Somewhere on St. Thomas by Toby Neal

Author:Toby Neal [Neal, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Toby Neal
Published: 2015-08-18T05:00:00+00:00

Life got a lot better once I had Shellie back in my life. I got the part in Oliver! and a crash course in drama through a heavy rehearsal schedule, so when I wasn’t working in the caf or on my studies in class, I was at the theater working hard there, too, and making new friends.

I never wrote Rafe back, not having an address even if I’d wanted to, but I treasured the letters he’d sent in the jewelry box, reading and rereading them. He continued to write from ports all along the coast of California, then Mexico, then South America.

Reading one from Panama—a vivid description of the locks of the Panama Canal—I realized that the Creamy Maid seemed to be working its way from San Francisco to Boston. I got frantic.

“Shellie!” I exclaimed, bursting into her room and waving Rafe’s latest letter with the postmark from Panama on it. “I think Rafe’s coming here!”

“Panama is a long way from Boston,” she snorted after I explained. She’d begun dating a new guy, Phillip, a thin, arty type with Fu Manchu whiskers. He was smoking a doobie in her room, and I thought he might make it to the weekend before she kicked him to the curb.

“The Panama Canal’s part of that famous trade route between Boston and San Francisco,” Phillip said with more enthusiasm than I’d ever seen from him. “It’s the shortcut alternative to sailing around Cape Horn. Does he say anything about the ports they’re going through?”

“No,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat up at talking about Rafe, whom Phillip seemed to think was really cool. “He actually doesn’t talk about the overall voyage much. I don’t know where their destination is. He talks a lot about what he sees, the sea life and birds and such.”

I didn’t really want to share any of what he said in the letters. They’d changed from our early passionate exchange of fantasies to more like a travel journal, with little vignettes about crew members and stories of fishing and weather and his hours working on the deck. He seemed to be trying to share his adventure with me, and I’d come to love the raggedy letters that arrived every few days, postmarked from all sorts of South American towns I’d never heard of.

“He’s really kind of cagey about that, come to think of it,” I said thoughtfully.

But I knew what he’d promised to do.

Come and get the ring in person.

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