Summer′s Child
Summer's Child
Diane Chamberlain
Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, Daria Cato found an unexpected gift - an abandoned baby. Unable to leave the child unclaimed, the Cato family adopt Shelly, but the secrets of her birth continue to haunt Daria.Twenty years later, an old friend of Daria’s, Rory Taylor, returns to his hometown – and something precarious shifts in the community. For Rory will stop at nothing to uncover the mysteries of Shelly’s birth.As closely guarded secrets and sins begin to unravel, piece by piece the mystery of the summer’s child is about to be exposed. A mystery no one involved is prepared to face.A chance to uncover the secrets of her past.A truth that will change her future forever.Praise for Diane Chamberlain ‘Fans of Jodi Picoult will delight in this finely tuned family drama, with beautifully drawn characters and a string of twists that will keep you guessing right up to the end.' - Stylist‘A marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem’ - Literary Times’Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’ - Daily Mail’So full of unexpected twists you'll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult's style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’ - Candis
Praise for
DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
‘Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read.’
—Closer
‘An excellent read’
—The Sun
‘This complex tale will stick with you forever.’
—Now
‘A hugely addictive twist in the tale makes this a sizzling sofa read … a deeply compelling and moving new novel.’
—Heat
‘This exquisite novel about love and friendship is written like a thriller … you won’t want to put it down.’
—Bella
‘A bittersweet story about regret and hope’
—Publishers Weekly
‘A brilliantly told thriller’
—Woman
‘An engaging and absorbing story that’ll have you racing through pages to finish’
—People’s Friend
‘This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.’
—Inside Soap
‘A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises’
—Star
‘Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’
—Daily Mail
‘Chamberlain skilfully … plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’
—Candis
‘The plot is intriguing and haunting revelations will have you glued to the very end.’
—Peterborough Evening Telegraph
‘I was drawn in from the first page and simply could not put it down until the last. I think I have found a new favourite author.’
—Daily Echo
‘[A] gripping summer read that’s full of twists and turns —5 stars’
—Woman’s Own
‘The compelling story of three friends who are forced to question what it is to be a friend, mother and a sister.’
—Sunday World
‘A gripping novel’
—The Lady (online)
‘Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.’
—Literary Times
‘A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult for, as this builds, one does indeed wonder if all will come right in the end.’
—lovereading.co.uk
‘I couldn’t put it down.’
—Bookseller
Also by DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
The Courage Tree
Her Mother’s Shadow
Kiss River
Keeper of the Light
The Lost Daughter
The Bay at Midnight
Before the Storm
Secrets She Left Behind
The Lies We Told
Breaking the Silence
The Midwife’s Confession
The Shadow Wife
The Good Father
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This story is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Susan Chamberlain, my inspiration and comfort.
Summer’s Child
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
End Page (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
ON HER ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY, DARIA CATO BECAME A HERO.
A deep hush had fallen over the Sea Shanty after the savage weather of the night before, and Daria woke very early, as usual, when the sky outside her bedroom windows held only a hint of dawn. She opened the window above her dresser to let the breeze slip into the room. The sound of the ocean was rhythmic and calm, not like the angry pounding of the night before, and she breathed in the smell of salt and seaweed. The sunrise would be spectacular this morning.
Quickly, she slipped out of her pajamas and into her shorts and tank top, then quietly opened her bedroom door and walked into the hallway. She tiptoed past her sister Chloe’s room, and past the room where her cousin, Ellen, slept. Ellen’s mother was asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and Daria’s parents were in their room on the third story. Her father would be getting up soon for early mass, but her mother, Aunt Josie, Ellen and Chloe wouldn’t be up for at least another hour. They didn’t understand the early-morning allure of the beach, but that was fine with her. She preferred solitude as she watched the sand and sea change color and texture each morning. This morning would be special, not just because of the storm, but because it was her birthday. Eleven. Kind of a dull number, and still two years away from being able to call herself a teenager, but definitely better than ten.
Daria padded quietly on bare feet down the stairs, trying to avoid the step that always squeaked. Would anyone remember her birthday this year? She was certain it would be nothing like the year before, when her mother had arranged a party for her with all the other kids on the cul-de-sac. No, this year was destined to be different, because her mother was different. She’d changed over this last year, and this first gloomy, overcast week of summer in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, had done nothing to lift her dour mood. Daria’s mother slept late almost every day and moped around the cottage once she did get up. She barely seemed to remember her daughters’ names, much less their birthdays. Chloe wouldn’t care, of course. She was seventeen this summer, the brainy one in the family, already finished with her freshman year at college and interested only in boys and what color nail polish she should use to paint her toes. That’s when their mother started changing, Daria thought, when Chloe went off to college. “I’m losing my little ones,” Daria had overheard her mother say to her aunt just yesterday.
And, of course, the kids on the cul-de-sac would balk at coming to the birthday party of an eleven-year-old this year, now that they were all teenagers. Every single one of them except her! It was a good thing she didn’t mind being alone all that much, she thought as she opened the front door and walked onto the Sea Shanty’s broad screened porch, because that was obviously the way it was going to be this summer.
From the porch, Daria could look directly across the cul-de-sac and see Poll-Rory, Rory Taylor’s cottage. Even Rory, who had been her summertime buddy for most of her life, was now fourteen and pretty much ignoring her. He seemed to have forgotten all the hours they’d fished together, crabbed together and raced against each other while swimming in the sound.
There were no lights on inside Poll-Rory. She looked at the upstairs window she knew to be Rory’s bedroom and felt a prickly pain in her heart.
“Who needs you, anyhow,” she muttered, pushing open the screen door and descending the steps to the cool sand. She began walking toward the beach, where she could see the sky just beginning its silent, peach-colored glide toward sunrise.
All six cottages on the cul-de-sac were built on stilts, like most of the oceanside structures in the Outer Banks. The Sea Shanty, built by her father and uncle the year Daria was born, was only the second cottage from the water, so Daria quickly reached the low, grass-covered dune overlooking the beach. She glanced at the cottage where Cindy Trump lived, the only home on the cul-de-sac directly fronting the ocean, to make sure it had not been damaged by the storm. It was perfectly fine. She envied Cindy and her brother for living right on the water, but her father said the beach was narrowing in Kill Devil Hills and Cindy’s cottage would one day plunge into the sea. Still, Daria thought it would be neat to be able to look out your bedroom window and see nothing but water below you.
The beach was beautiful! The storm had washed the sand clean, and the tide had left behind a deep, wide row of shells, waiting for her to sift through them. The sun was already a thin sliver of copper on the horizon above the water, which was so calm it looked more like the sound than the ocean. Nothing like last night’s turbulent, frothy waves. She sat down on the dune to watch the sun’s rapid ascent into the iridescent sky. The sand was cool and damp, and she dug her bare feet into it.
Large, brown, orb-shaped horseshoe-crab shells dotted the beach, an eerie spectacle in the coppery light. They looked like something from another planet. She had never seen so many of them at one time, but they only held her interest for a moment or two before she began thinking again about the social dilemma facing her this summer. Although the Catos had been at the Sea Shanty for less than a week, Daria could already see how this summer was going to shape up, and the picture wasn’t pleasant. She went over the cul-de-sac kids in her mind, wishing she’d made a mistake in figuring out their ages. Chloe was seventeen and Ellen, who’d be with them for most of the summer, was fifteen. Cindy Trump was sixteen, her brother, Todd, thirteen. There were seventeen-year-old twins, Jill and Brian Fletcher, in the cottage next to Poll-Rory. Next door to them was that really quiet girl, Linda, who was fourteen and always had her nose stuck in a book. An old couple, the Wheelers, lived next door to Daria, and their three children were so grown-up, they were married. Last year, Daria had occasionally played with Rory’s sister, Polly. Polly was fifteen, but she had Down’s syndrome, so it was like playing with someone much younger. But even Polly seemed to have moved far beyond Daria this summer, at least in terms of physical development, if not interests. She had breasts that Ellen and Chloe were talking about with envy.
Once the sun was fully above the horizon, Daria set out for the inviting line of shells. Her shorts had deep pockets, so she would be able to carry whatever treasures she found. Her bounty would annoy her mother, who now complained about her collecting buckets of “useless” shells each summer, even though she’d never said a word about it before.
The sand was deliciously cool beneath her feet as she walked along the line of shells. She had progressed only as far as the Trumps’ cottage when she spotted the largest horseshoe-crab shell she had ever seen smack in the middle of the broad strip of shells. The shell looked odd to her, raised up a bit, as though perhaps the crab might still be inside. Curious, she extended her leg, and with her sandcovered toe, kicked the brown globe onto its back. Daria blinked in disbelief. A bloody baby! She shrieked before she could stop herself, then took off across the sand, screaming and waving her arms, wishing now that she were not all alone on the beach.
She’d run the distance of several cottages when she stopped short. Had it really been a baby? Could it have been a doll, perhaps? She looked back over shoulder. Yes, she was certain it had been a real, human baby. And in her memory, she imagined the small, almost imperceptible movement of a tiny, blood-covered foot. Surely that had not actually happened. She stood rigidly on the beach, staring back at the shell. Okay, maybe it really was a baby, but it couldn’t possibly be alive. Very slowly, she walked back to the overturned shell. The ocean was so quiet that she could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Standing above the shell, she forced herself to look down.
It was a baby, a naked baby, and not only was it stained with blood, it was lying next to what looked like a pulpy mountain of blood. And the baby was alive. There was no mistaking the tiny movement of its head toward the sea, no mistaking the weak, mewling sound escaping from its doll-like lips.
Fighting nausea, Daria took off her tank top and knelt in the sand. Carefully, she began to wrap the shirt around the baby, only to pull away in horror. The bloody mountain was attached to the baby! There was no way to leave it behind. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped the shirt around everything—baby, mountain and half a dozen shells—and stood up, cradling the bundle in her arms. She walked as quickly as she could up the beach toward the Sea Shanty. She stopped once, expecting to be sick, but she felt the trembling of the small life in her arms and forced her feet to continue walking.
Once in the Sea Shanty, she laid the bundle down on the kitchen table. Blood had soaked clear through the tank top, and she realized there was blood on her bare chest as she ran up the stairs to her parents’ third-story bedroom.
“Mom!” She pounded on their bedroom door. “Daddy!”
She heard her father’s heavy footsteps inside the room. In a moment, he opened the door. He was tying his tie, and his thick, usually unruly, black hair was combed into place for church. Behind him, Daria could see her mother, still asleep in their double bed.
“Shh.” Her father held a finger to his lips. “What’s the matter?” His eyes widened as he saw the red stain on her chest, and he stepped quickly into the hall, grabbing her by the shoulder. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you get hurt?”
“I found a baby on the beach!” she said. “It’s alive but it’s all—”
“What did you say?” Her mother sat up in bed, her brown hair jutting from her head on one side. She looked suddenly wide-awake.
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said, pushing past her father to reach the bed. She tugged her mother’s hand. “I put it on the table in the kitchen. I’m afraid it might die. It’s really tiny, and it’s got a lot of blood on it.”
Her mother was out of the bed more quickly than Daria had seen her move in months. She pulled on her robe and slippers and raced down the stairs ahead of both Daria and her father.
In the kitchen, the baby was just where Daria had left it, and the bundle was so still that she feared the baby might now truly be dead. Daria’s mother did not balk for an instant at the bloody sight, and Daria was impressed and proud as her mother lifted the crimson tank top away from the infant.
“Dear God in heaven!” Daria’s father said, taking a step backward. But her mother was not repelled. With the practiced hands of the nurse she had once been, she began moving efficiently around the kitchen. She filled a pan with water and put it on the stove, then wet a dish towel and began cleaning the baby with it.
Daria leaned close, made less afraid by her mother’s matter-of-fact handling of the situation. “Why is it so bloody?” she asked.
“Because it’s a newborn,” her mother said. “She’s a newborn.”
Daria looked closer and could see that the baby was indeed a girl.
“Where exactly did you find her?” her mother asked.
“She was under a horseshoe-crab shell,” Daria said.
“Under a horseshoe-crab shell!” her mother exclaimed.
“She was with all the shells washed in from the tide,” Daria said. “Do you think the storm last night washed her up on the beach?”
Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “She would have been washed clean then. And she would have been dead.” Her lower lip trembled and her nostrils flared with quiet rage. “No, someone just left her there.”
“I’m calling the police.” Daria’s father headed for the living room and the phone. His face had gone gray. Aunt Josie passed him on her way into the room.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Oh my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth as she saw the baby lying on the kitchen table.
“I found her on the beach,” Daria explained.
“All by herself?” Aunt Josie asked. “Where on the beach?”
“Right in front of Cindy Trump’s cottage,” Daria said. She saw her mother and aunt exchange glances. People always did that when they talked about Cindy Trump, but Daria didn’t have a clue why.
“The placenta is attached,” Aunt Josie said, peering closer, and Daria knew she must mean the bloody mountain still lying next to the baby.
“I know.” Daria’s mother shook her head as she rinsed out the wet cloth under the faucet. “Isn’t this just unbelievable?”
Daria thought of Chloe and Ellen still asleep upstairs. They shouldn’t miss this. She started toward the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked.
“To get Chloe and Ellen,” Daria said.
“It’s not even eight o’clock,” her mother said. “Don’t wake them yet.”
“Teenagers sleep the sleep of the dead, I swear,” Aunt Josie said.
Chloe and Ellen would probably blame her for not waking them, but Daria thought it best to be obedient just then. She stepped close to the table again and watched as her mother slipped the blades of the kitchen scissors into the boiling water for a moment, then snipped the cord coming from the baby’s belly button. Finally, the baby was free of the horrible, pulpy mass. Aunt Josie brought a towel from the downstairs bathroom and Daria’s mother wrapped it around the newly bathed baby and lifted the bundle to her chest. She rocked the baby back and forth. “Poor darling little thing,” she said softly. “Poor little castaway.” Daria thought it had been years since she’d seen so much life in her mother’s eyes.
The policemen and rescue squad arrived within minutes. One of the rescue-squad workers, a young man with long hair, nearly had to pry the infant from Daria’s mother’s arms. Still wearing her robe and slippers, she followed the baby to the ambulance. She stood watching the vehicle as it drove away, and she stayed there for several minutes after the ambulance had turned onto the beach road from the cul-de-sac.
Meanwhile, the policemen were full of questions, mainly for Daria. They sat with her on the screened porch of the Sea Shanty and went over and over the details of her discovery until she herself began to feel guilty, as though she had done something terribly wrong and would be hauled off to jail any moment. After questioning her for nearly half an hour, they sent her inside while they spoke with her parents and Aunt Josie. Daria sat on the wicker chair in the living room, the one right next to the window that opened onto the porch, so she could listen to whatever the grown-ups had to say.
“Can you tell us what teenage girls live on this cul-de-sac?” one of the policemen asked.
Aunt Josie began ticking them off. “That cottage there on the beach,” she said, “There’s a fast girl lives there. Cindy Trump. I’ve heard the boys call her Cindy Tramp, because she’s easy, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t say that, Josie,” Daria’s mother scolded.
“But I saw her yesterday,” Daria’s father said. “She didn’t look pregnant to me.”
Daria leaned her cheek against the wicker back of the chair, positioning herself to hear better. This was fascinating talk.
“I saw her, too,” Aunt Josie said. “She had on a big white shirt, like a man’s shirt. She could have been hiding anything under there.”
Daria could almost hear her father’s shrug of defeat. Aunt Josie had been married to his brother, who had died five years ago, and she always seemed to get her way with Daria’s dad.
Aunt Josie began speaking again. “There’s that girl Linda, who—”
“She’s only fourteen,” Daria’s mother protested. “And she’s so shy. Why, she can’t even talk to the boys, much less…” Her voice trailed off.
“We’d still like to know what girls are on the cul-de-sac,” one of the policemen said. “Whether you think they could be the mother of that baby or not. How about in this cottage? Any girls besides Supergirl? Daria?”
Supergirl? Daria grinned to herself.
“Yes,” Daria’s father said, “but they’re good Catholic girls.”
“My daughter, Ellen, is fifteen,” Aunt Josie said. “And I can assure you she was not pregnant.”
“Same for our daughter, Chloe.” Daria’s father sounded insulted that Chloe might be considered a suspect. “She goes to Catholic University. Got in when she was only sixteen, so you can guess she spends most of her time hitting the books.”
Daria wasn’t so sure about that. Chloe was smart enough to get good grades without doing much studying.
“Anyone else?” one of the officers asked.
“In this cottage?” Aunt Josie asked. “No, but there’s a couple more girls on this block. There’s Polly across the street.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Josie,” Daria’s mother said. “She’s mentally retarded. Do you really think—”
“She’s right to tell us,” one of the policemen said. “Who else?” He and Aunt Josie sounded like old buddies.
“I think the only other one is that Jill girl,” Aunt Josie said.
“She’s the Fletcher girl.” Daria’s mother’s sounded resigned. Every girl on the cul-de-sac was going to be on that list, whether she wanted them to be or not.
Daria saw Chloe descending the stairs from the second story and put her finger to her lips. Chloe frowned as she reached the living room. She walked over to her sister on bare feet.
“What’s going on?” she whispered, trying to peer out the window onto the porch.
“Don’t let them see you!” Daria grabbed a fistful of her sister’s wild black hair to pull her head down.
“Ouch.” Chloe extricated herself from Daria’s grasp. “Why are the cops here?”
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said.
“You found what?”
“Shh,” Daria said. But before she could explain further, their father stepped into the room.
“Chloe, good, you’re here,” he said. His hair was mussed now. He could never keep it looking neat for long. “I was just coming in to get you. You and Ellen need to answer a few questions for the police.”
“Why?” Chloe looked surprised. Her usual olive complexion had a waxy cast to it in the pale morning light, and Daria guessed she was nervous about having to talk to policemen.
“It’s all right,” Daria said. “I talked to them for a long time. They’re pretty nice.” Of course, though, I’m Supergirl.
“Get Ellen,” her father said to Chloe, who rolled her eyes and offered him a look of disdain before stomping up the stairs. That defiant attitude was brand-new. Chloe had been away at college all this year, only joining the family at the Sea Shanty a few days ago, and Daria had not yet adjusted to the change in her sister. Chloe had always been her parents’ pride and joy, with her straight-A report card and adherence to their rules. Suddenly, she was acting as though she didn’t need parents at all.
“And you.” Daria’s father looked straight at her, and she knew she’d been caught eavesdropping at the window. “You go on upstairs now. You must be tired. It’s already been a long morning for you.”
Daria did not want to go upstairs; she wanted to hear what the police would say to Chloe and Ellen, and she should be able to. She was eleven now, not that anyone seemed to have remembered. And if it hadn’t been for her, this whole commotion wouldn’t be happening at all. But her dad had that stern look on his face that told her she’d better not argue.
She passed Ellen and Chloe on her way up the stairs. Ellen wore the same pale-faced look as Chloe, and they said nothing to her as she passed them. But when she was nearly to the second story, she heard Chloe call out to her.
“Hey, Daria,” she said. “Happy birthday, sis.”
When she reached the upstairs hallway, Daria sat down on the top step, trying to remain within hearing range of the voices downstairs. She could tell who was talking, but little of what was said, and her mind began to wander. She thought about what she’d told the police, playing the interview over and over in her mind. If you lied to the police, could you be arrested? Would they arrest an eleven-year-old girl? She had not actually lied, she reassured herself. She had simply left out one fact—one small, probably insignificant piece of the story: the baby was not all she had found on the beach that morning.
1
Twenty-two years later
DARIA’S THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY WAS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT from any other early June day. Life was slowly returning to the Outer Banks as vacationers trickled into the coastal communities, and it seemed the air and sea grew warmer by the hour. Daria spent the day with her co-worker and fellow carpenter, Andy Kramer, remodeling the kitchen of a house in Nag’s Head. She installed cabinets and countertops, all the while battling the melancholia that had been her companion for the past month and a half.
Andy had insisted on buying her lunch—a chicken sandwich and fries at Wendy’s—as his birthday gift to her. She sat across the table from him, nibbling her sandwich while he devoured his three hamburgers and two orders of fries, as they planned their work agenda for the afternoon. Despite Andy’s appetite, he was reed slender. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that reached the middle of his back, and a gold hoop pierced his left earlobe. He was only in his mid-twenties, and Daria figured that was the reason he could still eat as he did and never gain an ounce.
“So,” he said to her as he polished off the last of his burgers, “are you going to party tonight?”
“No,” Daria said. “I’m just going to have some cake with Chloe and Shelly.”
