This morning Connie and I took Jenny to the Nassau airport as our little adventure came to a close. With feelings of warmth and a pang of melancholy that it was over we embraced and sent Jenny homeward. My flight was in a couple of days. Connie’s husband Joe, their three kids, and another family of four were arriving the next day.

When Connie and I got back to the house I got a notification on my computer from Find My Phone with an exact GPS location of where it was. I was elated! I called the Bahamas Police right away. An Inspector Burroughs in full regalia showed up with his deputy and they made a big show of taking down the coordinates. I hand wrote the list of all our valuables that had been stolen that were, in all likelihood, with my phone and gave it to the inspector. He said they would go check out the address and get back to us. I could not believe our luck! There was a chance at justice!

I started to read the local news stories of the week and discovered that the night after our robbery police had shot and killed a suspected armed robber/rapist on our street. They had a warrant for his arrest as he had been caught with one of the stolen Rolex watches from the Atlantis store. When they pulled him over he drew fire but the cops got him first. That is what was happening outside our home here the night after our robbery. Remember when we got scared and ran inside and saw police lights out front later on? Always trust your instincts! They are almost always right on the money.

Spooked with this new news, Connie and I closed up the house, storm shutters and all and awaited a call back from the police. As the sun set on the day I decided to call them back myself. It was Friday evening. The officer who answered said that Inspector Burroughs had gone home at 5PM and would be back in on Monday morning. I inquired if he knew if anyone had been to the address in question. He didn’t know. He asked me to send him a photo of the coordinates from my phone (!) and I lost my shit. In a crying fit I screamed over the phone that I had made it very simple to solve the crime if only someone had bothered to go to the address and look around. He hung up on me. I gave up. Connie and I ordered a feast of Chinese food delivery and watched Ru Paul’s Drag Race until we felt better. Connie’s family and friends arrived the next day and we spent some quality time together until my departure home.

At the end of the day, I am so grateful that none of us got hurt. I am grateful that Connie’s kids weren’t with us. I know that the robbers needed our stuff more then we did and I hope it helped them and their families out of a tough spot. I am grateful that I got to see seven countries in the month before Corona Virus shut down the world. As soon as I got home, school got cancelled, the government orders to stay home were all over the news, the cruise industry collapsed, and the world as we knew it would be forever changed. We got Jake home from Brussels the same day they closed the borders there. We are all safe and sound, thank God. The shock from the robbery quickly subsided as this global pandemic inflicted so much suffering and change upon the world that our little brush with death seems miniscule in comparison. And life goes on. I hope you are all well and good. Thank you for reading. Writing this diary and sharing it with you has helped me to heal. xo