I don’t think she ever did come back. Maybe she did, and nobody told me. I don't care. Rumors will be rumors, and everything else is gossip. It's the birthright of every kid in the family to accompany their parents on a weekend vacation to a piece-of-crap set of cabins by the Ocean. This happens every summer, and we keep coming back "because we went last year".
After a four hour drive from Seattle, and four one-hour sets of the Abba/Temptations mix my parents put together *special* for the event, we finally pulled into the "Beachwood Resort"
We weren't the first to arrive. My oldest cousin, and her one-year-old son, "Christian" had already claimed a "well-loved" cabin a few doors from the road by an outcropping of dead shrubbery. After us, came my younger-by-one-year cousin Stacey, and her parents.
The last one was several hours late. Heralded by the lewd grunting of his engine, and the overpowering smell of petrol, My other uncle --Kim’s dad-- arrived. He was six feet tall hunched over, in his brown smoking jacket --technically every jacket he owned was a smoking jacket. Nobody came to greet him, but he lit up, and sauntered over to the firepit.


Then, out from the passenger seat, came his girlfriend.

Sandy.

I won't take the time to describe her in any justifying detail, but imagine a really pretty, well-fed, well tended-to rose; and then imagine the exact opposite of that. In fact, imagine a old sun-bleached leather football. In fact, imagine rubbing your eyes with sandpaper.

We'd never seen her before.
In his own words, she'd been "picked up" at a "club" about three days prior to the trip.

First impressions are everything.

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Since mere minutes after they arrived, Sandy and My Uncle had been shut up in their cabin -- the one next to Kim's, no surprise. I don't know what they were doing, I didn't ask; but they still hadn’t come out by the time we all drove down to the beach that night, and the people who stayed behind said nothing had changed when we came back later that same night.
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The first words I heard when I got to Stacey's parent's cabin the next morning were "Maybe we should call the police."

She pulled me aside and said that her dad heard everything.


"Sandy's gone. She was doing pills. And drinking the whole time. Yeah, so was he. With her.”
She pulled me all the way outside, and we walked along the lawn.
“Here’s what I know. Kim was getting real nervous with her son so close to her dad’s cabin, with her there, but she just kind of brushes everything off, because he’s only one year old, and it’s not like anything would happen, right? WRONG. So my dad’s awake for this --he hears her yelling at him. He hears her whining and begging for something, and then he hears a bottle break --and so did Kim, apparently, because she busts down the door and starts screaming. I heard that part. She said she wasn’t welcome here, and she said she was a b****. And then Sandy storms out of the cabin --not in her sunday best-- with Kim right behind her. She chases her out to the driveway, and she never came back. And Kim’s off in some cabin by herself now.”

I think I said “wow” or something stupid, and left it at that.
What could I say?

My uncle was still in the cabin, alone.

Nobody went to talk to him.
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It rained torrentially the next day. Nobody ever called the cops, and nobody pressed any charges.
We packed up the car, and were the last to finally leave. We never did see her again after that --but there were rumors about My Uncle picking her up, and taking her someplace --but wishful thinkers said maybe she’d walked all the way back from aberdeen to her apartment... or his apartment

or to her trashcan... or wherever.

For some time after that --until Christmas, I think, when we all had to get together again-- things settled down, and life returned to normal.