“Oh, right,” Andy said. “It’s Shelly’s birthday, too, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. She’s twenty-two.” Hard to believe. Shelly still seemed like a child to her.
Andy drank the last swallow of his soda and set the empty cup on the tray. “Well, I think you and Shelly should go out on the town tonight and do it right.”
“I have to teach a class at the fire station,” Daria said, as if that was the only thing keeping her from “going out on the town.”
“You do?” Andy looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t—”
“I’m not working as an EMT,” Daria finished his sentence for him. “I still want to be an instructor, though. This will be the first class I’ve taught since…in a while.”
He had to know she meant it was her first class since April, when the seaplane went down in the ocean and changed everything in her life, but he wisely said nothing. Daria was anxious about teaching again. Tonight would be the first time she’d faced the other emergency medical technicians since turning in her resignation from the volunteer force, and she knew she had left them confused—and short-handed—by her sudden departure. She feared she had lost credibility with them, as well.
She left the restaurant with Andy, wondering how he felt about her quitting. Andy longed to be an EMT. He’d failed the exam twice, and Daria knew it was unlikely he would ever pass it, although he seemed determined to keep trying. He had been at the plane crash back in April, though, and he surely understood how horrendous that situation had been for her. But even Andy didn’t know the entire story.
The class at the fire station that evening proved that Daria had been right to be nervous about teaching again. No one seemed to know what to say to her. Were they angry with her for leaving so abruptly, or just disappointed in her? Most of them probably thought she had left because her fiancé, Pete, had resigned, and she allowed them that misperception. It was easier than telling them the truth. A few of them, those who had known her for many years, were aware that her leaving had something to do with the crash of the seaplane, but even those people did not understand. After ten years as a volunteer EMT, with a reputation as the “local hero” who possessed exceptional skills and steely nerves, it was unthinkable that one failed rescue attempt could flatten Daria to that extent. As she stood in front of the class that evening, she couldn’t blame any of them for their confusion or sudden distrust of her. After all, she was teaching them to perform tasks she was no longer willing to perform herself. She wondered if she truly had the right to be teaching at all. Walking out to her car after the class, she was painfully aware that no one was following her to ask questions or even to chat. They all hung back in the classroom, probably waiting until she’d left the building to begin talking about her.
It was a bit after eight o’clock as she drove home from the station. Although it was only Thursday night and still early in the season, the traffic on the main road was already growing thick with tourists. She knew what that meant: accidents, heart attacks, near drownings. Shuddering, she was glad she was no longer an EMT.
She pulled into the driveway of the Sea Shanty, parking behind Chloe’s car. As of this week, all the driveways in the cul-de-sac were full. Seeing the cars, Daria suddenly missed the isolation of the winter months, when she and Shelly had the cul-de-sac entirely to themselves. They’d lived in Kill Devil Hills year-round for ten years, and usually she looked forward to the cul-de-sac’s coming to life in the summer. But there was too much explaining to do this year. “Where’s Pete?” everyone would want to know. And “Why did you quit being an EMT?” She was tired of answering those questions.
Chloe was sitting in one of the rockers on the porch, reading a book by the porch light. “I’ve got an ice-cream cake in the freezer,” she said. “Now all we need is Shelly.”
“Where is she?”
“Out on the beach, where else?” Chloe said. “She’s been out there for a couple of hours.”
Daria sat down on another of the rockers. “I don’t like her to walk on the beach at night,” she said.
“She’s twenty-two years old, sis,” Chloe said.
Chloe didn’t get it. She was only with them during the summer months, when she directed the day-camp program for kids at St. Esther’s Church. She wasn’t with Shelly enough to know how poor the young woman’s judgment could be. Shelly could pick up some stranger on the beach, or some stranger could pick her up. It had happened before.
Daria brushed her hand over a spot on her khaki shorts, where glue from the installation of the countertops had found a permanent home. One more ruined pair of shorts. She must have sighed, because when she looked up, Chloe was staring at her. The extremely short haircut Chloe was sporting this summer made her huge brown eyes seem even larger, the dark velvety lashes longer. For a second, Daria was mesmerized by her sister’s beauty.
“I’m a little worried about you, Daria,” Chloe said.
“Why?”
“You seem so down,” Chloe said. “I don’t think I’ve seen a smile on your face since I arrived.”
She hadn’t known her unhappiness was that obvious. “Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t need to apologize,” Chloe said. “I just wish there was something I could do to help. I don’t understand Pete, frankly. Does he ever call you?”
Daria stretched her arms out in front of her. “He’s called a couple of times, but it’s definitely over,” she said. On the phone, Pete sounded relieved to be away from her, and the few times they’d spoken, he’d lectured her about putting herself first for once. It was painful to hear from him, and while part of her wished he would call again, she knew prolonging that relationship would only hurt her in the long run.
“Can you tell me why he broke off the engagement?” Chloe asked gently. She had avoided that question so far, probably hoping Daria would provide the answer on her own.
“Oh, a bunch of reasons,” Daria said evasively. “Shelly was part of it.” Shelly was all of it, actually.
“Shelly! What did she have to do with it?”
Daria drew her feet up onto the seat of the rocker and wrapped her arms around her legs. “He thought she needed more supervision than I was giving her,” she said. “He thought I should put her in some sort of home or something.”
Chloe’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “That’s crazy,” she said. She leaned toward Daria, covering her hand with her own. “I’m so sorry, honey. I had no idea Shelly had been that taxing on your relationship with Pete.”
Shelly had always been an issue between her and Pete, but after the plane crash it had come to a head. Daria didn’t want to discuss that with Chloe. There was no one she could discuss it with.
“It’s Pete’s problem, not mine.” Daria got to her feet. “I’m really tired,” she said. “I’m going to lie down for a while. Call me when Shelly gets here and we can do the cake, okay?”
Upstairs, she lay on her bed, but didn’t sleep. She stared at the dark ceiling, listening to the night sounds of the ocean and the shouts of the Wheelers’ grandkids from the yard next door. Since the summer she turned eleven, every one of her birthdays brought back memories of the day she’d found the infant abandoned on the beach. She closed her eyes, saying a quick prayer that Shelly was safe out on the beach, then let herself remember the day twenty-two years ago—the day that had shaped the rest of her life.
The baby had been the talk of the neighborhood all that day, and for many days to come. The police had questioned everyone on the cul-de-sac, as well as people on neighboring streets and the other side of the beach road, but Daria had been aware only of the little world on her street. As the police made their rounds that afternoon, Daria had sat on the porch with Chloe and their cousin, Ellen, pretending to play with her bug-catching kit while listening to them talk about all the girls in the cul-de-sac. Ellen and Chloe sat in the rocking chairs, their long, bare legs stretched in front of them, their bare feet on the molding beneath the screens of the porch. Daria sat at the picnic table, hunched over her microscope, pretending to be absorbed in studying the wing of a dragonfly. She understood only bits and pieces of the conversation between her sister and cousin. They were talking about sex, of course. She knew that if she asked questions, they would stop talking completely, so she kept her mouth shut and feigned great interest in the dragonfly.
“The cops are in the Taylors’ cottage now,” Ellen said.
Daria braved a glance across the cul-de-sac at Poll-Rory, the Taylors’ cottage.
“I am so white,” Chloe said, examining her legs. Her legs were hardly white; like Daria and Ellen, Chloe was of Greek descent and had inherited the trademark thick black hair and olive skin of the Cato side of the family. Nevertheless, Chloe would complain all summer long about her inability to tan, even as she grew darker week by week.
“I don’t know why they’re bothering to talk to Polly,” Ellen said. “I mean, who’s going to get a mongoloid pregnant?”
“Well, she is fifteen now,” Chloe said. “But I really don’t see how she could hide being pregnant from Mrs. Taylor. Polly’s always with her.”
“Well, I’m fifteen, too,” Ellen said. “And I’m a whole lot better-looking than Polly, but I’m still a virgin.”
Chloe laughed. “Right,” she said, “and I’m the Queen of Sheba.”
Daria knew what a virgin was. The Virgin Mary had gotten pregnant with baby Jesus without ever having had sex. It had never occurred to her that Ellen or her sister or Polly or any of the other teenage girls on the cul-de-sac could be anything other than a virgin. She lowered her eye to the microscope again to keep the shock from showing on her face.
“What makes the cops so sure it was a teenager, anyhow?” Ellen asked.
“They’re probably pretty certain it’s Cindy Tramp’s baby,” Chloe said, “but they don’t have enough evidence to force her to have an examination. I bet they’re hearing all about her at every cottage they go to. She’s been doing it since she was twelve.”
“Twelve?” Ellen looked astonished.
“Twelve,” Chloe said with certainty. “Just one year older than Daria.” Both of them looked at Daria, and she raised her head from the microscope, feeling color blossom on her cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daria said, although she did. She could not imagine having sex one year from then. She looked across the street at Poll-Rory, thinking of Rory inside that cottage. He was the only boy she could imagine kissing, but even with Rory, she couldn’t picture doing anything more than that. She wasn’t certain exactly how it was done, anyway.
“I know who it was!” Ellen said excitedly. “I bet it was that girl, Linda.” She laughed, as though she’d said something wildly amusing. Chloe laughed, too, and Daria laughed along with them, pretending to understand.
The police suddenly walked out Poll-Rory’s front door, with Rory close on their heels. Rory was yelling at them, and Daria leaned closer to the screen, as did Chloe and Ellen, trying to hear.
“…just confused her!” Rory shouted. “What was the point?”
The policemen kept walking toward the street, ignoring him.
“Don’t come back again!” Rory yelled after them, a threat in his voice. The sun shimmered on his blond hair, and after only one rainy week at the beach, he was already tan. His voice was deeper than it had been a year before. Yelling at the policemen, Rory suddenly seemed more like a man than a boy, and Daria was both enticed and humiliated, seeing at once how ridiculous she was for hoping he might still want to hang out with her this summer.
“Rory!” Mrs. Taylor opened the screen door of Poll-Rory and called to her son.
Rory did not turn around. He stared after the policemen as they walked down the street, and even from across the cul-de-sac, Daria thought she could see the daggers in his eyes.
Mrs. Taylor came out of the cottage and into the sandy yard, where she spoke with him softly, putting her arm around his shoulders. Finally he turned and walked with her back into the cottage.
“Rory is looking hot this summer,” Ellen said, fanning herself with her hand.
“He’s only fourteen,” Chloe scoffed. “Though I guess that’s about right for you.”
Daria’s mother came out onto the porch. She had on a dress, unusual attire for Kill Devil Hills. “We’ll go out for pizza tonight,” she said, stroking her hand over Daria’s hair. The touch felt nearly alien. It had been a while since her mother had touched her that way. “For your birthday, Daria,” she added. “And then to the miniature-golf course. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Daria said, pleased that her mother had not forgotten her birthday after all. Chloe and Ellen looked at Sue Cato as if she’d grown two heads.
“And right now—” Daria’s mother smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress “—I’m going to the hospital in Elizabeth City to visit the baby.”
“Why?” Chloe asked. “It’s not yours.”
“That’s true, but right now she doesn’t have anyone,” Sue said. “No one to hold her and rock her. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Can I go, Mom?” Daria stood up, the dragonfly forgotten. “I found her.”
Her mother tilted her head, as if considering. “Sure,” she said. “I think you should.”
The nurse instructed them to wash their hands with a special soap and put on blue gowns before they could walk into the nursery where the baby was lying in a plastic bassinet. They were not allowed to pick her up, however. They were just allowed to stare. And stare they did. Daria barely recognized the tiny infant lying in front of her. The baby was so small. Had she really been that small when Daria found her on the beach? Her skin was very pale, almost translucent, and her hair was little more than a dusting of fine blond glitter on the top of her head. She was attached to several monitors by long wires taped to her chest.
Daria was surprised to feel tears fill her eyes as she looked at the baby. This baby was alive because of her. She moved, she breathed, because of her. It seemed unbelievable.
Daria’s mother took her hand, and Daria held on tightly, something she had not done in years. She glanced up at her mother’s face to see tears streaming slowly and silently down her cheeks, and Daria knew that for each of them, this baby was more than a small bundle of flesh and bone. This baby was already changing their lives.
“We’re going to stop at St. Esther’s,” her mother said once they were back in the car and driving across Currituck Sound toward Kill Devil Hills.
“To light a candle,” Daria said with conviction, proud she was able to read her mother’s mind.
“Yes,” her mother said. “But also, we’re going to pay a visit to Father Macy.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Daria’s mother stared at the road and clutched the steering wheel firmly in her hands. “Because if the mother doesn’t come forward, I believe that baby should be ours.” She turned to face Daria. “Don’t you? After all, she’s alive because of you, my sweet Daria.”
It had not occurred to her that they might be able to keep the baby, but instantly, Daria could imagine no other outcome. A little sister! She was going to do something a bit evil when she lit her candle: She was going to pray that the identity of the person who left the baby on the beach was never discovered.
St. Esther’s was nothing like the church Daria’s family attended during the rest of the year in Norfolk, Virginia. The church in Norfolk was dark and cold and musty-smelling, and always made her shiver with a strange mixture of fear and awe. But St. Esther’s stood near the sound in Nag’s Head, a large wooden rectangular building that felt clean and new inside. It was open and airy, with huge windows near the high ceiling and pews made from light-colored wood. There was stained glass in some of the windows, a kaleidoscope of translucent glass cut into abstract shapes that sent beams of bright colored light through the air of the church.
St. Esther’s was empty that afternoon, and Daria thought their footsteps were entirely too loud as she and her mother walked across the hardwood floor to the tiers of candles in the corner. Daria’s mother took a long wooden taper from the holder, slipped it into the flame of one of the candles and used the lit taper to light a candle of her own. She handed the taper to Daria.
It did not seem quite as magical and mysterious to light a candle in here as it would have in their dark, cavelike church in Norfolk, but nevertheless Daria lit a candle in the bottom tier and knelt next to her mother to say a prayer for the baby.
Dear God, let that little baby live and be healthy, she prayed. And let her be ours.
When they had finished praying, Daria and her mother walked out the side door of the church to the small attached building that housed the offices of the priests, as well as some classrooms where children attended day camp. They entered the building and began walking through the wide, cool hallway, its hardwood floor gleaming in the light from the skylights. Father Macy was just walking out of his office as they approached.
“Why Mrs. Cato. Daria,” he said with a smile. “What brings the two of you here?” He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and his hair was the color of the sea oats on the Kill Devil Hills beach. He was a good match for St. Esther’s, as approachable and cheerful as the church itself.
Daria felt her mother put an arm around her shoulders. “Go ahead and tell him, honey,” she said.
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said.
Father Macy’s brown eyes grew wide. “A baby?” he repeated.
“Yes,” her mother said. “Daria had the courage to pick her up and bring her home to us, even though she was a newborn with the, uh…afterbirth still attached.” She squeezed Daria’s shoulder. “We would like to talk with you about her, if you have a minute.”
“Of course,” Father Macy said. He stepped back into his office. “Come right in.”
They followed him into the small room. A massive desk stood in front of the one large window. It looked out toward the sound, and in the distance, the grand, golden dunes at Nag’s Head. The priest sat casually on the edge of his desk, and Daria and her mother sat in two armchairs on the opposite side of the room. Father Macy’s easygoing demeanor irritated her father, Daria knew. “He’s too informal,” he had said, and she doubted that the Norfolk priests ever sat on the edge of their desks. But Father Macy was very young; it was his third year being a priest and his second year at St. Esther’s. Even Daria thought he was handsome, with those large, brown eyes and long eyelashes. He had an easy laugh that made her feel relaxed around him.
“So tell me more about this baby you found, Daria,” he said.
“I was on the beach very early this morning to watch the sunrise and to beach-comb,” Daria said. “And I kicked over a horseshoe-crab shell, and underneath was the baby.” She didn’t want to tell him about the blood.
“And obviously, it had been born quite recently?” He looked at Daria’s mother for confirmation, and she nodded.
“Someone had simply given birth to her right there or very nearby, and left her to die,” Daria’s mother said.
“My, my.” Father Macy looked gravely concerned. “Is the baby…alive?”
“Yes, by the grace of God, she is,” she said. “She’s at the hospital in Elizabeth City. We just visited her and she’s doing well, and in a few days she should be able to go home. But she has no home, and that’s why I’m here.” Daria’s mother looked uncomfortable for the first time since they’d entered the priest’s office. She looked into her lap and played with the clasp of her purse, and Daria wished she would just get to the point.
“My husband and I would like to adopt her,” she said finally. “That is, if no one claims her. And I was wondering if you could help with that. If you could intercede on our behalf.”
Father Macy looked thoughtful. “Do you realize what a miracle this is?” he asked. “That Daria found this baby in time to save her? That the baby was found by someone who belongs to a family as devout, as holy and blessed as the Cato family?”
For the second time that afternoon, Daria felt close to tears.
“Yes,” her mother said softly. “Yes, we’re very aware that the Lord selected us.”
“I’ll be in touch with the hospital,” Father Macy said, standing up. “And I’ll be in touch with the state adoption agency. I’ll do whatever I can to plead your case. I can think of no better home for that little one.”
One week later, the baby arrived at the Sea Shanty, and became the instant celebrity of the neighborhood. Everyone from the cul-de-sac stopped by to stare at the little blond-haired infant and to shake their heads over her rude beginning in life. Daria’s mother named the infant Michelle, calling her Shelly for short. The irony of that name had seemed lost on everyone except Daria, who had delighted in how fitting a name it was. People often commented, though, on the other irony: that this tiny, blond, brown-eyed child was now part of the dark-haired, Greek Cato clan.
All that summer, Daria’s mother would sit on the porch, rocking the tiny baby in her arms and telling all who approached that Shelly was her gift from the sea.
“Daria?”
Daria started at the sound of Chloe’s voice. She sat up on the bed, freeing herself from the memories.
“Shelly’s back,” Chloe called from downstairs. “Come have some cake.”
“Coming!” Daria called, relieved that Shelly had returned safe and sound. She ran her fingers through her hair and headed downstairs to hug the young woman who was both her joy and her heartache, her blessing and her burden.
2
THE PLANE CAME TO A STANDSTILL AT THE GATE, AND RORY unfastened his seat belt and stood up to reach into the overhead bin. He pulled out the backpack and handed it to his son, who was still buckled into his seat and looked disinclined to leave the plane. Zack stared out the window, tapping out an imagined drumbeat on his knee. He was fifteen years old and annoyed at the prospect of spending the entire summer with his father on the East Coast. It had been a painful flight, at least for Rory, who had vainly tried every ploy he could think of to get his son to talk to him.
“Come on,” Rory said. “Let’s go find our rental car and get on the road.”
With a loud sigh, Zack unbuckled his seat belt and followed Rory down the aisle.
“Welcome to Norfolk, Mr. Taylor,” the flight attendant said as Rory passed her to leave the plane. She’d chatted with him off and on during the flight from Los Angeles, telling him how True Life Stories was her favorite show on TV. He doubted that was true, but as host and producer of the popular show, he was accustomed to the adulation. Women tended to know him from television, men from his days on the football field. Either way, he attracted attention, and even that seemed to irritate Zack. “We can never go anywhere without people staring at us,” he’d said when the third or fourth passenger on the plane had approached Rory for an autograph.
“Welcome to Nor-fuck,” Zack said now, under his breath, and Rory pretended not to hear him.
They checked in at the car-rental counter, and there was a subdued flurry of excitement between the two female clerks as they recognized their customer.
“You reserved a Toyota FJ Cruiser,” one of the clerks said as she checked his reservation.
“You did?” Zack sounded incredulous.
“Sure,” Rory said. He’d specifically requested a Cruiser. It would give them room for their considerable luggage, plus, he knew a Cruiser would please Zack. If Zack was pleased, though, the boy was determined not to show it.
The Cruiser was cobalt blue and looked new. Rory spread his map over the steering wheel and studied the route they would take to the Outer Banks. “It’s an easy drive,” he told his son, who said nothing in reply.
It was only an hour and a half from Norfolk to Kill Devil Hills, and Zack was no easier to talk with in the car than he had been on the plane. Rory gave up after a while, deciding to simply enjoy the scenery on this much-changed road, with its antique stores and vegetable stands. Zack pressed the scan button on the car radio, hunting for a station that was not too “pitiful.”
