When my 3 girls were very young, and the youngest was 5 yrs younger then her older sister (then 3 yrs the middle one), we were on a trip to the Ocean City resort in Maryland. After packing up for the trip back home the girls heard a siren, actually a lot of sirens. It was a huge fire in Ocean City, perhaps one of the largest I've heard of.
It seemed as though thousands of people were walking up the street towards the location of the fire. They asked could we go too?
So off we went, walking, all 5 of them, the 3 girls, (the youngest about 6 I think) they all walked just ahead of us, and we kept saying stay together.
All of a sudden (or so it seemed) the crowd got much much larger, and we lost sight of the little one.
She was gone, just like that!
My heart sank to my feet.
My husband took off faster to push through the thickening crowd looking for her.
I kept seeing tons of cars on the street up and down the promenade, in and out of Ocean City that weekend, and I kept thinking, "OMG, she could be in one of those cars".......we cannot leave this town EVER, until we find our daughter.....I was scared s-----ss
Finally, as though a miracle, he spotted her.
Someone had lifted her up and placed her on a wall so she could see.
The fire could be seen up higher.
I'll never forget that as long as I live.
We eventually lost this daughter through an early death.
When she was 14 she wanted to go to Fireman's school, and joined the Fire Dept.
She was a volunteer searcher on the search & rescue team and once they called early 5AM to arrange a search for a child in tall farmland grasses, and they did find her.
I think she was somewhat upset when she learned she could not pass the fire hose strength test. She was tiny, only 5feet and less then 100 lbs. (maybe 94) and simply didn't have that kind of strength demanded of her for it.
I think it tore at her heart, ..........
So strange things can happen, and for us it was in a huge rather growing crowd of people she disappeared in. She later said, she was mesmerized by the flames.
For little Cayleigh, it must have been mesmerizing her, the ocean's waves OR perhaps a dog she saw, any number of things took her to that shoreline and she disappeared that day . Wasn't there an undertow that fateful day, rather harsher waves?