“You heard what happened to the lady in Quebec, didn’t you?” I turned to look at my co-worker. It was lunch break, and I had mentioned my daughter’s plans to meet her internet contact at the airport that weekend. I should have known better, but I asked anyway.
“No, I didn’t hear. What are you talking about?” Mistake.
A disturbing story. The lady had been chatting with a man over the Net for a couple of months, and had finally agreed to meet him alone at a restaurant in Quebec City. She did take certain precautions: the meeting was to be in a public place, there would be a coded telephone call from her best friend, she had pepper spray in her purse. The call to her best friend happened, and all seemed well at the time. They found her car in the parking lot two days later, her purse and cell phone intact, but she has disappeared. According to my co-worker, she has not been seen since.
As is usual with this kind of thing, others in the lunchroom suddenly remembered having heard of similar experiences. Whether they were fact or fiction is anyone’s guess, but each telling only augmented my insecurity about the whole affair. I needed to talk to my daughter!
When I stopped in at her house that evening, she was sitting at the kitchen table, having coffee with a friend. I would have waited until we were alone, but the subject came up, I interrupted her friend’s warnings by blurting out what I had to say.
“I’m going with you to the airport.” Both girls looked at me in surprise, but my daughter said nothing. She wouldn’t, of course, which is why I had wanted to tell her in person instead of over the phone. I needed to read her expression. Unlike my two sons, who are very vocal about their wishes, Shan tends to keep her thoughts to herself. Arguing aloud has never been her forte, even as a child. She does, however, get this set look on her face which we’ve learned means she’ll just go ahead and do exactly as she pleases anyway, whether you like it or not. The look was there now, but I could tell she was considering my words.
Maybe it was the excitement of this first venture, or maybe her friends talked her into it, but she did pick me up on the way to the airport when the day arrived. We were there far too early, of course, and our long wait afforded numerous nervous trips to the bathroom by my daughter. Her anxiety that the potential suitor not find her to his taste was soothed by a total stranger walking over to us, excusing himself, then proceeding to tell her that he and his group of fellow crew workers, who were sitting near us in the arrival section, decided that she was stunning; that she had the most beautiful eyes they’d ever seen! Wow! What more could one ask as a morale booster?
Needless to say, the dude showed up, was okay with ‘mama’ being there, and my concerns were laid to rest by the time they dropped me off after the long drive home. I still called her later that evening – just to make sure. They had a nice weekend together, he has flown back to his own place now, and it looks like that is the end of it. Some things just don’t work out.
In the meantime, this mother returned the pepper spray to its storage place. I know exactly where to find it if cyber-romance rears its head again.
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