Rory had his hopes pinned on this summer. He’d been divorced from Glorianne, Zack’s mother, for nearly two years, and he and Glorianne had joint custody of Zack. Technically, at least. Rory was supposed to have Zack for weekends, holidays and summers. But several months ago, Glorianne had married the movie producer with whom she’d been having an affair during her marriage to Rory, and she now had a house in Beverly Hills, along with every other material possession she could desire. Rory found himself unable to compete with the glitzy, seductive new life-style Zack was enjoying in Glorianne’s home. Zack was at that age where possessions and grandeur mattered. He was slipping away from his father, and Rory hoped that this summer would bring him back. Rory knew that behind his son’s offensive, defensive adolescent facade, Zack was still hurting from the divorce and angry with both his parents for letting it happen. Intellectually, Rory understood all that. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
“So,” Zack asked dryly as he poked at the scan button, “are we there yet?”
“Another twenty minutes, I’d guess,” Rory said. “This road we’re on used to be narrow and sleepy, with just a few vegetable stands along it.”
“It still looks narrow and sleepy to me,” Zack said. He was a true Southern California kid. Anything tamer than the San Diego Freeway was going to look sleepy to him.
Rory didn’t bother to argue. He knew Zack hated hearing about the way “things used to be,” and he supposed he hadn’t cared for that sort of conversation, either, when he was Zack’s age.
“I miss L.A. already,” Zack said, gazing out the car window.
“Well, we haven’t reached the Outer Banks yet.”
“I still don’t get why we had to come here,” Zack said.
Rory thought he’d explained his reasons for spending the summer in Kill Devil Hills to his son, but either Zack hadn’t heard them or they hadn’t been persuasive enough for him to remember.
“Well, you know I spent my summers here when I was a kid,” he said.
“Right. And it’s got some kind of nostalgic pull on you or something.”
“That’s true.” Rory tried not to sound defensive. “It was a very special place for me. I still own my family’s old cottage there, and I haven’t seen it since I was seventeen.”
“You mean the cottage has just been standing there, empty all this time? Won’t it be rotted out by now?”
“I sure hope not,” Rory said. “I’ve had a real estate agency looking after it. They’ve rented it to people visiting the beach, and supposedly they’ve taken care of the upkeep, as well. I guess we’ll see about that soon.” That was something he was worried about.
“You could have come back for, like, a week or even just a couple of days to check on the cottage,” Zack said. “Instead we have to stay here the whole stupid summer.”
“I have a good reason for wanting to stay the summer,” Rory said, glancing at his son. This part of his plan he had not told him. “There’s an old incident I want to research here for True Life Stories. Want to hear what it is?”
Zack shrugged.
“When I was fourteen, a baby was found on the beach close to my cottage. She was a newborn. The little girl across the street found her early in the morning and brought her back to her cottage. The police got involved, of course, but they were never able to figure out who had left the baby there. A few months ago, I received a letter from the baby, who’s grown up now, of course.”
“What did she want?” Zack actually sounded interested.
“She said she knows I try to solve old mysteries on True Life Stories and that I’d lived near where she was found. She said she always wanted to know who her mother was and asked if I could try to figure it out.” He glanced at Zack again. “The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it,” he continued. “I’d always wondered about that incident, especially lately. You know how we’ve been hearing about all these teenage girls having their babies and trying to flush them down toilets or leave them in Dumpsters as if they were nothing more than a Popsicle wrapper? Doesn’t it make you angry when you hear things like that?” He didn’t wait for a response from Zack; he didn’t expect one. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that sort of cruelty. When I hear those stories on the news, it makes me remember that baby. Shelly, her name is.”
“So, where does this…Shelly live?” Zack asked.
“She was adopted by the family of the girl who found her, and apparently she still lives in the house on the cul-de-sac.” He tried to remember the name of that cottage, but failed. “At least, that was the return address on the envelope.” Shelly had given him very little information. It had been a short letter—more of a plea, actually. “She was only about three years old the last time I saw her.” Rory remembered a slender little girl with long platinum hair and large, brown eyes. Even as a teenager, he’d thought it was odd to see that leggy little waif living in the midst of the dark, exotic-looking Cato family. He’d forgotten her name until receiving the letter, remembering only that it was Sandy or Shelly, something to do with the beach. “I never wrote back to her,” Rory said. “I thought I’d surprise her, instead.”
The long bridge across Currituck Sound was directly ahead of them, and Rory felt a rush of excitement. “Kitty Hawk is on the other side of this bridge,” he said to Zack. “And right next to Kitty Hawk is Kill Devil Hills.”
After crossing the bridge, Rory spotted one of the milepost markers along the road and smiled. “People here locate things by the milepost markers,” he said. “Watch the side of the road, there. The next marker should be 3. Our cottage is between milepost 7 and 8.” He was secretly glad of the markers. He wasn’t sure he could remember where to turn, especially since the landmarks had changed drastically since he’d last been here.
“There’s 3,” Zack said.
“Uh-huh.” Rory could not help but feel some disappointment at what he was seeing. This portion of the Outer Banks was overgrown. The landscape was dotted with the trademark cottages on stilts, the main road was littered with shops and restaurants, and there were far too many people and cars.
“What’s that?” Zack pointed ahead of them in the distance and Rory saw the obelisk jutting up from one of the hills after which Kill Devil Hills was named.
“It’s the Wright Brothers’ Memorial,” Rory said. “This is where they took their first flight, over a hundred years ago.”
“That’s cool,” Zack acknowledged, as if finally admitting there might be some small reason to like this place.
After passing milepost 7, Rory turned the Cruiser toward the ocean and drove a short distance to the beach road. He turned right, hoping that was the correct choice, and in a moment he saw the cul-de-sac on his left.
“Here we are,” he said, turning into the short, broad cul-de-sac. After the jarring sights on Route 158, he felt enormous relief. The cul-de-sac looked the same as it had when he was a child, and nostalgia washed over him. The same handful of cottages was there—less one. The cottage at the end of the cul-de-sac, the one built right on the beach, was gone. Cindy Trump’s cottage. He could picture her even more readily than he could her cottage. She’d been a couple of years older than him, with sun-bleached hair, a killer tan and the skimpiest bikini in Kill Devil Hills.
His eyes were drawn to his old summer home, the last of the three cottages on the right. He laughed. “Well,” he said to his son, “looks like we now own beachfront property. There used to be one cottage between ours and the beach, but that’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Zack asked.
“Into the sea, I’d imagine,” Rory said. “Probably went in during a storm.”
Rory pulled into the driveway of his old home. The cottage looked the same, except cleaner, freshly painted. The rental agency was doing a good job taking care of it.
“Poll-Rory.” Zack read the sign above the front door. “Was that you and Aunt Polly?”
Rory looked at the sign himself. It was not the same old wooden sign from his youth; this one had white lettering on a blue background. But it surprised him to see any sign at all after so many years.
“That’s right,” he said. “My parents named the cottage after us.” He felt a pinprick of pain in his heart. Staying here was going to bring back many memories of his sister.
Looking across the cul-de-sac at the Catos’ cottage, he saw that a sign still hung above their porch door as well. The Sea Shanty. Yes. That had been the name of their cottage. It was no shanty, though. It was the largest cottage on the cul-de-sac, rising three stories above its stilts, and stained a light taupe color. Above the third story was the widow’s walk, where he and Daria used to play when they were small.
“God, we’re right on the beach,” Zack said, opening the car door. “I’m going to go check it out.” He took off toward the water, and Rory let him go.
Getting out of the Cruiser, Rory noticed the two cars in the Sea Shanty driveway and wondered who they belonged to. Were Mr. and Mrs. Cato still living? How did they feel about Shelly’s desire to track down her roots? Would Chloe be around? Growing up, Chloe had been clearly out of his league. She’d had a bunch of boyfriends, all of whom Rory, in his adolescent yearning, had envied. Three years older than him and in college by the time she was sixteen, Chloe had been knockout gorgeous, with dark eyes and long, wavy black hair. All the Cato girls had that same thick, dark hair. Ellen—she was the cousin, if he was remembering correctly—had been pretty as well, but her cute facade had hidden a mean-spiritedness that had scared him at times. He suddenly remembered an incident he hadn’t thought about in years. He’d been about thirteen, sitting with Ellen and a group of kids on the beach. He was watching an attractive girl walking along the water’s edge, when Ellen saw fit to point out to the rest of the group that he had an erection. He’d rolled rapidly onto his stomach, hating Ellen and her big mouth. Even now, he cringed remembering that moment.
Then there had been Daria, his little buddy, the girl who could run faster, swim better and catch bigger fish than he could. She’d been three years younger than him, but she’d been his competitor, nevertheless. He’d always pretended that he was letting her win at whatever they attempted. Inside, though, he’d been filled with admiration for her. He wondered what had become of the three Cato girls.
He opened the back of the Cruiser and pulled out two of the suitcases. He carried them up to the porch, then took a moment to look toward the ocean himself, breathing in the still-familiar scent of the beach he loved. It would be a good summer. He was in one of the finest places on earth, about to delve into an intriguing story, and he had Zack with him. Zack would come away from this summer with a healthy tan, sun-kissed hair and his good values restored. And with, Rory hoped, renewed love for his father. He could hope for the moon, couldn’t he?
3
THE LAUNDRY BASKET WAS FULL OF DARIA’S CLEAN WORK clothes—several pairs of shorts and a dozen T-shirts—and she dumped them onto her bed and began folding. She had the windows wide-open, and a warm ocean breeze lifted the blue and white curtains and sent them floating into the room like the wings of a tired gull. It was the sort of early-summer day that used to make her feel light and carefree, but she no longer seemed capable of experiencing those feelings.
She carried the stack of folded shirts across the room and set them on top of the dresser. Pulling open the dresser drawer, she took out the photograph she kept tucked beneath her T-shirts. She stepped closer to the window to study it, as she did nearly every time she opened that drawer. The picture was of Pete. He was leaning against a split-rail fence at a friend’s house in Manteo, a beer in his hand, a five-o’clock shadow on his face, and he was grinning at her, the photographer. His dark hair, as smooth and straight as hers was full and wavy, fell over his forehead. It was torture to look at the picture, and yet she did it anyway, over and over again. He’d been a part of her life and her future for six years. Now he was only a part of her past, and it was taking her longer than she liked to get used to that fact.
She replaced the picture, then lowered the stack of T-shirts on top of it and returned to the bed and the laundry basket, but her mind was still back with the photograph. Pete and his callous feelings about Shelly were linked together in her mind with the night of the plane crash, the night the young female pilot died. For two months now, Daria had been visited by that pilot’s last moments in her nightmares. She could not seem to free herself from the young woman’s pleading gaze.
That morning, she’d received a call from her old Emergency Medical Services supervisor, a call she’d half expected but had hoped would never come. They were pulling her off CISD duty, he said, and she’d winced as though he’d slapped her in the face. She’d worked as a critical incident stress debriefer for five years. After traumatic incidents anywhere in the county, she’d be called in to help distraught emergency technicians cope with what they’d endured. Now she was the distraught technician. Her supervisor summed it up for her when she begged him to reconsider. “If you can’t manage your own stress,” he said, “how do you expect to be able to help someone else with theirs?”
She was finishing folding the shorts when her gaze was drawn through the window to the cottage across the cul-de-sac, where this week’s vacationers were moving into Poll-Rory. Something made her move closer to the window, brushing aside the billowing curtain, to stare hard at the newcomers. A man and a teenage boy were unpacking a blue SUV in the driveway. Even from that distance, and even though she hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years, she knew the man was Rory Taylor. She’d watched every game the Rams had played on television when he’d been with them, and she’d watched him on True Life Stories for years. She had given up on his ever returning to Poll-Rory, though, especially now that both his parents were dead. He probably had more glamorous vacation spots in which to spend his free time. Yet here he was. Most likely, that was his son with him. She had read he’d gotten a divorce.
For some reason, the first memory that came to mind was of a hayride they’d gone on with some of the neighborhood kids. Her father was the group chaperon, and Rory, who must have been about twelve and full of early-adolescent bathroom humor, told joke after joke that Daria had felt unable to laugh at because her devoutly religious father was along. Rory, of course, understood her predicament and tortured her with ever more raucous stories. The memory made her smile. Rory had been her best friend during the summers of her childhood. When she was ten or eleven, that friendship began turning into a genuine crush, on her part at least. But that’s when he began to snub her in favor of the older kids. She knew that she had never truly lost that attraction to him. When she watched True Life Stories, she was not simply excited by the fact that someone she had known had become a celebrity; she was excited by Rory himself.
Rory carried a suitcase across Poll-Rory’s sandy yard and up the front steps to the porch, and Daria noticed the slight limp in his gait. She remembered that he’d been injured playing football. That’s what had ended his career.
She watched until Rory and the boy disappeared inside the cottage for the last time, then she walked downstairs to the screened porch. Chloe was sitting in one of the three blue rockers, reading a book titled Summer Fun for Kids 5–15, and Shelly sat at the blue-painted picnic table, stringing shells for a necklace, her long, blond hair falling over her shoulders.
“Did you see who just moved into Poll-Rory?” Daria asked, more to Chloe than to Shelly. Shelly knew that the host and producer of True Life Stories was someone who used to live on the cul-de-sac, but she had been very small the last time she’d seen Rory, and it was unlikely she remembered him.
Chloe glanced across the street. “I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said. “Was it a man and a boy?”
For a moment, Daria wondered if she’d only seen what she wanted to see. But she remembered the man’s limp, the breadth of his shoulders, the sandy color of his hair.
“It was Rory Taylor,” she said.
“Really?” Shelly asked. “True Life Stories Rory Taylor?”
Chloe said nothing. She stared across the street.
“I’m sure it was him,” Daria said.
“Why would he come here?” Chloe asked.
“Well, he still owns the cottage,” Daria said.
Chloe stared at Poll-Rory a moment longer before lowering her gaze to her book. Rory’s return was probably of little interest to her, Daria thought. Chloe had been older than Rory; she had not known him well. She had not looked forward to spending time with him every day during the summers of her childhood.
“Let’s go say hi to him.” Shelly started to stand up.
Daria felt instantly intimidated. He probably would have little memory of her. How full his life had been since the last time she’d seen him, while here she was, still firmly rooted in Kill Devil Hills.
“Let’s give them a chance to settle in first,” she said, glancing across the street once more before walking into the cottage to finish folding her laundry.
4
DAYLIGHT WAS FADING, AND RORY FELT THE PINCH OF A mosquito bite. If he and Zack stayed on the deck much longer, they would need to light the citronella candle. They’d eaten dinner on the rear deck, which jutted from the second story of the cottage and gave them a view of the ocean to the east as well as the sun falling over the sound to the west. Between Poll-Rory and the sound, though, were many, many cottages. Far more than Rory remembered. Still, little could ruin his pleasure at being in Kill Devil Hills.
They’d eaten carryout North Carolina barbecue for dinner—one of those culinary delicacies he’d been craving ever since deciding to make this trip.
“Let’s have takeout every night,” Zack said, closing the disposable box and lifting a can of soda to his lips.
“Well, a few times a week, anyhow,” Rory said. The truth was, he loved to cook, and two years of cooking primarily for himself had grown old. He was looking forward to spending time in Poll-Rory’s rudimentary kitchen this summer.
“This is crazy,” Zack said, looking above him at the darkening sky. “I’m never going to get used to East Coast time.”
“You will,” Rory said, although they had eaten dinner very late because their stomachs still thought they were back in L.A. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll have breakfast at nine, and then we’ll be on track.”
“Nine? Forget it. It’s summer. I’m sleeping in.”
“Okay,” Rory said. This was not worth arguing about. “You can sleep as much as you like.” He slapped a mosquito on his thigh. “I’m going across the cul-de-sac to see the neighbors,” he said. “Want to join me?”
“I saw some kids over on the beach before you got back with dinner,” Zack said. “Think I’ll go see if they’re still there.”
Well, at least Zack wasn’t shy. Or maybe he simply wanted to get away from his father for a while after this long day of togetherness.
“Okay,” Rory said. “I’ll see you later.”
Rory walked down the steps from the deck, through the cottage, and out to his sandy front yard. The warm, humid air smelled strongly of the sea, and he couldn’t shake a sudden bittersweet wave of nostalgia as he walked across the cul-de-sac. The screened porch light was on at the Sea Shanty, and as he neared the cottage, he saw a blond-haired woman inside, sitting in one of the rocking chairs, engrossed in something on her lap. She stood up when she spotted him and walked to the porch door.
“Hi,” Rory said. “Are you Shelly?”
“Sure am.” The woman pushed open the screen door. “And you’re Rory,” she said.
“Right.” Still standing in the sand, he put his hands on his hips and cocked his head to study her. Her smile was wide, her teeth straight and white, and she was very pretty. Her long hair was a silky, pale blond. “You were about three years old the last time I saw you.”
“Well, you were about thirty-five the last time I saw you.” She grinned. “I saw you just the other night on True Life Stories.”
He laughed. “Thirty-six,” he said.
“I don’t remember you from when I was little,” Shelly said. “Daria and Chloe remember you, though.”
“Who are you talking to, Shelly?” A female voice came from the living room, beyond the porch.
“Are they here?” Rory asked. “Daria and Chloe?”
“Yes, they’re inside. Come in.” She stood back to let him walk past her onto the porch, and he noticed she was tall—nearly as tall as he was. “Did you get my letter?” she asked in a near whisper.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Oh, thank you!” She gave him a quick, sideways hug, then led him into the living room.
“Rory Taylor’s here,” Shelly announced to the woman who was sitting on the couch, a book on her lap.
It took him a minute to recognize the woman as Chloe. She rested the book on the couch and stood up. “Hello, Rory,” she said.
She was still beautiful, although she looked quite different from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was very short, capping her head in dark curls. She looked like a Greek goddess.
“Hi, Chloe,” he said. He wanted to move forward to give her a hug, but her stance, stiff and uninviting, kept him rooted near the door. The sound of an electric saw came from somewhere in the cottage, and he wondered if Mr. Cato was still building furniture in the Sea Shanty’s workshop.
“It’s been a while,” Chloe said. “You remember Shelly, I guess?” She looked at her sister.
“Very well,” he said. “Although I can’t say I would have recognized her.”
“I’ll get Daria,” Chloe said, heading for the door to the porch. “She’s down in the workshop. Shelly, why don’t you get Rory something to drink?”
“We have lemonade or iced tea or soda pop,” Shelly said once Chloe had left the room. “Orange, ginger ale or Coke.”
“Orange sounds good,” he said.
“Be right back. Don’t go away!”
He watched her disappear into the kitchen. It was strange to be in this cottage again. The furniture was different—of course it would be, after all these years. Poll-Rory’s furniture, purchased for him by the real estate agency, was the boxy wood and nubby upholstery type that would hold up to the abuse of renters. The Catos’ furniture, with its blues and yellows and traditional lines, had a homier feel to it. The walls were lighter, and he noticed that the wood paneling had been painted a soft cream color. Were Mr. and Mrs. Cato still living? he wondered once again. Daria was in the workshop, Chloe had said. Was she with her father down there? He remembered that workshop. It was on the ground floor, built into a space among the stilts, and it smelled of wood and metal. He recalled that every time a major storm came through, the Catos would have to pack up the tools and carry them up to the first or second story of the cottage to get them out of harm’s way.
“Rory!” Daria strode into the living room and over to him, wrapping him in a welcome hug. “I can’t believe you’re in Kill Devil Hills.”
He drew away to look at her. She’d probably been about fourteen the last time he’d seen her. He guessed she’d been pretty back then, but now she possessed the rare, exotic sort of beauty that had once attracted him to Chloe, with those dark eyes and long, thick, unruly black hair. Unlike Chloe, though, she still had the body of a tomboy—tight, small-breasted, compact and tan in her shorts and T-shirt. Her hair was barely contained in a ponytail and there was something pale and feathery scattered through it. Sawdust?
“I’m happy to see that you guys are here,” he said, glancing at Chloe, who stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, a small smile on her lips. “I was hoping you would be.”
Shelly walked into the room and handed him a glass of orange soda. “We’re always here,” she said.
“How long are you staying?” Daria asked.
“All summer,” he answered. “My son is with me.”
“Well, sit down,” Daria said, motioning toward one of the chairs.
He took a seat. Chloe and Daria sat at opposite ends of the sofa, while Shelly sat on the floor, her back against one of the other chairs in the room. She was wearing a deep purple sundress, and her long, slender legs looked very tan against the pale carpet.
“So, bring me up to date,” he said. “Your parents? Are they…?”
“Mom died fourteen years ago,” Daria said. “And Dad, just last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rory said. “I guess you know I lost my parents.”
“Yes,” Daria said. “The real estate agent who handles your cottage told us. What about Polly? How is she doing?”
