I woke one morning to clear skies, breeze in the palm trees, and instant coffee from the microwave. As I dragged open the sliding glass door, I spotted our complementary copy of Aruba Today lying on the patio table.

            The front page showed a picture of a handcuffed man being led by two uniformed police officers. The man wore a striped shirt over his face and carried his belongings in a trash bag. His name was Gary Giordano, a person of interest in the disappearance of Robyn Gardner.

            The headline read: “Under Suspicion.”

            Aruba Today rarely leads with local news, much less a story about suspected abduction and murder. Aruba is home to only 100,000 people, which is half the population of Washington County. The island nation is famous for safe streets and relaxed people. The red license plates read, “One Happy Island.”

            As I sipped my second coffee by the hotel pool, I marveled at this coincidence. In 2005, the disappearance of Natalie Holloway caused an uproar in the U.S. The main suspect was Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot, and when he was convicted of a separate crime in Peru, Americans were reassured but felt little closure. Still, Aruba has quietly recovered from the scandal, spending six sunny years without so much as a shark attack.

            And then, only days before my girlfriend Kylan and I flew to Queen Beatrix Airport for vacation, Robyn Gardner vanished, and a shockwave coursed through the American media. Holloway’s disappearance was tragic, but a second instance was alarming. Our inboxes received a steady stream of concerned emails. Over drinks in Oakland, friends cracked jokes about stocking masks and windowless vans.

            “Just be careful,” people advised.

            Over the years, I have had several brushes with international incident. In 2000, my Semester at Sea ship sailed dangerously close to the U.S.S. Cole bombing, and our voyage was rerouted. Shortly after I visited Dublin, the Irish economy collapsed. After Greece, riots ignited in the streets of Athens. After publishing a glowing essay about Iceland, I watched in horror as the island’s economy imploded, and then one of its volcanoes erupted. I was still showing pictures of a Nile cruise when Cairo became a warzone, and only hours after I flew out of Heathrow, a wannabe terrorist jumped the airport fence and tried to blow up a grounded plane. Never mind my girlfriend’s former flat-mate, Ekram, who recently wrote us about arson and violence on her own street, a street Kylan briefly called home.

            It’s strange, walking the avenues of Oranjestad, Aruba’s pastel-colored capital. As we amble past restaurants and beaches, hotels and rogue iguanas, I realize that Gardner saw these same sights and may have strolled these same sidewalks. With any luck, she’ll still be found, healthy and relieved. But I can’t shake the feeling that I am walking the last landscape she ever saw.

            Stranger still is that nobody mentions the event. No bartender waxes philosophic, no cabbies soliloquize. The nation is only 19 miles long and six miles wide. Aruba is a small town surrounded by water. How could people avoid talking about it?

            “You should go to Baby Beach,” says Hank, our hotelier. “It is the best beach on the island.”

            He says this without irony, as if unaware that Baby Beach is where Gardner was last seen, snorkeling, before she disappeared. When we drive there, past the smokestacks of an oil refinery and the scraggly dunes of a pet cemetery, we are startled by the nearby walls of KIA, Aruba’s main jail. Our rental car bumbles over dusty roads only a half-mile from Giordano’s cell.

            The macabre story colors our every move. When I go for a hike in the desert, Kylan says, “Have fun. Don’t get abducted.” When she goes for a run along the highway, I advise her to watch out for kidnappers.

            But we’re only half-joking. Every event feels heavy with meaning: A commuter offers us a ride into town, and we adamantly decline. We double-check the locks on every door, overuse our hotel room safe, and when I drop a bottle of Merlot, the pool of sticky red liquid gives us dramatic pause.

            Nothing happens to us, except for sightseeing and dips in the ocean. The biggest threats are zealous drivers gunning around the traffic circles. Even as the Gardner-Giordano story develops, and investigators from three countries are called in, we see no hint of foul play. Soon the mystery feels as fanciful as our beach reads. When we climb the cliffs toward the Natural Pool, a Jeep pulls up and the driver calls, “Would you like a lift?” A woman smiles in the passenger seat. They’re young and friendly-looking, a tourist couple just like us. Sure, they could be serial killers. But then again, so could anybody.

            “Sure,” Kylan says.