The Cabin Below by N.L. Hinkens

Author:N.L. Hinkens [Hinkens, N.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947890220
Publisher: Dunecadia Publishing
Published: 2020-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

20

Sophia

Sophia yawned as she reached for her phone. 7:15 a.m. The ship was probably already docked at Cozumel. They hadn't yet made any arrangements to meet up with Doug and Allison after their late night in Slow Vibes. After going back up to her cabin to change out of her wet clothes, Allison had texted Doug to say she was tired and had decided to turn in after all. The rest of them had enjoyed another round of drinks before calling it a night.

Deep down, Sophia wasn’t sure what to make of Allison. Had she really been too tired to come back down to the bar last night, or had she wanted to search through Doug’s things again? She came across as coherent and intelligent most of the time, but then she turned around and did some pretty absent-minded things, which seemed to suggest she might be abusing her prescription medication.

The whole thing about the burner phone was peculiar, but then again, did it even exist? Allison had insisted it was there one minute and gone the next—just like the necklace. Was she simply looking for attention? She had admitted to attempting suicide once before. Maybe she’d tried it again at Labadee.

Sophia’s mind flitted back to the conversation she’d had with Allison about her baby. Suffering a miscarriage was one thing, but accidentally suffocating your child would be an awful thing to have to live with—if, that was, in fact, what had happened.

Maybe Allison had fabricated the whole story because it garnered more attention than a miscarriage. Sophia rubbed her eyelids and stretched. She wasn't going to be able to resolve any of this in the final forty-eight hours of their cruise. She had her own problems to go home to as it turned out.

She prodded Cody gently with her elbow. "Do you want to jump in the shower? We should make the most of our last shore excursion."

"You go first," he mumbled. "I need a few more minutes."

As Sophia stood beneath the steaming water, her thoughts drifted away from Cozumel, Mexico, and back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they would soon return to reality with a crash landing. Not the reality they had left—one in which she and Cody had been successful business owners, able to afford the kind of vacations their parents could only ever have dreamed of. Their new reality involved a lot of uncertainty, and would necessitate a whole lot of paring back, and a heavy dose of reassessing their priorities. She tried to quash the unsettling thought that they might even have to sell their house. They’d only just finished remodeling the kitchen—the dream kitchen she’d waited a decade for. Sophia grimaced as she turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. Bankruptcy wasn’t out of the question, either. She had no idea how much they owed the IRS, and she’d been too afraid to ask. Cody hadn’t thrown out any numbers—maybe he didn’t know for sure himself.

Dread curled in her stomach when she pictured the boys’ reactions.

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