“She died two years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Rory,” Daria said.
“Me, too,” Chloe added. “Polly was truly special.”
“Mmm, very,” he said.
“I read about your divorce,” Daria said.
He laughed. His life was open to the public. “I guess I have no secrets,” he said.
“That must be strange,” Daria said. She sounded sympathetic. “But the news just reports the facts about a celebrity. So and so got divorced. So and so landed in a mental hospital. They don’t say how so and so feels about what happened to him.”
“Good point,” Rory said. “Well, I can sum up my feelings about those events pretty quickly. Losing my parents was the pits—they were too young. Losing Polly was even worse, as you can imagine.”
“I bet,” Daria said.
“My divorce was…difficult, but a relief in the long run. And my son is the best thing that ever happened to me, although he hasn’t figured that out yet.”
“Who is Polly?” Shelly asked.
“My sister,” he said.
“Why did she die?” Shelly asked.
“She had Down’s syndrome,” Rory said. “It affected her heart.”
“She was so fair,” Daria said. “I remember she’d always burn, every summer, no matter how much lotion your mom put on her.”
“That was Polly,” Rory agreed. “She wasn’t much of a beach person.” He looked at Chloe. “So,” he said, “now all of you know what I’ve been up to. How about the three of you? Chloe? You were so smart. You were in college before I could even spell the word. I remember you were studying history, right? You wanted to be a teacher. Is that what you are?”
The three women laughed, and he raised his eyebrows, surprised. “I’m wrong, I take it?” he asked.
“Well, no, you’re not wrong,” Chloe said slowly, coyly. “I teach history and English at a Catholic school in Georgia during the year.”
Shelly giggled. “Chloe is really Sister Chloe,” she said.
“Sister Chloe?” he repeated, confused.
“I’m a nun,” Chloe said.
“Oh!” He knew he couldn’t prevent the shock from showing in his face. Chloe Cato was a nun? He suddenly remembered that the Cato family had been very religious. Mr. Cato had gone to church early every morning, and he and his wife had been very strict, requiring Daria and Chloe and their cousin, Ellen, to come inside as soon as it got dark, while the other kids were still playing on the beach. Still, this was hard to believe. Chloe’s head might be telling her she was a nun, but her body and beauty were doing their best to deny it. He still remembered how she looked in a bikini: those large breasts, tiny waist and narrow hips. The boys on the beach had followed her around with their tongues hanging out. He remembered everyone ruling Chloe out as a suspect in the deserted-baby incident because, except for those breasts, she had been notoriously thin. Anorectic, almost. Yet that body was hidden now beneath long, loose shorts and a baggy T-shirt.
“I think you’ve rendered him speechless,” Daria said to Chloe with a laugh.
“I just…hadn’t expected that.” He laughed himself. That explained Chloe’s reserve in greeting him. “So, do nuns get the summer off? Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m working at St. Esther’s, the Catholic church in Nag’s Head, for the summer,” Chloe said. “I’ve been doing that the past few summers, running a day camp for kids.”
“Well, I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re doing, Daria,” he said.
“I’m a carpenter,” she said.
Rory laughed. “I should have guessed,” he said. “For real?”
“For real,” she said. “I probably have sawdust in my hair right now.”
“I was wondering what that was,” he said. “I thought maybe it was a new Outer Banks trend.”
“It’s just a Daria Cato trend.” Shelly grinned.
“I was working on a bookshelf for a cottage in Duck when Chloe told me you were here. There’s always a lot of building going on in the Outer Banks.”
“Are you living here year-round?” he asked. Despite the fact that Shelly’s letter bore the Kill Devil Hills return address, it was hard for him to imagine anyone living here year-round. For him, the Outer Banks had always meant summer and the beach.
“Uh-huh,” Daria said. “Shelly and I have lived here for the past ten years.”
“Wow.” He wondered what it would be like to live smack on the beach during the winter.
“Daria’s also an EMT,” Shelly said. There was pride in her voice.
“An EMT?” he asked. “Emergency medical technician?”
“Well, I was,” Daria said. “I’m taking some time off.”
“A lifesaver.” Rory studied her with admiration. “You started that avocation early, didn’t you?” He looked at Shelly. “She was only ten years old when she saved your life.”
“Eleven,” Daria corrected.
“I know,” said Shelly. “People around here call her Supergirl.”
“I remember!” he said, flashing back to the newspaper articles that followed Shelly’s discovery on the beach. “They still call you that after all this time?”
“’Fraid so,” Daria said. “I’ll be sixty and they’ll still call me Supergirl.”
“It’s because she’s kept on saving people,” Shelly said. “She’s the local hero.”
“I’ll never forget that day.” He wondered if he should tell them now that Shelly’s letter had prompted his visit to Kill Devil Hills this summer, but he had more catching up to do first. He set his empty glass on the coffee table. “Is there anybody else left on the cul-de-sac from the old days?” he asked. “I noticed Cindy Trump’s cottage is gone.”
“There was a bad storm more than a decade ago,” Daria said. “The ocean swallowed their cottage in one gulp. It did a lot of damage to the Sea Shanty, too, but your cottage was spared.”
“The Wheelers are still around,” Chloe said. “Do you remember them? They live next door.”
“Still?” He remembered a quiet older couple who often strolled on the beach in the evening, hand in hand. “They’re still living?”
“They’re only in their seventies,” Daria said. “Their cottage is filled with their grandchildren all summer long.”
“Did he know Linda and her dogs?” Shelly asked.
“Yeah, you knew Linda, right?” Daria asked.
He narrowed his eyes in concentration, picturing a mousy young girl lying on the beach with her nose in a book. “I think so,” he said.
“She lives in that same cottage with her partner, Jackie,” Chloe said. “They raise golden retrievers. Linda is a lesbian.”
Chloe revealed that fact as easily as if she’d said that Linda was a teacher or a swim coach. Rory had had little experience with nuns, but he’d assumed that Chloe had become moralistic and judgmental. He hoped her matter-of-fact description of Linda meant that she had not.
“Well, you never can tell how people are going to turn out, can you,” Rory said. “What about your cousin? Ellen? What’s she doing?”
“She’s married,” Chloe said. “She comes down every few weeks or so with her husband and kids.”
“Not this summer,” Daria said. “I mean, Ellen and Ted will be here, I guess, but not her daughters. They’re traveling in Europe as part of a high-school exchange program,” she explained to Rory. “Ellen’s a medical technician. She does mammograms all day.” Daria and Chloe laughed at that. “I don’t know if you remember what she was like, but that job suits her perfectly.”
Rory smiled. “She had a bit of a…sadistic streak, if I recall,” he said.
“You’ve got it,” Chloe said.
“What about the twins who lived next door to me?” Rory asked. “Jill and…her brother. I can’t remember his name.”
“Jill and Brian Fletcher,” Daria said. “Jill is still around.”
“The bonfire lady,” Shelly said.
“Yes.” Daria looked at Rory. “Remember the annual bonfire we had on the beach near the end of each summer?”
He had forgotten, but the memory slipped back easily. The huge, roaring fire. Great food. The sound of the ocean. Willing girls and the sheltering darkness. He nodded.
“Well, Jill has kept that tradition going,” Daria said. “She has to get special permission each year, because bonfires are no longer allowed on the beach. She has to make the fire closer to the water, but she’s fanatical about it. She’s got a couple of teenagers, and her husband comes down on the weekends. I don’t know what happened to Brian, her brother.” Daria looked at Chloe, who shrugged.
“Haven’t seen him in years,” Chloe said.
Rory was pleased to hear that some of the old residents were still around, although he was disappointed that Cindy Trump was not one of them. He’d always thought that Cindy somehow held the key to the mystery of the foundling.
He looked at Shelly. She was a striking young woman, with large, light brown eyes, that long blond hair, a willowy body and perfect tan. Sitting there on the floor of the living room, she was all legs and arms and gossamer hair. She’d been wearing the same ingenuous smile since his arrival, and he realized that she had a childlike way of speaking, a simplicity about her. He’d lived with Polly long enough to recognize it, and he wondered if Shelly’s rude introduction to the world had left her with some brain damage.
“How about you, Shelly?” he asked. “What are you up to?”
“I work at St. Esther’s Church as a housekeeper,” she said proudly. “And I design shell jewelry.”
“Shell jewelry?” he repeated.
“Uh-huh.” She stood up and walked out to the porch for a moment. Back inside, she handed him a choker, a small, gold-plated starfish set in the center of a strand of tiny shells. He was impressed. He’d expected shell jewelry to be a bit on the tacky side, but this was certainly not.
He looked up at Shelly. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Was this a real starfish?”
“Yes,” she said, taking the choker back from him. “I collect the shells on the beach. It’s hard to find a starfish that size, though.”
“It’s wonderful, Shelly,” he said. “What do you do with the jewelry after you’ve finished it?”
“I sell it at the gift shop on…” She looked to Daria for help.
“Consignment,” Daria said.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Shelly said, grinning at him.
“Yeah, it is.” He felt the broad smile on his face. Something about Shelly touched him. Reminders of Polly, perhaps, or maybe it was just the simple joy that emanated from her.
“Tell us about your son,” Chloe said.
“Oh.” Rory looked out the window at the darkening sky and wondered if Zack had made any friends on the beach. “He’s a California kid,” he said. “He doesn’t want to be here. But—” he stretched and sighed “—I’m hoping he’ll adjust to it. He’s a good kid, just screwed up a little from the divorce.” He wondered what Chloe thought about divorce—or the phrase “screwed up,” for that matter. Did he have to watch his language around her?
He leaned forward abruptly. “Well,” he said, getting down to business, “I received Shelly’s letter a few months ago, and I’ve decided to follow up on her request to find out who left her on the beach twenty-two years ago. I plan to make it an episode on True Life Stories.”
Dead silence filled the room. Chloe and Daria looked at each other, and Rory didn’t miss the disapproval in their faces. Shelly wore a sheepish smile, and Rory suddenly realized she had written the letter without her sisters’ knowledge.
“That is so cool!” Shelly said finally. “Thanks, Rory.”
Daria looked at her younger sister. “You wrote to Rory?” she asked.
Shelly nodded.
“I wish you’d told me that, honey.” Daria’s voice was disapproving, but not unkind. Even so, he instantly felt sorry for Shelly.
“I thought it was a wonderful letter,” Rory said quickly. “A wonderful idea. And if I can’t uncover the answer during my research, Shelly, maybe someone watching the show will know what really happened and contact me.”
Chloe tucked her legs beneath her on the sofa. “I don’t think this is such a good idea, Rory,” she said. “Why dredge up something that happened twenty-two years ago?”
“Chloe’s right,” Daria said. “I’m sorry to put a damper on your idea, but Shelly’s a Cato, Rory. She has been, right from the start. Of course, she’s always known what happened to her, but she’s one of us, an integral part of us. Who her birth mother was doesn’t matter.”
For the first time since his arrival, Shelly lost her smile. “I know I’m a Cato,” she said to Daria. “But I’m also something else. I’ve always wanted to know what that something else is.”
Daria looked surprised. “You never said anything about it, Shelly. Nothing at all.”
“Because I figured there was no way to ever find out,” Shelly said. “But I was watching True Life Stories one night, and I knew Rory lived here when I was found, and he always can figure out those mysteries, so…if he wants to try—” she shrugged “—I want him to.”
He had not expected resistance. It was understandable, though, that Chloe and Daria would find his plan unsettling if they hadn’t known about Shelly’s letter. Was he being intrusive? Was Shelly’s plea enough reason for him to tamper with their lives?
“Well,” he said, standing up. “I guess I’ll have to give this some more thought.” He saw Shelly bite her lip. A crease formed between her eyebrows. “And right now, I’d better go home and see what my son is up to.”
“Good seeing you, Rory,” Chloe said. She did not stand up, but Daria did. She walked him to the porch door.
“Don’t be a stranger, Rory,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “I won’t be.”
“I’m sorry Shelly bothered you about…”
“It’s not a bother at all,” he said.
Daria brushed a few flakes of sawdust from her hair, and in the porch light, Rory saw a world of worry in her eyes. “I think it would be a mistake to pursue the story,” she said.
“Well,” he said, touching her arm, “we’ll talk about it again, all right?”
He left the Sea Shanty and was halfway across the cul-de-sac when Shelly caught up to him.
“Rory, wait a second,” she said.
He stopped walking and turned around. Poll-Rory’s porch light lit her face.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Please, Rory. I still want you to try and find out who my real mother was,” she pleaded. “I really want to know.”
He hesitated. “Your sisters have some genuine concerns,” he said.
“Yes, but I’m the one who counts, right?” Shelly asked.
He studied her face. She was a stunning young woman with hope in her eyes, and he couldn’t help but smile at her. “That’s right, Shelly,” he said. “You’re the one.”
5
DARIA’S MOOD WAS LIFTING. SITTING IN HER PARKED CAR IN the Sea Shanty driveway as she waited for Shelly and Chloe to join her for the drive to Sunday mass, she felt a lightness she had not known for the past two months. She’d felt it when she’d awakened that morning and found herself getting out of bed with a smile on her face. She only had to look across the street at Poll-Rory to know the reason for her altered mood. Her lightness was tempered, though, by Rory’s desire to pry into Shelly’s past. Nothing could be gained by that…and too much could be lost.
The Wheelers—seventy-something Ruth and Les—were getting into their van in the driveway next door. A few of their grandchildren climbed into the van with them, and Daria knew they were going to St. Esther’s for mass, as well. She waved, and Ruth Wheeler called out a greeting.
Chloe and Shelly walked down the wooden front steps of the Sea Shanty. Shelly got into the front seat of the car, Chloe the rear.
“St. Christopher,” Chloe prayed as Daria backed the car out of the driveway, “guard and protect us on our journey.”
For as long as Daria could remember, Chloe had uttered that prayer every time she got in a car—even after St. Christopher had been desainted. Chloe had a bit of the rebel in her.
“There’s Rory Taylor.” Shelly pointed toward Poll-Rory, where Rory and his son were crossing their yard, carrying beach chairs and towels under their arms.
Daria tapped her horn. Rory waved at the car with a smile as she passed them. Rory’s son reminded her of the boy she had known many years ago—the handsome, blond-haired boy with the broad-shouldered build that would later serve him well on the football field. She remembered what a strong swimmer Rory had been and how she’d liked to watch him swim far out into the ocean until the lifeguards whistled at him to come in. He’d been a lifeguard himself one year, and he’d rescued an elderly man caught in the undertow. He’d been seventeen then, and by that time he’d definitely forgotten she existed. The local newspaper printed his picture after he rescued the man, and she’d carried that picture around with her for years, even after he’d gone off to college and stopped coming to Kill Devil Hills.
“Your cheeks are red, sis,” Chloe teased from the back seat of the car.
“Are not.” Daria tilted her chin to look at her reflection in the mirror. She feared Chloe was right: she could feel the flush rising from her stomach all the way to her ears.
“What do you mean?” Shelly studied Daria’s face. “Why would her cheeks be red?”
“’Cause Daria has a thing for Rory,” Chloe said.
Shelly lit up at that news. “You do?” she asked.
“I don’t know what Chloe’s talking about,” Daria said.
“A new man for you!” Shelly exclaimed.
“Oh, no,” Daria protested. “No way.” She glanced over her shoulder at Chloe. “Thanks a lot,” she said.
Chloe laughed.
“I’m not interested in Rory Taylor that way at all,” Daria said to Shelly. “Chloe just remembers back when we were kids, and it’s true, I did have a crush on him then, but that was a long time ago, so don’t get your hopes up.” She knew that Shelly had been worried about her ever since Pete fell out of her life. Shelly didn’t know how much of a role she’d played in his leaving, of course, and Daria intended to keep it that way.
“I think he’s really nice,” Shelly said.
“Yes, he is,” Daria agreed. She’d been particularly touched the night before by the warm and easy way Rory had related to Shelly. That was a sure way to Daria’s heart.
St. Esther’s was packed with the summer crowd. The church had expanded physically since that day Daria and her mother had lit candles for the infant abandoned on the beach, but the atmosphere inside was the same—clean and light and filled with the scent of the sea. Daria knew she could be considered part of the summer crowd herself, since she rarely attended church any other time of year. Shelly went most weeks, either walking or riding her bike or catching a ride from a fellow parishioner. But in the summer, Daria felt a need to attend mass out of respect for Chloe. She’d somehow missed out on the devout genes that had coursed through her family for generations. Perhaps Chloe had received her share.
Communion was a problem for her this summer. Although she’d left behind church dogma and ritual, she still felt guilty about receiving communion when she had not confessed the truth about the plane crash. Yet she received it, anyway. Otherwise, Chloe would have known she was carrying around some sin in her heart. Daria told herself she had done her best the night of the crash. Everyone had done their best. No one had any intent to harm. Nevertheless, she had covered up their human failings. That was her sin.
A group of children mobbed Chloe—Sister Chloe—in front of the church after mass, badgering her with questions about what they would be doing in day camp the coming week. Daria liked watching Chloe with the kids. Her sister was animated and affectionate with them, unlike the nuns Daria remembered from her own Catholic school childhood.
Sean Macy approached them as they were walking to the car, and the three of them turned to greet him.
“Hi, Shelly, dear,” the priest said when he’d caught up to them. “Sister.” He nodded at Chloe, then looked at Daria. “Good to see you at church, Daria,” he said. He had a teasing twinkle in his eye, and Daria smiled at him. All of the Catos had a special place in their hearts for Father Macy, since he’d helped Sue and Tom Cato adopt Shelly long ago. He’d also gotten Shelly her housekeeping job at the church, and he worked side by side with Chloe in the day-camp program.
“I need a moment with Daria,” the priest said to them. He took Daria by the arm and led her away from the car, and she waited for him to speak again. “I’ve been asked to talk with you, Daria,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “What about?”
“About resuming your EMT duties.”
She groaned. Someone at the Emergency Medical Services must have been bending Father Macy’s ear. “Who told you to speak with me?” she asked.
“Several people, actually,” the priest said. “You are sorely missed. And the community suffers without you, you know.”
“Thanks for the guilt trip,” she said.
“Seriously, Daria.” His face lost its smile. He was handsome, his hair still that wheat-blond color, but when he didn’t smile, he looked tired. “I don’t know what demons you’re grappling with,” he said, “but I want you to know that I’m here, if you ever want to talk about it.”
“Thanks, Father,” she said. “But I really have nothing to talk about. I just needed a break for a while.”
“I can understand that,” he said. The smile was back again. “I feel that way myself sometimes.” He squeezed her hand warmly, then told her goodbye, and she turned and began walking, slowly, toward her car.
She had certainly considered counseling. That’s what she would suggest for anyone else who’d suddenly relinquished their EMT duties. But counseling wouldn’t help. She’d lie to the counselor, so what would be the point?
In the car, she found that Shelly was now in the back seat, Chloe in the front. She started the engine.
“What did Father Sean want to talk to you about?” Shelly asked.
Daria pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road. “He just wanted to see if I could help out with the charity auction this year,” she said.
“Oh,” Shelly said, satisfied, but Chloe gave Daria a dark look.
“With a lie like that,” she said under her breath, “you’d better go to confession before you receive communion next Sunday.”
Daria thought she was only half joking.
6
GRACE SPOONED A DOLLOP OF WHIPPED CREAM ON THE mocha latte and handed the cup across the counter to Jean Best, one of the regular customers at Beachside Café and Sundries.
“How are you doing, Grace?” Jean asked. Her eyes bore concern, and the question was sincere, but Grace busied herself cleaning the espresso machine.
“Just fine, Jean,” she said. “Thanks for asking.” She knew she should ask Jean how things were going with her elderly mother and the house she was trying to sell, but she didn’t want to engage her—or anyone, actually—in conversation.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Jean said, taking her cue from Grace’s reticence and backing away from the counter. “Thanks for the coffee.” She carried her coffee to one of the small tables near the window overlooking Pamlico Sound, and Grace was relieved to see her go.
Beachside Café and Sundries was small, cramped and popular among locals and tourists alike. She and Eddie had opened it eight years ago with money Eddie’s mother had left him. They carried a few staples, but they were most beloved for their coffee and sandwiches, which ran the gamut from avocado and cheese to Italian subs, something for everyone. The shop had been a labor of love, a reflection of love, and people used to comment on the warm, supportive relationship she and Eddie still enjoyed after twenty years of marriage. No one was commenting on it now, though.
