosed with cancer, he was certain it was a different girl.
Cassidy Hunter had blue eyes.
It occurred to him that Cassidy Hunter would have been only a little older than his own daughter, now living with her mother half a country away. He wondered how he would take it, if his sweet Megan, or his son, Sammy Jr., were taken away like that, never to be seen again. He sympathized with Cassidy’s parents.