Butterfly Serials 2.4

Joan's Search Ends In Casablanca; Butterfly Serials 2.4

© 2024 by Amber Wright

June 1973.

They were gone sightseeing in Munich so Dinah Isaacs stayed at the hotel with an achy stomach. She flipped open a diary...

Date: September 1916

Place: Ship to Casablanca

The stars had fallen from the sky.

The air had dried to powder.

Brooklyn was gone.

Joan couldn't stop crying as she stood looking over the rail of the ocean liner bound for the last place Brooklyn had been taken. That much they'd gotten out of the O'Reilley band of kidnappers, relatives of her first husband.

“We'll find her,” Jill Jackson stood beside her like a pillar of faith.

But Joan wasn't so sure.

“It's because I didn't want her when she was born,” Joan's voice shook. “It's all my fault!”

The days passed in a blur of vomit, tears and more vomit. The loss of her daughter was more painful than two dead husbands—or two hundred husbands!—put together.

One child was worth more than a thousand men she could ever want.

Joan's fists tightened over the rail and all that was before her was a black and starless night.

• • •

They docked and the police came aboard to question everyone.

“Have you seen my daughter?” Joan blurted out before the officer could speak.

“No—why are you here?” the officer asked. “I must see your papers.”

“But is she here? She has been kidnapped and brought here!” Joan waved the photo of Brooklyn. “She's only just turned one!”

“No,” the officer kept saying, “we have not seen a child of that description come into our ports. We would know. We know everything.”

But something about the way he said it, Joan sensed he was hiding something. Or hiding the truth about somebody else.

“Please!” Joan begged, tugging at the man's jacket. “Please, can you help me search for my daughter?”

Jill pulled her back. “Joan!”

The police talked among themselves.

“Wait here,” the officer told her. “We'll come back when we have had news.”

Joan and Jill sat in their cabin; and the hours felt like days.

The officer came back with a stern face, “We have found nothing and no one. You have wasted my time—valuable police time—and you will stay on this boat and leave immediately tomorrow morning!”

“But please, my daughter is—”

“We have found nothing!” the officer barked at her. “Leave, or I'll arrest you!”

Arrest me? May as well say hang me, the way you do things over here!

Jill took charge and talked with the officer while Joan's mind froze and reeled at the same time. She would not find Brooklyn.

It was too late.

“It's all my fault!” Joan sobbed on Jill's shoulder. “I wish I had never been born!”

“You don't mean that, Joan. I know this is the worst possible thing to say—but maybe there is a reason for all of this.”

Joan sniffled, straightening.

“Maybe there is somebody taking care of your daughter—and you will take care of other people's daughters. For right now.”

“What do you mean?” Joan sat up straighter.

“I mean, don't lose hope. You need to find a distraction right now. How about we start a book club or something?”

“Book club!” Joan shouted.

“I had a strange dream on the way over here. I saw Brooklyn—but she was old. She's going to be alright, Joan.”

Joan started crying again.

June 1973.

...Dinah sniffed away a tear. So that's how the Butterfly Girl Club had started.