Grace made a couple of sandwiches for a man and woman she didn’t recognize. She was more comfortable these days with the strangers, with people who didn’t know her and know all she’d endured these past few months. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want sympathy. And most of all, she didn’t want to talk about it. Because if she talked, she would disintegrate into little pieces. And that she couldn’t afford to do.
She knew her regular customers worried about her. They worried about how much weight she’d lost and how fragile she seemed to be, both physically and emotionally. They commented about her pallor and her inability to concentrate on what anyone was saying. A few weeks earlier, she’d overheard a conversation between two of her customers, one of whom said, “Grace just isn’t herself these days.” That had become her mantra. Whenever she found herself thinking or doing something out of character for her—which was often, lately—she heard that voice inside her head: Grace just isn’t herself these days.
She could hear Eddie in the small office behind the counter area, typing on the computer, and she wondered how many of the regulars knew that things had fallen apart between the two of them. It had to be obvious. The jovial atmosphere that had once existed in Beachside Café was gone, and now there was a palpable tension between Eddie and herself. Several customers even knew that Grace had moved into the above-garage apartment she and Eddie used to rent to tourists in the summer. How they’d found out, she didn’t know, but the year-round population in the Outer Banks community of Rodanthe was small, and it wasn’t hard for people to learn each other’s business. And, of course, everyone knew the reasons for the change in Grace, as well as for the change in her marriage.
“Grace?” Eddie poked his head out from the back office of the café. “Phone.”
Grace wiped her hands on the towel hanging below the counter and walked into the office. She took the phone from his hand.
“I’ll watch the front for you,” he said as he left the office.
She nodded, avoiding his eyes. Once he was out in the café, she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, Grace, it’s Bonnie.”
“Bonnie!” There was only one person Grace could handle talking to at that moment, and it was Bonnie, her oldest, dearest friend. But Bonnie rarely called. She lived in San Diego and sent an occasional letter or e-mail once or twice a month. A phone call was rare, and it worried her. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything is fine here,” Bonnie said. “I’m more interested in how things are going there.”
“Oh, you know.” Grace sat down on the desk chair and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s been rough.”
“Well,” Bonnie said, “I wish I could do something to help you, and I’m worried that my reason for calling might just make things worse for you. But I wanted you to—”
“I don’t see how you could make things worse, Bon,” Grace interrupted her.
Bonnie hesitated. “Do you know who Rory Taylor is?” she asked finally.
“Of course. True Life Stories.”
“Right,” Bonnie said. “Well, I was reading one of the L.A. magazines and there was this tiny little blurb—I almost missed it. It said that he’s going to be in Kill Devil Hills for the summer.”
Grace frowned, trying to figure out why that would be of any significance to her. “So?” she asked.
“He’s there—” Bonnie let out a long sigh “—to look into that baby that was found on the Kill Devil Hills beach twenty-two years ago. He wants to do a story about it for his television show.”
Grace was silent, a chill racing up and down her spine. “For what purpose?” she asked. Her voice sounded tremulous, she thought, even though she was struggling for control.
“I don’t know, specifically,” Bonnie said. “But he’s usually trying to solve some sort of mystery. Like, who the baby’s mother was.”
Grace shut her eyes. “You know,” she said softly, “that baby has been on my mind a lot lately.”
“Of course she has,” Bonnie said. “Of course she would be.”
“Why now?” Grace asked, a bubble of anger forming in her chest. “Why, after all this time, does somebody have to delve into that—”
“I know,” Bonnie said. “It’s the wrong time. Not that there ever was a good time for it. Gracie, how are you doing otherwise? What does the doctor say?”
Grace ignored her question. “You know who I hate?” she asked. “Who I despise? Even after all these years?”
Bonnie hesitated a moment before asking, “Who?”
“The nurse,” Grace said. “Nurse Nancy. I would love to get my hands on that woman.”
“I know,” Bonnie said, her voice soothing. “So would I. Look, Grace, I’m worried about you. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t want you to find out some other way. Do you want me to come to North Carolina to be with you? Maybe I could help out somehow?”
“No, no,” Grace said. “I’m all right.”
“I know Eddie would be there for you if you’d let him,” Bonnie continued. “But he said you’re freezing him out.”
“He froze himself out,” Grace said, although that was not the truth and Bonnie probably knew it. Eddie would be there for her, but right now she couldn’t even stand the sight of him. She could hear his voice, a deep voice she had once found mesmerizing, coming from the café. He was laughing with one of the customers. Laughing. She pressed the phone more tightly to her ear to block out the sound.
Bonnie uttered more words of concern, more words of comfort, but Grace barely heard her. She was too absorbed by the thought of Rory Taylor hunting for clues to how that baby came to be on the beach. And by the time she hung up the phone with her old friend, Grace had a plan.
7
THE SUN WAS SLIPPING INTO THE SOUND AS DARIA DROVE into Andy Kramer’s driveway.
“You have an incredible view, Andy,” she said to her co-worker, thinking of how he must enjoy this spectacle every evening.
“I know,” Andy said, opening the car door. “I’m a lucky guy. Now if I just had a decent van.” His van was in the shop again, the third time in the past few months.
Daria spotted the boat tied to the pier behind Andy’s cottage. “I didn’t know you were into boats,” she said. “Is that new?”
Andy laughed, his earring glowing a vibrant rose color in the muted sunlight. “Brand-new,” he said, “but it’s not mine. I share the pier with my next-door neighbors, and it’s theirs. Raises my property value, though, having it behind my cottage.”
She could see his neighbors, a man and woman and a little boy, on the side deck of their cottage, grilling their dinner. She could even smell the steak. “Well, I hope they at least take you out in it sometime,” she said.
“Me, too.” Andy got out of the car and shut the door, but bent over to look in the window. “Thanks for the lift,” he said. “And have a good soak in your tub tonight.”
“I plan to.” She pulled out of his driveway, already thinking about spending a leisurely half hour in the whirlpool tub later that night. The tub was the one extravagance in the Sea Shanty, but it was truly a necessity after a day like this one. She and Andy had spent the day building wall-to-ceiling bookshelves in a huge house in Corolla, and her shoulders and arms ached. Before she could take a bath, though, there was something she needed to do.
She drove the mile and a half across Kill Devil Hills to the cul-de-sac, where she parked in the Sea Shanty driveway. But instead of going inside the cottage, she walked across the street to Poll-Rory.
Rory answered the door in shorts, sky-blue T-shirt and a handsome grin that threatened her resolve. She had to keep the purpose of this visit firmly in her mind.
“Come in, neighbor,” he said, pushing open the screen door for her.
Daria stepped into the living room and took off her sunglasses. She had been in Poll-Rory many times over the years, so the changes in its interior were no surprise to her. She imagined they had been to Rory, though. The furniture, the new paneling on the walls, the artwork and knickknacks had all been selected by the real estate agent handling the property.
Daria spotted a computer on the table in the dining area. Papers and books were strewn across the table’s surface.
“Looks like you’re working,” Daria said.
“Working and playing,” Rory said. “That’s my plan for this summer.” His hands were on his hips, and she felt him appraising her. She probably had more sawdust in her hair. She knew she had paint on her white T-shirt and a smudge of varnish on her cheek.
She looked at him squarely. “I need to talk with you about Shelly,” she said and felt the apology forming on her face. Rory had come all the way across the country to get to the bottom of Shelly’s story, and she planned to make him stop that search before he’d even begun.
He must have seen the concern in her eyes, because his grin faded. “Well,” he said, “this looks like a serious, sitting-down kind of conversation. Let’s go up on the deck.”
She followed him out the back door and up the stairs to the small deck, with its view of both ocean and sound. Nearly as good a view as from the Sea Shanty’s widow’s walk.
“I’d offer you something to drink,” Rory said, “but all I have right now is water and milk. Zack already drank the soda I bought. I’d forgotten how much food he can go through.”
Daria sat in an Adirondack chair and slipped her sunglasses on again, even though the sun had fallen well below the horizon. Rory’s green eyes were uncovered, and she wished that were not the case. There was something about his eyes that had always made her weak-kneed, even when they’d been kids.
After a few moments of chatter about Zack and the view and the changes that had taken place in Kill Devil Hills during Rory’s absence, she got to the point of her visit.
“I know Shelly asked you to find out about her past,” she began, “but it’s really not a good idea. You don’t understand Shelly. She’s not—” Daria hunted for the right choice of words “—like everyone else,” she said. “I know she seems perfectly fine. I know she’s beautiful, and a wonderful person, but—”
“I think I do understand,” he said. “I picked up on what you’re saying when I met her. Did she suffer some brain damage when she was born?”
Daria was surprised that he’d grasped that fact; she hadn’t thought Shelly’s problems were that obvious. She nodded. “Yes, that’s what they figure. Her IQ is in the very low-average range, but on top of that, she has some learning disabilities that kept her back in school. Plus, she has a seizure disorder and, although she’s on medication for it, it’s not under very good control. She’s not allowed to get her driver’s license because she’s never been seizure free for a year, and that’s the requirement.” She glanced toward the Sea Shanty, but the only part of the cottage she could see from back here was the widow’s walk. “She’s a bit phobic,” she continued, “and very dependent on me. After Mom died, she became my responsibility. She was only eight, and I was just nineteen. Now she gets scared when I’m not around.”
“Why was she your responsibility?” Rory looked puzzled. “What about your dad? He was still living then, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but Shelly was too much for him to handle. She really needed a woman. A mother.”
“What about Chloe? She was the oldest. Why didn’t she help?”
Everyone asked that question, and Daria was ready with her answer. “Chloe was already a nun,” she explained. “She was living in Georgia, and there really wasn’t much she could do.”
“What did you mean about Shelly being phobic?” he asked.
“She’s afraid of a lot of things—earthquakes and snakes, for example, even though she’s never encountered either. But mostly, she’s afraid of being away from the Outer Banks. Pathologically afraid.” Daria wasn’t sure how to explain this. She’d tried over the years to describe Shelly’s fears to doctors and teachers, but no one really seemed to understand. “Shelly is only happy on the beach,” she said. “When she was little, we came to the Sea Shanty for the summers and spent the rest of the year in Norfolk, and we began to notice that she had a sort of…split personality. She’d be anxious and down in the winter, and relaxed and up in the summer.”
“Well, aren’t most kids that way?” Rory smiled. “I sure was.”
“Yes, but for a different reason,” she said. The light on the deck was fading, and she took off her sunglasses. “At first, we thought it was because she was in school in the winter and free in the summer, the way it is with most kids. But gradually we realized it was the beach itself that made her calm and happy. One time, when she was only about seven years old, we came down at the beginning of the summer. Dad had just pulled the car into the driveway—he hadn’t even come to a stop—when she jumped out and ran to the beach, right to the exact spot where I’d found her, although there was no way she could have known that. She sat down there and watched the ocean, all by herself, all afternoon. It was as if she could finally relax.”
Rory actually shivered. “That’s a little spooky,” he said.
“It was,” Daria agreed. “But after all these years, I’ve just come to accept that about her. She needs the beach. Period. After Mom died and I realized how happy Shelly was here, I started bringing her down on weekends. Just Shelly and me. Dad was…” She remembered her father’s years as a widower as one long fall into a life barely lived. “Dad withdrew after Mom died. He never dated or did things with friends, even though he was only in his fifties. He spent more and more time at church. Chloe and I used to say that he and God were dating.” She laughed at the memory. “He loved Shelly and me, but essentially, we were on our own. So, anyhow, Shelly had to settle for weekends at the beach. But then, when she was twelve and went on a field trip with her class to a museum in Norfolk, she disappeared. We didn’t know if she’d been kidnapped or what.” Shelly had been kidnapped once before, but she didn’t want to get into that.
“The police looked for her,” Daria continued. “The next day, when she was still missing, I called Chloe in Georgia to tell her about it. Chloe wondered if Shelly might have gotten here to Kill Devil Hills somehow. It seemed impossible, but it turned out that’s where she was. We never did find out exactly how she’d managed to get here—some combination of buses and hitchhiking, I guess. She’d broken one of the Sea Shanty’s windows to get in and had pretty much set up house for herself. I decided that was it—we’d move here.” She glanced at the widow’s walk again. “I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do for her. Maybe she should have been forced to tough it out somewhere else, because—to be honest—I think she’s even worse than she was. Whenever we have to go to the mainland now, to visit someone or to see a doctor, she gets panicky. But I love her.” She looked directly into Rory’s eyes and saw sympathy there. “To see her miserable tears me apart,” she said. “To see the total joy in her face when she’s safe on her beach makes it all worthwhile to me.”
“Maybe it was the right move for her,” Rory said. “She’s able to hold a job here, it sounds like. Would she be able to do that if you lived back in Norfolk?”
“I don’t think she would have been able to get out of bed in the morning if we’d stayed in Norfolk,” Daria said. “And she’s very responsible about her work. But frankly, there really isn’t much she can do to earn a living or to allow her to live independently. Sean Macy—the priest at St. Esther’s—and the others who supervise her give her a lot of direction in the housekeeping she does. Sometimes I think they keep her there out of pity. She probably wouldn’t be able to hold a job anywhere else.” Daria suddenly felt as though she had painted a one-sided picture of her sister. “She does have skills, though. She’s very kindhearted and likable. She’s creative. Her jewelry is actually in demand. She’s a terrific swimmer. Physically, she’s very graceful.”
“Yes,” Rory said, “I noticed that.”
“She can’t work, but she sure can play volleyball.” Daria smiled. “She excels at just about everything that’s fun. She just can’t do the serious things in life very well.”
Rory laughed. “Maybe we should all take a lesson from her,” he said. Then he leaned forward, his face now sober and not far from hers, and she saw the fine lines around his eyes. “I understand what you’re saying about Shelly and why you’d be concerned about her,” he said. “But she certainly knew what she was doing when she wrote to me about True Life Stories. She understood what the show is about and how it might be able to help her.”
Daria felt tears of frustration form in her eyes. He still didn’t get it. “Shelly is so vulnerable,” she said. “She’s fragile. She needs protection. People take advantage of her very easily. She’ll do anything if she thinks it’s helping someone else.”
“Are you saying she’s only enthusiastic about me telling her story because she wants to help me out? To give me an episode for the show?”
Daria shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. She really does seem to want you to do it, I can’t deny that. But I think it would be a mistake to unearth that sordid mess, or to make her face the reality of the woman who…who essentially tried to kill her.”
Rory leaned back in his chair again at that, and Daria continued.
“Shelly feels secure with us,” she said. “She knows she’s loved, she knows she’s been loved from the very first day. Why tamper with that? I don’t know what it would do to her to have the truth come out.”
“Maybe the truth would be positive, though,” Rory argued. “Maybe her birth mother regrets what she did and would love to know that Shelly is alive and doing well.”
“You’re fantasizing a happy ending, Rory,” Daria said. She felt a twinge of anger at his perseverance.
“You know, I understand better than you think,” Rory said. “The way you feel about Shelly was the way I felt about Polly.”
She had forgotten his devotion to his sister. “I can still picture Polly perfectly,” she said. Polly’d had a short, boxy build, white hair and the almond-shaped eyes of a Down’s syndrome child. She remembered how Rory had defended her against the teasing of other children and taken time out from his own activities to play with her. Seeing him with Polly was one of the reasons she’d been attracted to him.
“Remember the incident with the fish hook?” Rory asked with a laugh. “When you said you were an EMT, that’s what I thought of.”
She’d forgotten about that, but the memory came back to her instantly. Polly had managed to get a fish hook stuck through her toe. Neither Rory nor his mother seemed to know what to do to get it out, and Daria, then only twelve, had performed the feat.
“You knew exactly what to do,” Rory said. “It makes sense that you got involved in medicine.”
“Dad had told me how to extract a fish hook in case I ever got stuck by one,” she said simply. She didn’t want to discuss her EMT work and answer the inevitable questions about why she was no longer doing it, so she changed the subject. “I don’t remember Polly and your parents ever coming to Kill Devil Hills again after you went off to college,” she said.
“That’s right,” Rory said. He let out a long sigh and stretched. His T-shirt strained across his chest, and she looked away for the sake of her own sanity. “They stopped coming,” he said. “That’s when I realized they’d bought the cottage primarily for me, so I could get to spend time on the beach in the summer. But my parents never sold Poll-Rory. I’m sure they were hoping I might use it for my own family one day. Until this summer, that just wasn’t possible.”
“Why not?”
“Glorianne. My ex-wife.”
“She didn’t want to come here?”
“An understatement. She and I were very different. She was…” He looked toward the ocean for a moment, as though carefully selecting his words. “When I first met her, she was very young and shy and…unassuming. Her parents had been killed in an accident. They’d had little money and left lots of debts, so Glorianne had essentially nothing. She needed me, and I liked being needed. She changed over time, though. Once we had money, it was as though it all went to her head. I’d always wanted us to live in a middle-class neighborhood, with Zack attending public school and experiencing the sort of down-to-earth upbringing I’d had. Glorianne thought we should live in Beverly Hills and send Zack to a private school, since we could afford it. I didn’t want Zack to think that being famous and having money was more important than being honest and having good values.”
Rory paused before continuing. “So, the upshot was that we did live in a very nice upper-middle-class neighborhood and Zack did attend public schools, but I had to compromise. And that compromise took the form of where we vacationed. I would have loved to have spent all our summers here in Kill Devil Hills, but Glorianne hated the beach and she didn’t like the East Coast altogether. She always wanted to travel during the summer, and said that if I was going to limit Zack in what he could be exposed to during the year, then the least we could do was take him to Europe for the summer.” Rory looked perplexed, as though he was still amazed that his simple, unassuming wife could have changed so much. “So, that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said. “Till now, anyhow.”
“This summer with you should be good for Zack.”
Rory laughed. “He doesn’t seem to think so,” he said. “At least he’s doing a lot of complaining about it. But I do have hope. I think he’s already making some friends. He’s out on the beach right now.”
“Is that what ended your marriage?” she pried, curious. The article she’d read had claimed irreconcilable differences as the cause, and she’d always wondered. “Your disagreements over where to live and how to raise Zack?”
“And a million other things,” he said. “Actually, Polly turned out to be a big reason for the demise of my marriage,” Rory said.
That surprised her. “Why?” she asked.
“Well, after my parents died, I took Polly in. I moved her from Richmond to California to live with us. I wanted Zack to get to know her,” he said. “I wanted him to understand that people with Down’s syndrome were still lovable and valuable. And I think that really did work. Zack got along well with Polly.” Rory looked up at the darkening sky, as if searching for the words. He returned his gaze to Daria. “But having Polly there put a terrific strain on Glorianne and me,” he said. “We were already shaky enough to begin with, and Glorianne always felt as though Polly was an intruder in her family. And Polly never really adapted to living on the West Coast or to losing our mother. Plus, she had cardiac problems and needed a lot of medical care, and making sure she took her medications and running her to doctors’ appointments just wasn’t Glorianne’s thing.”
“That must have been hard on you,” Daria sympathized, moved by the way Rory talked about his sister. She was struck by the similarities between Rory’s situation with his wife, and her situation with Pete. At least Glorianne had allowed Polly to move in with them. “I know by the way you talk about Polly that you understand how I feel about Shelly,” she said. “You must understand why I want to protect her.”
He nodded. “Of course I do, Daria,” he said. “But Shelly is very different from Polly. Shelly is still able to analyze a situation and make up her own mind as to what she wants.”
He was right, though only to a degree. She sighed. “I haven’t succeeded in getting you to change your mind, have I?” she asked, standing up.
“I’ll think about what you said,” he promised, “although I think the decision is ultimately up to Shelly.” He stood up as well and followed her to the stairs. They were quiet as they walked through the cottage.
“Is there a gym around here?” he asked when they neared the front door.
“There’s a health club,” she said. “A nice one. I go there a few times a week.” She told him where it was located and suggested he check into the summer fees.
They walked onto the porch. “Do you still beach-comb every morning like you did when you were a kid?” Rory asked.
Daria laughed. “I have to be on the job early in the morning these days,” she said. “And those mornings I’m not working, I’d rather sleep in.”
She looked through the screen door at the Sea Shanty. It was Shelly who loved the beach at dawn now. Shelly who sifted through the shells and basked in the sunrise, taking her energy from the sea. Daria could not, would not, let Rory or anyone else harm her sister’s world.
8
RORY SAT ON THE PORCH OF HIS COTTAGE, LISTENING TO THE breakers swell and collapse in a sleep-inducing rhythm as he watched for Shelly to leave the Sea Shanty. He planned to begin his research by talking with her. He felt almost as if he needed Daria’s permission to do so, especially after his conversation with her the day before, but Shelly was twenty-two years old, for heaven’s sake.
A golden retriever sat next to him on the porch, her massive head resting comfortably on Rory’s knee. Rory buried his fingers in the dog’s thick coat, scratching her neck and behind her ears. He didn’t know where the dog had come from—she had simply appeared after Rory sat down on the porch—but he was glad for her company.
From the porch, he could see the ocean, but not the beach. He knew the beach would be crowded, though, and he knew Zack was part of the crowd. Zack was out there with his new friends. He’d had little to say when Rory questioned him about who he had met and who he was hanging out with. Zack was not about to admit that spending the summer in Kill Devil Hills might not be such a bad idea after all.
Rory thought he saw some movement on the Sea Shanty’s front porch, but no one emerged from the cottage. Since Daria’s visit, he’d considered her concerns, wondering if he should indeed go forward with his exploration of the past. He knew his motivation was mixed. Shelly had felt strongly enough to write to him about the situation, and given his link to her and his memory of the event, he had a personal desire to pursue the story. There was no doubt that the tale of a beautiful foundling would make a great episode on True Life Stories. Plus, the person who left the baby on the beach might finally have to face what she had done. He often wondered about that young woman. Had she just blindly, guiltlessly, gone on with her life? He knew he had a hostile attitude toward her, perhaps too much so. He was not ordinarily a punitive sort of guy, so that feeling surprised him, but the cruelty of her actions seemed unforgivable to him. Especially now that he had met Shelly and knew how close she had come to losing her chance at life. But what if the woman was remorseful and had been able to make a normal, healthy life for herself? What right did he have to disturb that?
Despite Daria’s protestations and his own misgivings, he felt that Shelly had the right to make the final decision. He needed to make sure she understood what she was getting into, though; that’s why he wanted to talk with her today. If Shelly still wanted him to pursue the story, he hoped Daria would eventually come around. He respected Daria and treasured the remnants of the childhood bond they’d shared. He would hate to spend the summer as her enemy.
The dog spotted Shelly first. The golden retriever lifted her head and stared in the direction of the Sea Shanty, and a few seconds later, Shelly appeared in the side yard. She must have come out the rear door of the cottage, and now she was headed for the beach. Rory stepped off the porch, the dog at his heels, and walked quickly toward her. She was cresting the low dune at the edge of the beach as he neared her. There was an otherworldly quality about her as she stood there among the sea oats, and he stopped to simply stare at her. She wore a white bikini, set off by her tan. The bikini bottom was covered by a gauzy white skirt wrapped around her waist. The breeze blew her long, pale blond hair away from her face. What a perfectly stunning creature she was. The Foundling. That’s what he would call the episode on True Life Stories.
“Shelly?” he called, taking a step closer.
She turned and smiled at him. “Hey, Rory,” she said. “I see you’ve got one of Linda’s dogs with you.”
Rory looked down at the retriever, now leaning against his leg. “She seems to have adopted me,” he said. He’d met Linda briefly on the beach the day before. She’d introduced herself to him; he would never have recognized her otherwise. She was now an attractive, big-boned woman with short blond hair and round glasses, and he could not get it through his mind that she was the cul-de-sac’s bashful bookworm from twenty-two years ago.
“Can I join you for a walk on the beach, Shelly?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “But Melissa’s not allowed. Go home, Melissa!”
The dog performed an obedient pivot and trotted off down the street.
“Which way do you want to go?” Shelly asked as Rory joined her on the beach.
He pointed south. “You must know that dog well,” he said as they started walking.
“And you must like dogs a lot, because Melissa is Linda’s unfriendliest dog.”
“I didn’t know there were any unfriendly golden retrievers,” Rory said.
“That one is. Though not to me. And not to you, either, I guess.”
They cut through a sea of blankets, beach chairs and umbrellas and began walking along the water’s edge. “I wanted to make sure of something,” he said. “I know that Daria and Chloe worry about me looking into how you came to be on the beach that morning when you were a baby. I need to know that you really want me to do this.”
“Yes, I absolutely do,” Shelly said.
“What if I uncover…if I find out something that would be very painful to you? I might find out, for example, that your real—your biological mother—doesn’t want anything to do with you. She might even wish that you had died that day. How would you feel if I learned something like that?”
Shelly looked down at the ground, where the water rose and fell over her feet with the rhythm of the waves. For a moment, he wondered if she had heard him—or understood him. Then she turned toward him, a small smile on her lips. “Well,” she said, “that would be the truth, and what I really want to know is the truth.”
“Okay,” Rory said, relieved. “But if you change your mind at any point, you just say the word, and I’ll back off, okay?” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Okay.”
“Well, then,” Rory said, “tell me what your life has been like.”
“Oh, I’ve had a wonderful life,” Shelly said. “I’ve—” A beach ball suddenly flew across the sand in front of them, and a little boy of about three ran after it, wailing. With a couple of long strides, Shelly grabbed the ball and returned it to the child, patting the top of his head as she sent him back up the beach to his parents. She fell into step once more with Rory.
“Isn’t he adorable?” she asked, turning back to look at the boy. “Isn’t the beach the best place?” She raised her arms out from her sides and tipped her head back to breathe in the salt air. Then she looked at Rory. “I always want to live on the beach,” she said. “It’s where I was born and it’s where I want to die.”
“Isn’t it kind of nasty here in the winter?” Rory asked.
“Oh, I don’t mind the winter at all,” she said. “The only time I ever mind the weather here is when one of those bad storms is coming and they say we have to evacuate. I hate evacuating.” She shuddered at the thought. “I hate going to the mainland.”
“Why is that?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know why,” Shelly said. “All I know is, I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m away from here. I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep, I get real jumpy. Nothing’s right until I get back to Kill Devil Hills.”
He wanted to put a fatherly arm around her shoulders and give her a hug. She was indeed fragile, as Daria had said.
“It’s really windy here, though,” Shelly continued. “Especially in the winter, but really all the time. Daria doesn’t like that, because she says she has bad wind hair. I have good wind hair, though. That’s what I mean. It’s like I was designed to live here.”
He wasn’t sure what good and bad wind hair were, but he got her point.
“There’s Jill!” Shelly said.
He followed her gaze to a heavyset woman sitting on a beach chair, reading a book.
“Jill, from the cul-de-sac?” Rory asked, although the woman looked nothing like the Jill Fletcher he’d known as his next-door neighbor.
“Yes. Let’s go say hi to her.” Shelly was walking toward the woman in the beach chair before he had a chance to say a word.
“Hi, Jill,” Shelly said when they were right in front of her.
The woman looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. She smiled. “Hi, girlfriend,” she said, then looked past Shelly at Rory. Her smile broadened. “Rory Taylor,” she said. “I heard you were here for the summer.”
He wouldn’t have recognized her any more than he had Linda. She’d been a couple of years older than him and had hung around with a different crowd, but he’d seen her nearly every day during the summers of his youth. He remembered her as a little on the skinny side, with very straight, dark hair. Her hair was almost entirely silver now, and it was short and thick and very becoming on her. She was no longer skinny, however. She had to be at least forty pounds overweight, and her breasts formed a deep cleavage above the neckline of her one-piece, black bathing suit.
He leaned over to shake her hand. “Hi, Jill,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”
Jill laughed. “Just don’t go telling me I haven’t changed a bit,” she said.
“You look great,” he said, and he meant it. Despite the weight, she was an attractive woman. She still had those enormous blue eyes rimmed with dark lashes.
“I’ve already met your son,” she said.
“You have?” He glanced around him at the surrounding bodies, slick with tanning lotion, wondering if Zack was nearby.
“Uh-huh. He’s about fifteen, right? Same age as my son, Jason. They met on the beach a couple of nights ago and have been hanging around together. Although I hear your son already has his eye on one of the Wheelers’ granddaughters.”
He did? Rory was definitely out of touch with Zack.
“Probably Kara,” Shelly said. “She is so cute.”
“Daria said you’re in charge of the bonfire this year,” he said.
“This year and every year,” Jill said. “Those bonfires have always been my fondest memory of the summer.”
“They were great,” he agreed.
Shelly suddenly unwrapped her gauzy skirt and dropped it on the sand. “I’m going to take a quick swim,” she said to Rory. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go on without me!”
“I’ll wait.”
“Isn’t she something?” Jill asked as they watched Shelly run toward the water. She offered him a towel to sit on, and he accepted, lowering himself to the sand. “She’s out here every day, walking along the beach like a breath of fresh air.” She looked at him. “I heard you’re planning to feature her on your show,” she said, and he tried unsuccessfully to read the tone of her voice.
“Well, she’s asked me to do a little digging into how she came to be abandoned on the beach when she was a baby,” he said.
Jill kept her gaze on Shelly, who was swimming straight away from shore with long, easy strokes. “I hope she doesn’t come to regret asking you,” she said. “I’ve watched her grow up, summer after summer, and she is a dear, dear soul. Her mother used to call her a gift from the sea.”
“You can’t blame Shelly for wanting to know the truth,” Rory said. “I just need to be sure she’s ready to hear whatever I might uncover.”
“Right,” Jill said. “I’m never sure exactly how much she understands about any given topic.” Jill changed the subject to his sister, and they were still talking about Polly when Shelly returned to the beach, her hair slick over her shoulders. Jill tried to hand her a towel, but Shelly waved it away. “I’m fine,” she said, lifting her skirt from the sand and tying it around her waist. “The sun will dry me off.” She turned to Rory. “Ready to walk some more?” she asked.
“Sure.” He stood up, his knee a bit stiffer than when he’d sat down.
They said goodbye to Jill and began strolling along the water’s edge again. Shelly stopped to speak to a woman who was hesitantly dipping her toes into the chilly water. “It will feel warm and wonderful once you’re in,” Shelly said.
For the first time, Rory understood, and maybe even shared, some of Daria’s concern for her sister. Shelly was open to everyone, friend and stranger alike, and that could indeed leave her vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
“Did you hurt your leg?” Shelly asked when they started walking again.
“I hurt my knee a long time ago, when I played football,” he said.
“Is it very painful?”
“Not too much,” he said. “It’s a chronic pain, so I’m used to it.”
“What does chronic mean?”
“It means ongoing. Not like banging your toe into a table leg. That’s a bad pain, but it’s over in a few minutes, usually. Chronic means it goes on and on.”
“Yuck,” Shelly said, and he laughed.
Shelly reached down to pick up a shell. She examined it, then dropped it on the beach again. “I have a secret friend,” she said abruptly.
“Who might that be?” he asked.
“I’ll never tell,” she teased. Her gaze was still riveted on the sand in front of her. “Daria’s been pretty sad lately,” she said in another rapid change of topic. The way she flitted from subject to subject with no thought of censoring herself reminded him of Polly.
“She has?” he asked. “Why is that?”
“Because Pete—he was her fiancé—broke off their engagement.”
“Oh.”
“I never liked him very much,” Shelly said. “He was one of those he-man types, you know what I mean?”
Rory laughed. “I think so. You mean, sort of macho?”
“Right. He had tattoos on his arms, one of a sea horse.” She wrinkled her nose. “But Daria loved him, and she was really, really upset when he said he wouldn’t marry her. They’d gone out together for six years. He moved away to Raleigh.”
“Do you know why they broke up?” He felt a little uncomfortable, as though this might be information Daria would not want him to know.
“Daria would never tell me,” she said. “She said it was personal, so I figure it must have something to do with sex.”
Rory laughed again. “There are personal issues that don’t have anything to do with sex,” he said.
Shelly looked at him coyly. “Daria likes you,” she said.
“Well, I like Daria, too.” He hoped Shelly was not implying that there might be a romantic relationship between Daria and himself. “She was a good friend when we were little kids,” he said. “I’d like us to be good friends again.”
“You know what, Rory?” Shelly said. She raised her gaze from the beach to look at him.
“What?”
“I have chronic pain, too.”
“You do? Where?”
“No one knows about it,” she said.
“Can you tell me about it?” He felt some alarm. Was she ill?
“Only if you promise not to tell Daria or Chloe. It would upset them to know.”
“I promise,” he said.
“Well, it’s not an arm or a leg that hurts,” she said. “It’s actually all of me. My body and my head and my heart. They all hurt from not knowing who my real mother is.”
Rory looked at her, at those beautiful brown eyes, filled with hope and sadness, and this time he did put his arm around her and gave her a hug. He truly had her permission now.
9
THE HEAT IN THE CAR WAS ALMOST INTOLERABLE. THE DAY WAS not all that warm, and Grace had the windows open, but after sitting in the parked car for nearly two hours, she was beginning to wilt. She’d parked the car at the end of the cul-de-sac, close to the beach road and just two lots away from the cottage she’d learned belonged to Rory Taylor. She’d driven past the cottage before parking and saw the sign: Poll-Rory. Who or what did the “Poll” stand for? she wondered.
She was nervous. She’d been nervous since leaving her tiny apartment in Rodanthe that morning. It had taken her half an hour to drive from Rodanthe to Kill Devil Hills, yet it had seemed an eternity. She knew she was doing something crazy; she almost felt as if she was doing something illegal. Grace just isn’t herself.
Suddenly, the front door to Rory Taylor’s cottage opened, and her heart kicked into high gear, skipping a beat or two, alarming her. Had she taken her medication that morning? She couldn’t remember, and now there was no time to worry about it. The man emerging from the front door was almost certainly Rory Taylor. She knew what he looked like; everyone did. He was carrying a beach chair, and she grimaced as he headed toward the beach. Damn. She’d been hoping he would get in his car and drive out of the cul-de-sac so that she could follow him. She’d pictured him driving to the nearest grocery store, where she could “accidentally” bump into him in one of the aisles. But things were not going her way. Nevertheless, she’d prepared for this possibility as well. She wasn’t supposed to be in the sun, but what did a rash or a sunburn matter at this point? Grabbing the beach blanket from the back seat, she got out of her car.
Rory had just finished the first chapter of the paperback he was reading, when a woman spread her blanket on the sand near his chair. He tried to keep his attention on his book, but he couldn’t help staring at her, and he hoped his dark glasses would prevent her from noticing. The woman was very attractive, tall and slender, with light brown hair that reflected the sunlight. Her one-piece, high-necked navy blue bathing suit made her shoulders look sexy. She was very pale, though, as if she hadn’t spent much time on the beach so far this summer. She lay facedown on her blanket, took off her sunglasses and closed her eyes.
She’s going to burn to a crisp, he thought.
It was a weekday, and the beach was strewn with sunbathers, but not really crowded. He could see Zack sitting close to the water, sharing a blanket with a few other kids his age. Zack already had the sort of tan it took most people a summer to acquire, and his hair was several shades lighter than it had been when they’d first arrived. Had Rory tanned that quickly, looked that good when he was Zack’s age? If he had, he’d never known it.
He returned his attention to his book and was in the middle of chapter three when the woman lying near him suddenly let out a yelp and jumped up from her blanket.
Startled, Rory looked up at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
The woman laughed, her cheeks coloring. “I think something bit me,” she said, brushing her hand over her arm. “Probably just a horsefly.” She had deep bangs that framed her face and accentuated her chiseled features, and she was older than he had first guessed. Late thirties, or maybe even early forties.
“Oh, yeah, there are a few of them around,” he said, although to be honest, he hadn’t seen any yet this summer.
The woman suddenly stood perfectly still, staring at him, and he knew that he’d been recognized.
“You’re Rory Taylor!” she said.
“Guilty.” He rested his book facedown in the sand, glad to have an entrée to talk with her. “And you’re…?”
“Grace Martin,” she said. She sat down again, brushing her hand over the invisible bite on her arm as she smiled at him. She had one of those wide, straight smiles that was impossible to observe without smiling back.
“I live down in Rodanthe,” she said, lifting her sunglasses from the blanket and slipping them on. “I was visiting a friend up here in Kill Devil Hills, and the day was so beautiful that I decided to relax on the beach awhile before heading back.” Her hands were still shaking from her run-in with the fly, and even her voice sounded a bit tremulous, but the flush remaining in her cheeks made her look very pretty. Her sunglasses were see-through blue, and he could still make out her brown eyes behind them. There was something needy about her, and he felt an unexpected desire to comfort her by taking one of those pale hands in his own.
“What’s the beach like in Rodanthe?” he asked, although he didn’t particularly care about the answer. He just wanted to keep her talking.
“Oh, about the same as this. Not as many people, though.”
“Must be nice,” he said.
“So, why are you here?” she asked. “We don’t usually get movie stars in the Outer Banks.”
He laughed. “I’ve never been in a movie,” he said. People made that mistake all the time. “But to answer your question, my family has had a cottage here ever since I was a kid, right behind us on that cul-de-sac.” He pointed behind him. “I haven’t been back to it in a long time, but recently I’ve been thinking about an incident that happened here many years ago that might make a good episode on the show I produce.”
“True Life Stories,” she said.
“Right.”
“What is the incident?” She cocked her head, and he wondered if she was coquettish or merely curious.
“Well, a long time ago, a newborn baby was found on this beach,” he said, “right about where we’re sitting. A little closer down to the water.” Right where Zack was sitting, actually, he realized.
Grace leaned forward, eyes wide behind the glasses. “You’re kidding?” she said. “How long ago?”
It was genuine curiosity, he thought now, and it was gratifying. He’d wondered if the story would capture the interest of the general public. “Over twenty years ago,” he said. “I was fourteen the summer it happened. My neighbor, a little girl who lived across the street from our cottage, found the baby early one morning.”
“Who’d left it there?” Grace asked.
“No one knew,” he said. “They never found out. So I thought, even after all this time, it would be interesting to try to find out who that might have been. Who did it, what prompted her to do it, how has she lived with herself since then. That sort of thing. And I thought that her answers might lend some insight into the reasons for the rash of abandoned newborns we’re seeing these days.”
“It must have been terrible for the little girl who found the baby,” Grace said.
“Oh, I don’t know. She was a pretty tough little kid,” he said. And a tough grown-up as well. “Her name is Daria, and she was considered a hero. There were articles in all the papers about her. Were you living in the Outer Banks at that time? Maybe you remember reading about it?”
“I was living in Charlottesville twenty years ago,” she said. She looked perplexed. “Why was the girl considered a hero if the baby died?” she asked.
“Oh, the baby didn’t die,” he said. “That’s the exciting part of the story. She—the baby was a girl—would have certainly died if Daria hadn’t found her, but she survived, and Daria’s family adopted her. She suffered some mild brain damage, but she’s beautiful and—” he searched for a word “—charming.”
Grace looked astonished, and he knew the story was even more captivating than he had thought.
“So…where is…I guess the baby would be a young woman by now…” Grace seemed to have trouble putting her thoughts into words. “Where does she live?” she asked finally.
Rory turned and pointed behind them at the Sea Shanty. From where they sat, only the white widow’s walk was visible above the sea oats. “Right there,” he said. “She and Daria live together in that cottage.”
“Right there,” Grace repeated. She stared at the widow’s walk as if lost in a daydream.
Rory spotted Zack walking toward him across the beach. “Here comes my son,” he said with some pride, and Grace slipped out of her daydream to turn toward the boy.
“Hey, Dad,” Zack said as he neared him. “Can I have some money?”
Rory should have guessed Zack was not coming over to him for some father-son conversation.
“Zack, this is Grace,” he said. “Grace, meet my son.”
“Hi, Zack,” Grace said.
“Hi,” Zack said without really looking at her. He was waiting for Rory to answer his request.
“I don’t have any money on me,” Rory said. “My wallet’s in the cottage if you want to help yourself to a five.”
“A five? Don’t want to leave you broke or anything, Dad.” Zack grinned, glancing to his left, and Rory noticed that a teenage girl was waiting for him a few yards away. She was as tan and blond as Zack, and wore a skimpy green tankini and some glittery thing in her navel.
“Make it ten,” Rory said.
“Thanks.” Zack nodded to the girl, and both kids headed up the beach toward Poll-Rory.
“He looks a lot like you,” Grace said once Zack and the girl had disappeared over the dunes.
“He’s too much like me for his own good,” Rory said. “Do you have any children?”
“No.” She looked down at her arms, and he wondered if she realized that she was starting to burn. Should he tell her? She spoke before he had a chance to decide.
“I read about your divorce a couple of years ago,” she said. “I’m recently separated. I guess I’ll be divorced myself soon.”
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, feeling instant sympathy for her. “It’s hell to go through, isn’t it?”
“Just kind of…hard to get back on my feet again,” she said.
He remembered what that was like all too well. The loneliness, the roller-coaster of emotions. He could almost see the pain of starting over etched on Grace’s face. He wanted to know if her husband had been the one to leave. Had there been an affair? Had she, too, suffered that agony?
“Well, I had my work to keep me active and prevent me from thinking too much about it,” he said. “Are you working?”
She nodded. “I own a little shop in Rodanthe. I’m usually there, but my partner is handling things while I’m away today.” She glanced at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was so late,” she said. “I really should call my partner and tell him I got delayed. Is there a pay phone nearby?”
“My cottage is right next to the beach,” he said. “You’re welcome to use the phone there.” Her partner was a he. It was crazy, but that disappointed him.
“I hate to put you out,” she said.
He got to his feet. “No problem. Come on. I should check on my son and his friend, anyhow. Probably shouldn’t leave them alone in the cottage for too long.” He held out his hand to help her up from the blanket, and it seemed to take some effort for her to stand. Her shakiness had to be due to more than a fly bite.
“Are you all right?” he asked, not wanting to embarrass her, but her unsteadiness begged the question.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, brushing the sand from the rear of her bathing suit. “I’ve been ill recently, but I’m okay now.” She lifted her blanket from the sand, and he helped her fold it. Her shoulders were quite pink; she would suffer later.
As they walked over the dune to the cul-de-sac, he wondered what illness had left her so tremulous, weak and pale. She walked smoothly across the sand, though, with a fluid ease. Her eyes were on the Sea Shanty.
“You said you’ve met…the woman who was found on the beach?” she asked.
“Yes. She’s a very sweet person.”
“What about the brain damage you said she has?”
“It’s mild. Just makes her seem more childlike than someone her age.” He stepped into his front yard. “This is my cottage,” he said.
“How cute!” Grace said as they neared the front steps. Zack and the girl were just coming out of the door.
“Were you coming to chaperon us?” Zack grinned. The girl punched his arm, obviously embarrassed. “Maybe we’d better stay to chaperon you,” Zack added.
“Very funny,” Rory said. “Grace just needs to use our phone.”
Inside the cottage, Grace made a quick phone call, while Rory put on his shirt and busied himself emptying the dishwasher. It relieved him to hear nothing intimate in her voice when she spoke to her partner. She hung up and turned to him.
“Well, I’d better get on the road,” she said. “Thanks so much for the use of the phone.”
“Where are you parked?” he asked.
“Just at the end of the street.”
“I’ll walk you.” He closed the dishwasher and left the cottage with her.
“So,” she said, glancing toward the Sea Shanty, “will you take…what do you call it? Footage? Will you take footage of the Sea Shanty? Will you have the grown-up abandoned baby on the show?”
They walked side by side down the cul-de-sac toward her car. “I don’t know what shape the story will take yet,” he said. “But I’m pleased that you seem intrigued by the idea. I want to make sure it’s a story that will appeal to the masses.”
Grace laughed, and he realized it was the first time he’d seen true levity in her face. “Well,” she said, “I’m not sure I’m representative of the masses, but I certainly think the story of a foundling is interesting.” She pointed to the sedan parked on the side of the road. “This is my car,” she said.
He couldn’t let her drive away without knowing if he might get to see her again. “Do you visit your friend in Kill Devil Hills often?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “She was just down for the week. She’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Well, now you have a new friend to visit in Kill Devil Hills.” It felt strange to be that forward, yet she looked pleased.
“Why, thanks,” she said, smiling that wide, engaging smile again.
“May I have your phone number?” he asked.
“Sure.” She rattled off the number. Neither of them had anything to write on, or with, but he memorized it. As she drove away, he saw her turn her head to look again at the Sea Shanty, and he knew he had a winner of a story on his hands.
10
“SO,” ANDY SAID, “IF YOU TAKE CARE OF THE WALL UNIT, I’LL make the pantry they wanted for the kitchen. Deal?”
Daria barely heard him. She and Andy were sitting on the Sea Shanty porch, going over the designs for a house in Corolla, but her eyes were fixed on Rory. He and a woman had walked from the beach into his cottage. They’d been in there ten minutes or so, and now he was walking her to her car. He’d been bare-chested from the beach to Poll-Rory; now he wore a broadly striped white and blue short-sleeved shirt. The woman was tall and slim and had the gait of a model. Her dark bathing suit was cut high on her shoulders; her long legs probably bore no trace of cellulite. Damn.
“Earth to Daria,” Andy said. He stood up and slipped the drawings into his portfolio.
Daria smiled at him. “Sorry,” she said. “Yes, I’ll do the pantry.”
“No, you’ll do the wall unit,” he said. “I knew you weren’t listening to me.”
“Was too,” she lied. “I was just teasing you.”
Rory touched the woman’s arm, and Daria felt a strangely familiar sense of loss, the same loss she’d felt when she was eleven and he started hanging around with the older kids. She was losing him again, and she’d never even had him to begin with. She’d be the first to admit this obsession of hers was nuts.
“Do you teach your EMT class tonight?” Andy asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Wish I was in it.”
She smiled at him again. “I wish you were, too,” she said.
“See you tomorrow?” He pushed open the screen door.
“Okay.”
Rory was walking back toward his cottage now, but when he spotted Daria sitting on the screened porch, he waved and turned in her direction.
“Good luck,” Andy said to her with a grin as he closed the door behind him.
God, everybody knew she was in heat.
Rory and Andy exchanged a greeting as they passed each other in the Sea Shanty’s front yard, then Rory opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch. He stopped short and smiled.
“I walked in here just like when I was a kid, without knocking first,” he said. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” Daria said, motioning toward one of the rockers. “Have a seat.” She knew he had taken a walk on the beach with Shelly a few days earlier, and she wanted to be irritated with him for it. She should be; he had intentionally discounted her concerns. But how could she be angry with him when he’d sent Shelly home in such excited good spirits? Shelly had talked of nothing else that night other than Rory this and Rory that and how she felt certain he could find her mother. This yearning for her birth mother was brand-new…at least to Daria. If Shelly had been feeling it, she’d kept it to herself all these years. Daria had talked with her sister about the possibility that Rory might fail to uncover anything new—a very real possibility, since Daria was going to do her best to make sure that was the case. Shelly had merely shrugged. “What will be, will be,” she’d said. It was an expression she’d picked up from Chloe, and Daria wondered if Shelly truly understood its meaning.
“So,” Rory asked as he sat down in the rocker, “was that someone you’re seeing?”
Daria was not certain what he meant at first. Then she understood and laughed. “No, that’s Andy. He’s a bit too young for me.” She wasn’t certain exactly how old Andy was, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty-six or-seven. “He’s a carpenter. We work together.”
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Diane Chamberlain
Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, Daria Cato found an unexpected gift - an abandoned baby. Unable to leave the child unclaimed, the Cato family adopt Shelly, but the secrets of her birth continue to haunt Daria.Twenty years later, an old friend of Daria’s, Rory Taylor, returns to his hometown – and something precarious shifts in the community. For Rory will stop at nothing to uncover the mysteries of Shelly’s birth.As closely guarded secrets and sins begin to unravel, piece by piece the mystery of the summer’s child is about to be exposed. A mystery no one involved is prepared to face.A chance to uncover the secrets of her past.A truth that will change her future forever.Praise for Diane Chamberlain ‘Fans of Jodi Picoult will delight in this finely tuned family drama, with beautifully drawn characters and a string of twists that will keep you guessing right up to the end.' - Stylist‘A marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem’ - Literary Times’Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’ - Daily Mail’So full of unexpected twists you'll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult's style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’ - Candis
Praise for
DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
‘Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read.’
—Closer
‘An excellent read’
—The Sun
‘This complex tale will stick with you forever.’
—Now
‘A hugely addictive twist in the tale makes this a sizzling sofa read … a deeply compelling and moving new novel.’
—Heat
‘This exquisite novel about love and friendship is written like a thriller … you won’t want to put it down.’
—Bella
‘A bittersweet story about regret and hope’
—Publishers Weekly
‘A brilliantly told thriller’
—Woman
‘An engaging and absorbing story that’ll have you racing through pages to finish’
—People’s Friend
‘This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.’
—Inside Soap
‘A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises’
—Star
‘Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’
—Daily Mail
‘Chamberlain skilfully … plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart.’
—Publishers Weekly
‘So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’
—Candis
‘The plot is intriguing and haunting revelations will have you glued to the very end.’
—Peterborough Evening Telegraph
‘I was drawn in from the first page and simply could not put it down until the last. I think I have found a new favourite author.’
—Daily Echo
‘[A] gripping summer read that’s full of twists and turns —5 stars’
—Woman’s Own
‘The compelling story of three friends who are forced to question what it is to be a friend, mother and a sister.’
—Sunday World
‘A gripping novel’
—The Lady (online)
‘Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.’
—Literary Times
‘A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult for, as this builds, one does indeed wonder if all will come right in the end.’
—lovereading.co.uk
‘I couldn’t put it down.’
—Bookseller
Also by DIANE CHAMBERLAIN
The Courage Tree
Her Mother’s Shadow
Kiss River
Keeper of the Light
The Lost Daughter
The Bay at Midnight
Before the Storm
Secrets She Left Behind
The Lies We Told
Breaking the Silence
The Midwife’s Confession
The Shadow Wife
The Good Father
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
This story is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Susan Chamberlain, my inspiration and comfort.
Summer’s Child
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
End Page (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
ON HER ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY, DARIA CATO BECAME A HERO.
A deep hush had fallen over the Sea Shanty after the savage weather of the night before, and Daria woke very early, as usual, when the sky outside her bedroom windows held only a hint of dawn. She opened the window above her dresser to let the breeze slip into the room. The sound of the ocean was rhythmic and calm, not like the angry pounding of the night before, and she breathed in the smell of salt and seaweed. The sunrise would be spectacular this morning.
Quickly, she slipped out of her pajamas and into her shorts and tank top, then quietly opened her bedroom door and walked into the hallway. She tiptoed past her sister Chloe’s room, and past the room where her cousin, Ellen, slept. Ellen’s mother was asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and Daria’s parents were in their room on the third story. Her father would be getting up soon for early mass, but her mother, Aunt Josie, Ellen and Chloe wouldn’t be up for at least another hour. They didn’t understand the early-morning allure of the beach, but that was fine with her. She preferred solitude as she watched the sand and sea change color and texture each morning. This morning would be special, not just because of the storm, but because it was her birthday. Eleven. Kind of a dull number, and still two years away from being able to call herself a teenager, but definitely better than ten.
Daria padded quietly on bare feet down the stairs, trying to avoid the step that always squeaked. Would anyone remember her birthday this year? She was certain it would be nothing like the year before, when her mother had arranged a party for her with all the other kids on the cul-de-sac. No, this year was destined to be different, because her mother was different. She’d changed over this last year, and this first gloomy, overcast week of summer in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, had done nothing to lift her dour mood. Daria’s mother slept late almost every day and moped around the cottage once she did get up. She barely seemed to remember her daughters’ names, much less their birthdays. Chloe wouldn’t care, of course. She was seventeen this summer, the brainy one in the family, already finished with her freshman year at college and interested only in boys and what color nail polish she should use to paint her toes. That’s when their mother started changing, Daria thought, when Chloe went off to college. “I’m losing my little ones,” Daria had overheard her mother say to her aunt just yesterday.
And, of course, the kids on the cul-de-sac would balk at coming to the birthday party of an eleven-year-old this year, now that they were all teenagers. Every single one of them except her! It was a good thing she didn’t mind being alone all that much, she thought as she opened the front door and walked onto the Sea Shanty’s broad screened porch, because that was obviously the way it was going to be this summer.
From the porch, Daria could look directly across the cul-de-sac and see Poll-Rory, Rory Taylor’s cottage. Even Rory, who had been her summertime buddy for most of her life, was now fourteen and pretty much ignoring her. He seemed to have forgotten all the hours they’d fished together, crabbed together and raced against each other while swimming in the sound.
There were no lights on inside Poll-Rory. She looked at the upstairs window she knew to be Rory’s bedroom and felt a prickly pain in her heart.
“Who needs you, anyhow,” she muttered, pushing open the screen door and descending the steps to the cool sand. She began walking toward the beach, where she could see the sky just beginning its silent, peach-colored glide toward sunrise.
All six cottages on the cul-de-sac were built on stilts, like most of the oceanside structures in the Outer Banks. The Sea Shanty, built by her father and uncle the year Daria was born, was only the second cottage from the water, so Daria quickly reached the low, grass-covered dune overlooking the beach. She glanced at the cottage where Cindy Trump lived, the only home on the cul-de-sac directly fronting the ocean, to make sure it had not been damaged by the storm. It was perfectly fine. She envied Cindy and her brother for living right on the water, but her father said the beach was narrowing in Kill Devil Hills and Cindy’s cottage would one day plunge into the sea. Still, Daria thought it would be neat to be able to look out your bedroom window and see nothing but water below you.
The beach was beautiful! The storm had washed the sand clean, and the tide had left behind a deep, wide row of shells, waiting for her to sift through them. The sun was already a thin sliver of copper on the horizon above the water, which was so calm it looked more like the sound than the ocean. Nothing like last night’s turbulent, frothy waves. She sat down on the dune to watch the sun’s rapid ascent into the iridescent sky. The sand was cool and damp, and she dug her bare feet into it.
Large, brown, orb-shaped horseshoe-crab shells dotted the beach, an eerie spectacle in the coppery light. They looked like something from another planet. She had never seen so many of them at one time, but they only held her interest for a moment or two before she began thinking again about the social dilemma facing her this summer. Although the Catos had been at the Sea Shanty for less than a week, Daria could already see how this summer was going to shape up, and the picture wasn’t pleasant. She went over the cul-de-sac kids in her mind, wishing she’d made a mistake in figuring out their ages. Chloe was seventeen and Ellen, who’d be with them for most of the summer, was fifteen. Cindy Trump was sixteen, her brother, Todd, thirteen. There were seventeen-year-old twins, Jill and Brian Fletcher, in the cottage next to Poll-Rory. Next door to them was that really quiet girl, Linda, who was fourteen and always had her nose stuck in a book. An old couple, the Wheelers, lived next door to Daria, and their three children were so grown-up, they were married. Last year, Daria had occasionally played with Rory’s sister, Polly. Polly was fifteen, but she had Down’s syndrome, so it was like playing with someone much younger. But even Polly seemed to have moved far beyond Daria this summer, at least in terms of physical development, if not interests. She had breasts that Ellen and Chloe were talking about with envy.
Once the sun was fully above the horizon, Daria set out for the inviting line of shells. Her shorts had deep pockets, so she would be able to carry whatever treasures she found. Her bounty would annoy her mother, who now complained about her collecting buckets of “useless” shells each summer, even though she’d never said a word about it before.
The sand was deliciously cool beneath her feet as she walked along the line of shells. She had progressed only as far as the Trumps’ cottage when she spotted the largest horseshoe-crab shell she had ever seen smack in the middle of the broad strip of shells. The shell looked odd to her, raised up a bit, as though perhaps the crab might still be inside. Curious, she extended her leg, and with her sandcovered toe, kicked the brown globe onto its back. Daria blinked in disbelief. A bloody baby! She shrieked before she could stop herself, then took off across the sand, screaming and waving her arms, wishing now that she were not all alone on the beach.
She’d run the distance of several cottages when she stopped short. Had it really been a baby? Could it have been a doll, perhaps? She looked back over shoulder. Yes, she was certain it had been a real, human baby. And in her memory, she imagined the small, almost imperceptible movement of a tiny, blood-covered foot. Surely that had not actually happened. She stood rigidly on the beach, staring back at the shell. Okay, maybe it really was a baby, but it couldn’t possibly be alive. Very slowly, she walked back to the overturned shell. The ocean was so quiet that she could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Standing above the shell, she forced herself to look down.
It was a baby, a naked baby, and not only was it stained with blood, it was lying next to what looked like a pulpy mountain of blood. And the baby was alive. There was no mistaking the tiny movement of its head toward the sea, no mistaking the weak, mewling sound escaping from its doll-like lips.
Fighting nausea, Daria took off her tank top and knelt in the sand. Carefully, she began to wrap the shirt around the baby, only to pull away in horror. The bloody mountain was attached to the baby! There was no way to leave it behind. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped the shirt around everything—baby, mountain and half a dozen shells—and stood up, cradling the bundle in her arms. She walked as quickly as she could up the beach toward the Sea Shanty. She stopped once, expecting to be sick, but she felt the trembling of the small life in her arms and forced her feet to continue walking.
Once in the Sea Shanty, she laid the bundle down on the kitchen table. Blood had soaked clear through the tank top, and she realized there was blood on her bare chest as she ran up the stairs to her parents’ third-story bedroom.
“Mom!” She pounded on their bedroom door. “Daddy!”
She heard her father’s heavy footsteps inside the room. In a moment, he opened the door. He was tying his tie, and his thick, usually unruly, black hair was combed into place for church. Behind him, Daria could see her mother, still asleep in their double bed.
“Shh.” Her father held a finger to his lips. “What’s the matter?” His eyes widened as he saw the red stain on her chest, and he stepped quickly into the hall, grabbing her by the shoulder. “What happened?” he asked. “Did you get hurt?”
“I found a baby on the beach!” she said. “It’s alive but it’s all—”
“What did you say?” Her mother sat up in bed, her brown hair jutting from her head on one side. She looked suddenly wide-awake.
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said, pushing past her father to reach the bed. She tugged her mother’s hand. “I put it on the table in the kitchen. I’m afraid it might die. It’s really tiny, and it’s got a lot of blood on it.”
Her mother was out of the bed more quickly than Daria had seen her move in months. She pulled on her robe and slippers and raced down the stairs ahead of both Daria and her father.
In the kitchen, the baby was just where Daria had left it, and the bundle was so still that she feared the baby might now truly be dead. Daria’s mother did not balk for an instant at the bloody sight, and Daria was impressed and proud as her mother lifted the crimson tank top away from the infant.
“Dear God in heaven!” Daria’s father said, taking a step backward. But her mother was not repelled. With the practiced hands of the nurse she had once been, she began moving efficiently around the kitchen. She filled a pan with water and put it on the stove, then wet a dish towel and began cleaning the baby with it.
Daria leaned close, made less afraid by her mother’s matter-of-fact handling of the situation. “Why is it so bloody?” she asked.
“Because it’s a newborn,” her mother said. “She’s a newborn.”
Daria looked closer and could see that the baby was indeed a girl.
“Where exactly did you find her?” her mother asked.
“She was under a horseshoe-crab shell,” Daria said.
“Under a horseshoe-crab shell!” her mother exclaimed.
“She was with all the shells washed in from the tide,” Daria said. “Do you think the storm last night washed her up on the beach?”
Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “She would have been washed clean then. And she would have been dead.” Her lower lip trembled and her nostrils flared with quiet rage. “No, someone just left her there.”
“I’m calling the police.” Daria’s father headed for the living room and the phone. His face had gone gray. Aunt Josie passed him on her way into the room.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Oh my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth as she saw the baby lying on the kitchen table.
“I found her on the beach,” Daria explained.
“All by herself?” Aunt Josie asked. “Where on the beach?”
“Right in front of Cindy Trump’s cottage,” Daria said. She saw her mother and aunt exchange glances. People always did that when they talked about Cindy Trump, but Daria didn’t have a clue why.
“The placenta is attached,” Aunt Josie said, peering closer, and Daria knew she must mean the bloody mountain still lying next to the baby.
“I know.” Daria’s mother shook her head as she rinsed out the wet cloth under the faucet. “Isn’t this just unbelievable?”
Daria thought of Chloe and Ellen still asleep upstairs. They shouldn’t miss this. She started toward the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked.
“To get Chloe and Ellen,” Daria said.
“It’s not even eight o’clock,” her mother said. “Don’t wake them yet.”
“Teenagers sleep the sleep of the dead, I swear,” Aunt Josie said.
Chloe and Ellen would probably blame her for not waking them, but Daria thought it best to be obedient just then. She stepped close to the table again and watched as her mother slipped the blades of the kitchen scissors into the boiling water for a moment, then snipped the cord coming from the baby’s belly button. Finally, the baby was free of the horrible, pulpy mass. Aunt Josie brought a towel from the downstairs bathroom and Daria’s mother wrapped it around the newly bathed baby and lifted the bundle to her chest. She rocked the baby back and forth. “Poor darling little thing,” she said softly. “Poor little castaway.” Daria thought it had been years since she’d seen so much life in her mother’s eyes.
The policemen and rescue squad arrived within minutes. One of the rescue-squad workers, a young man with long hair, nearly had to pry the infant from Daria’s mother’s arms. Still wearing her robe and slippers, she followed the baby to the ambulance. She stood watching the vehicle as it drove away, and she stayed there for several minutes after the ambulance had turned onto the beach road from the cul-de-sac.
Meanwhile, the policemen were full of questions, mainly for Daria. They sat with her on the screened porch of the Sea Shanty and went over and over the details of her discovery until she herself began to feel guilty, as though she had done something terribly wrong and would be hauled off to jail any moment. After questioning her for nearly half an hour, they sent her inside while they spoke with her parents and Aunt Josie. Daria sat on the wicker chair in the living room, the one right next to the window that opened onto the porch, so she could listen to whatever the grown-ups had to say.
“Can you tell us what teenage girls live on this cul-de-sac?” one of the policemen asked.
Aunt Josie began ticking them off. “That cottage there on the beach,” she said, “There’s a fast girl lives there. Cindy Trump. I’ve heard the boys call her Cindy Tramp, because she’s easy, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t say that, Josie,” Daria’s mother scolded.
“But I saw her yesterday,” Daria’s father said. “She didn’t look pregnant to me.”
Daria leaned her cheek against the wicker back of the chair, positioning herself to hear better. This was fascinating talk.
“I saw her, too,” Aunt Josie said. “She had on a big white shirt, like a man’s shirt. She could have been hiding anything under there.”
Daria could almost hear her father’s shrug of defeat. Aunt Josie had been married to his brother, who had died five years ago, and she always seemed to get her way with Daria’s dad.
Aunt Josie began speaking again. “There’s that girl Linda, who—”
“She’s only fourteen,” Daria’s mother protested. “And she’s so shy. Why, she can’t even talk to the boys, much less…” Her voice trailed off.
“We’d still like to know what girls are on the cul-de-sac,” one of the policemen said. “Whether you think they could be the mother of that baby or not. How about in this cottage? Any girls besides Supergirl? Daria?”
Supergirl? Daria grinned to herself.
“Yes,” Daria’s father said, “but they’re good Catholic girls.”
“My daughter, Ellen, is fifteen,” Aunt Josie said. “And I can assure you she was not pregnant.”
“Same for our daughter, Chloe.” Daria’s father sounded insulted that Chloe might be considered a suspect. “She goes to Catholic University. Got in when she was only sixteen, so you can guess she spends most of her time hitting the books.”
Daria wasn’t so sure about that. Chloe was smart enough to get good grades without doing much studying.
“Anyone else?” one of the officers asked.
“In this cottage?” Aunt Josie asked. “No, but there’s a couple more girls on this block. There’s Polly across the street.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Josie,” Daria’s mother said. “She’s mentally retarded. Do you really think—”
“She’s right to tell us,” one of the policemen said. “Who else?” He and Aunt Josie sounded like old buddies.
“I think the only other one is that Jill girl,” Aunt Josie said.
“She’s the Fletcher girl.” Daria’s mother’s sounded resigned. Every girl on the cul-de-sac was going to be on that list, whether she wanted them to be or not.
Daria saw Chloe descending the stairs from the second story and put her finger to her lips. Chloe frowned as she reached the living room. She walked over to her sister on bare feet.
“What’s going on?” she whispered, trying to peer out the window onto the porch.
“Don’t let them see you!” Daria grabbed a fistful of her sister’s wild black hair to pull her head down.
“Ouch.” Chloe extricated herself from Daria’s grasp. “Why are the cops here?”
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said.
“You found what?”
“Shh,” Daria said. But before she could explain further, their father stepped into the room.
“Chloe, good, you’re here,” he said. His hair was mussed now. He could never keep it looking neat for long. “I was just coming in to get you. You and Ellen need to answer a few questions for the police.”
“Why?” Chloe looked surprised. Her usual olive complexion had a waxy cast to it in the pale morning light, and Daria guessed she was nervous about having to talk to policemen.
“It’s all right,” Daria said. “I talked to them for a long time. They’re pretty nice.” Of course, though, I’m Supergirl.
“Get Ellen,” her father said to Chloe, who rolled her eyes and offered him a look of disdain before stomping up the stairs. That defiant attitude was brand-new. Chloe had been away at college all this year, only joining the family at the Sea Shanty a few days ago, and Daria had not yet adjusted to the change in her sister. Chloe had always been her parents’ pride and joy, with her straight-A report card and adherence to their rules. Suddenly, she was acting as though she didn’t need parents at all.
“And you.” Daria’s father looked straight at her, and she knew she’d been caught eavesdropping at the window. “You go on upstairs now. You must be tired. It’s already been a long morning for you.”
Daria did not want to go upstairs; she wanted to hear what the police would say to Chloe and Ellen, and she should be able to. She was eleven now, not that anyone seemed to have remembered. And if it hadn’t been for her, this whole commotion wouldn’t be happening at all. But her dad had that stern look on his face that told her she’d better not argue.
She passed Ellen and Chloe on her way up the stairs. Ellen wore the same pale-faced look as Chloe, and they said nothing to her as she passed them. But when she was nearly to the second story, she heard Chloe call out to her.
“Hey, Daria,” she said. “Happy birthday, sis.”
When she reached the upstairs hallway, Daria sat down on the top step, trying to remain within hearing range of the voices downstairs. She could tell who was talking, but little of what was said, and her mind began to wander. She thought about what she’d told the police, playing the interview over and over in her mind. If you lied to the police, could you be arrested? Would they arrest an eleven-year-old girl? She had not actually lied, she reassured herself. She had simply left out one fact—one small, probably insignificant piece of the story: the baby was not all she had found on the beach that morning.
1
Twenty-two years later
DARIA’S THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY WAS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT from any other early June day. Life was slowly returning to the Outer Banks as vacationers trickled into the coastal communities, and it seemed the air and sea grew warmer by the hour. Daria spent the day with her co-worker and fellow carpenter, Andy Kramer, remodeling the kitchen of a house in Nag’s Head. She installed cabinets and countertops, all the while battling the melancholia that had been her companion for the past month and a half.
Andy had insisted on buying her lunch—a chicken sandwich and fries at Wendy’s—as his birthday gift to her. She sat across the table from him, nibbling her sandwich while he devoured his three hamburgers and two orders of fries, as they planned their work agenda for the afternoon. Despite Andy’s appetite, he was reed slender. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that reached the middle of his back, and a gold hoop pierced his left earlobe. He was only in his mid-twenties, and Daria figured that was the reason he could still eat as he did and never gain an ounce.
“So,” he said to her as he polished off the last of his burgers, “are you going to party tonight?”
“No,” Daria said. “I’m just going to have some cake with Chloe and Shelly.”
“Oh, right,” Andy said. “It’s Shelly’s birthday, too, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. She’s twenty-two.” Hard to believe. Shelly still seemed like a child to her.
Andy drank the last swallow of his soda and set the empty cup on the tray. “Well, I think you and Shelly should go out on the town tonight and do it right.”
“I have to teach a class at the fire station,” Daria said, as if that was the only thing keeping her from “going out on the town.”
“You do?” Andy looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t—”
“I’m not working as an EMT,” Daria finished his sentence for him. “I still want to be an instructor, though. This will be the first class I’ve taught since…in a while.”
He had to know she meant it was her first class since April, when the seaplane went down in the ocean and changed everything in her life, but he wisely said nothing. Daria was anxious about teaching again. Tonight would be the first time she’d faced the other emergency medical technicians since turning in her resignation from the volunteer force, and she knew she had left them confused—and short-handed—by her sudden departure. She feared she had lost credibility with them, as well.
She left the restaurant with Andy, wondering how he felt about her quitting. Andy longed to be an EMT. He’d failed the exam twice, and Daria knew it was unlikely he would ever pass it, although he seemed determined to keep trying. He had been at the plane crash back in April, though, and he surely understood how horrendous that situation had been for her. But even Andy didn’t know the entire story.
The class at the fire station that evening proved that Daria had been right to be nervous about teaching again. No one seemed to know what to say to her. Were they angry with her for leaving so abruptly, or just disappointed in her? Most of them probably thought she had left because her fiancé, Pete, had resigned, and she allowed them that misperception. It was easier than telling them the truth. A few of them, those who had known her for many years, were aware that her leaving had something to do with the crash of the seaplane, but even those people did not understand. After ten years as a volunteer EMT, with a reputation as the “local hero” who possessed exceptional skills and steely nerves, it was unthinkable that one failed rescue attempt could flatten Daria to that extent. As she stood in front of the class that evening, she couldn’t blame any of them for their confusion or sudden distrust of her. After all, she was teaching them to perform tasks she was no longer willing to perform herself. She wondered if she truly had the right to be teaching at all. Walking out to her car after the class, she was painfully aware that no one was following her to ask questions or even to chat. They all hung back in the classroom, probably waiting until she’d left the building to begin talking about her.
It was a bit after eight o’clock as she drove home from the station. Although it was only Thursday night and still early in the season, the traffic on the main road was already growing thick with tourists. She knew what that meant: accidents, heart attacks, near drownings. Shuddering, she was glad she was no longer an EMT.
She pulled into the driveway of the Sea Shanty, parking behind Chloe’s car. As of this week, all the driveways in the cul-de-sac were full. Seeing the cars, Daria suddenly missed the isolation of the winter months, when she and Shelly had the cul-de-sac entirely to themselves. They’d lived in Kill Devil Hills year-round for ten years, and usually she looked forward to the cul-de-sac’s coming to life in the summer. But there was too much explaining to do this year. “Where’s Pete?” everyone would want to know. And “Why did you quit being an EMT?” She was tired of answering those questions.
Chloe was sitting in one of the rockers on the porch, reading a book by the porch light. “I’ve got an ice-cream cake in the freezer,” she said. “Now all we need is Shelly.”
“Where is she?”
“Out on the beach, where else?” Chloe said. “She’s been out there for a couple of hours.”
Daria sat down on another of the rockers. “I don’t like her to walk on the beach at night,” she said.
“She’s twenty-two years old, sis,” Chloe said.
Chloe didn’t get it. She was only with them during the summer months, when she directed the day-camp program for kids at St. Esther’s Church. She wasn’t with Shelly enough to know how poor the young woman’s judgment could be. Shelly could pick up some stranger on the beach, or some stranger could pick her up. It had happened before.
Daria brushed her hand over a spot on her khaki shorts, where glue from the installation of the countertops had found a permanent home. One more ruined pair of shorts. She must have sighed, because when she looked up, Chloe was staring at her. The extremely short haircut Chloe was sporting this summer made her huge brown eyes seem even larger, the dark velvety lashes longer. For a second, Daria was mesmerized by her sister’s beauty.
“I’m a little worried about you, Daria,” Chloe said.
“Why?”
“You seem so down,” Chloe said. “I don’t think I’ve seen a smile on your face since I arrived.”
She hadn’t known her unhappiness was that obvious. “Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t need to apologize,” Chloe said. “I just wish there was something I could do to help. I don’t understand Pete, frankly. Does he ever call you?”
Daria stretched her arms out in front of her. “He’s called a couple of times, but it’s definitely over,” she said. On the phone, Pete sounded relieved to be away from her, and the few times they’d spoken, he’d lectured her about putting herself first for once. It was painful to hear from him, and while part of her wished he would call again, she knew prolonging that relationship would only hurt her in the long run.
“Can you tell me why he broke off the engagement?” Chloe asked gently. She had avoided that question so far, probably hoping Daria would provide the answer on her own.
“Oh, a bunch of reasons,” Daria said evasively. “Shelly was part of it.” Shelly was all of it, actually.
“Shelly! What did she have to do with it?”
Daria drew her feet up onto the seat of the rocker and wrapped her arms around her legs. “He thought she needed more supervision than I was giving her,” she said. “He thought I should put her in some sort of home or something.”
Chloe’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “That’s crazy,” she said. She leaned toward Daria, covering her hand with her own. “I’m so sorry, honey. I had no idea Shelly had been that taxing on your relationship with Pete.”
Shelly had always been an issue between her and Pete, but after the plane crash it had come to a head. Daria didn’t want to discuss that with Chloe. There was no one she could discuss it with.
“It’s Pete’s problem, not mine.” Daria got to her feet. “I’m really tired,” she said. “I’m going to lie down for a while. Call me when Shelly gets here and we can do the cake, okay?”
Upstairs, she lay on her bed, but didn’t sleep. She stared at the dark ceiling, listening to the night sounds of the ocean and the shouts of the Wheelers’ grandkids from the yard next door. Since the summer she turned eleven, every one of her birthdays brought back memories of the day she’d found the infant abandoned on the beach. She closed her eyes, saying a quick prayer that Shelly was safe out on the beach, then let herself remember the day twenty-two years ago—the day that had shaped the rest of her life.
The baby had been the talk of the neighborhood all that day, and for many days to come. The police had questioned everyone on the cul-de-sac, as well as people on neighboring streets and the other side of the beach road, but Daria had been aware only of the little world on her street. As the police made their rounds that afternoon, Daria had sat on the porch with Chloe and their cousin, Ellen, pretending to play with her bug-catching kit while listening to them talk about all the girls in the cul-de-sac. Ellen and Chloe sat in the rocking chairs, their long, bare legs stretched in front of them, their bare feet on the molding beneath the screens of the porch. Daria sat at the picnic table, hunched over her microscope, pretending to be absorbed in studying the wing of a dragonfly. She understood only bits and pieces of the conversation between her sister and cousin. They were talking about sex, of course. She knew that if she asked questions, they would stop talking completely, so she kept her mouth shut and feigned great interest in the dragonfly.
“The cops are in the Taylors’ cottage now,” Ellen said.
Daria braved a glance across the cul-de-sac at Poll-Rory, the Taylors’ cottage.
“I am so white,” Chloe said, examining her legs. Her legs were hardly white; like Daria and Ellen, Chloe was of Greek descent and had inherited the trademark thick black hair and olive skin of the Cato side of the family. Nevertheless, Chloe would complain all summer long about her inability to tan, even as she grew darker week by week.
“I don’t know why they’re bothering to talk to Polly,” Ellen said. “I mean, who’s going to get a mongoloid pregnant?”
“Well, she is fifteen now,” Chloe said. “But I really don’t see how she could hide being pregnant from Mrs. Taylor. Polly’s always with her.”
“Well, I’m fifteen, too,” Ellen said. “And I’m a whole lot better-looking than Polly, but I’m still a virgin.”
Chloe laughed. “Right,” she said, “and I’m the Queen of Sheba.”
Daria knew what a virgin was. The Virgin Mary had gotten pregnant with baby Jesus without ever having had sex. It had never occurred to her that Ellen or her sister or Polly or any of the other teenage girls on the cul-de-sac could be anything other than a virgin. She lowered her eye to the microscope again to keep the shock from showing on her face.
“What makes the cops so sure it was a teenager, anyhow?” Ellen asked.
“They’re probably pretty certain it’s Cindy Tramp’s baby,” Chloe said, “but they don’t have enough evidence to force her to have an examination. I bet they’re hearing all about her at every cottage they go to. She’s been doing it since she was twelve.”
“Twelve?” Ellen looked astonished.
“Twelve,” Chloe said with certainty. “Just one year older than Daria.” Both of them looked at Daria, and she raised her head from the microscope, feeling color blossom on her cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daria said, although she did. She could not imagine having sex one year from then. She looked across the street at Poll-Rory, thinking of Rory inside that cottage. He was the only boy she could imagine kissing, but even with Rory, she couldn’t picture doing anything more than that. She wasn’t certain exactly how it was done, anyway.
“I know who it was!” Ellen said excitedly. “I bet it was that girl, Linda.” She laughed, as though she’d said something wildly amusing. Chloe laughed, too, and Daria laughed along with them, pretending to understand.
The police suddenly walked out Poll-Rory’s front door, with Rory close on their heels. Rory was yelling at them, and Daria leaned closer to the screen, as did Chloe and Ellen, trying to hear.
“…just confused her!” Rory shouted. “What was the point?”
The policemen kept walking toward the street, ignoring him.
“Don’t come back again!” Rory yelled after them, a threat in his voice. The sun shimmered on his blond hair, and after only one rainy week at the beach, he was already tan. His voice was deeper than it had been a year before. Yelling at the policemen, Rory suddenly seemed more like a man than a boy, and Daria was both enticed and humiliated, seeing at once how ridiculous she was for hoping he might still want to hang out with her this summer.
“Rory!” Mrs. Taylor opened the screen door of Poll-Rory and called to her son.
Rory did not turn around. He stared after the policemen as they walked down the street, and even from across the cul-de-sac, Daria thought she could see the daggers in his eyes.
Mrs. Taylor came out of the cottage and into the sandy yard, where she spoke with him softly, putting her arm around his shoulders. Finally he turned and walked with her back into the cottage.
“Rory is looking hot this summer,” Ellen said, fanning herself with her hand.
“He’s only fourteen,” Chloe scoffed. “Though I guess that’s about right for you.”
Daria’s mother came out onto the porch. She had on a dress, unusual attire for Kill Devil Hills. “We’ll go out for pizza tonight,” she said, stroking her hand over Daria’s hair. The touch felt nearly alien. It had been a while since her mother had touched her that way. “For your birthday, Daria,” she added. “And then to the miniature-golf course. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Daria said, pleased that her mother had not forgotten her birthday after all. Chloe and Ellen looked at Sue Cato as if she’d grown two heads.
“And right now—” Daria’s mother smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress “—I’m going to the hospital in Elizabeth City to visit the baby.”
“Why?” Chloe asked. “It’s not yours.”
“That’s true, but right now she doesn’t have anyone,” Sue said. “No one to hold her and rock her. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Can I go, Mom?” Daria stood up, the dragonfly forgotten. “I found her.”
Her mother tilted her head, as if considering. “Sure,” she said. “I think you should.”
The nurse instructed them to wash their hands with a special soap and put on blue gowns before they could walk into the nursery where the baby was lying in a plastic bassinet. They were not allowed to pick her up, however. They were just allowed to stare. And stare they did. Daria barely recognized the tiny infant lying in front of her. The baby was so small. Had she really been that small when Daria found her on the beach? Her skin was very pale, almost translucent, and her hair was little more than a dusting of fine blond glitter on the top of her head. She was attached to several monitors by long wires taped to her chest.
Daria was surprised to feel tears fill her eyes as she looked at the baby. This baby was alive because of her. She moved, she breathed, because of her. It seemed unbelievable.
Daria’s mother took her hand, and Daria held on tightly, something she had not done in years. She glanced up at her mother’s face to see tears streaming slowly and silently down her cheeks, and Daria knew that for each of them, this baby was more than a small bundle of flesh and bone. This baby was already changing their lives.
“We’re going to stop at St. Esther’s,” her mother said once they were back in the car and driving across Currituck Sound toward Kill Devil Hills.
“To light a candle,” Daria said with conviction, proud she was able to read her mother’s mind.
“Yes,” her mother said. “But also, we’re going to pay a visit to Father Macy.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Daria’s mother stared at the road and clutched the steering wheel firmly in her hands. “Because if the mother doesn’t come forward, I believe that baby should be ours.” She turned to face Daria. “Don’t you? After all, she’s alive because of you, my sweet Daria.”
It had not occurred to her that they might be able to keep the baby, but instantly, Daria could imagine no other outcome. A little sister! She was going to do something a bit evil when she lit her candle: She was going to pray that the identity of the person who left the baby on the beach was never discovered.
St. Esther’s was nothing like the church Daria’s family attended during the rest of the year in Norfolk, Virginia. The church in Norfolk was dark and cold and musty-smelling, and always made her shiver with a strange mixture of fear and awe. But St. Esther’s stood near the sound in Nag’s Head, a large wooden rectangular building that felt clean and new inside. It was open and airy, with huge windows near the high ceiling and pews made from light-colored wood. There was stained glass in some of the windows, a kaleidoscope of translucent glass cut into abstract shapes that sent beams of bright colored light through the air of the church.
St. Esther’s was empty that afternoon, and Daria thought their footsteps were entirely too loud as she and her mother walked across the hardwood floor to the tiers of candles in the corner. Daria’s mother took a long wooden taper from the holder, slipped it into the flame of one of the candles and used the lit taper to light a candle of her own. She handed the taper to Daria.
It did not seem quite as magical and mysterious to light a candle in here as it would have in their dark, cavelike church in Norfolk, but nevertheless Daria lit a candle in the bottom tier and knelt next to her mother to say a prayer for the baby.
Dear God, let that little baby live and be healthy, she prayed. And let her be ours.
When they had finished praying, Daria and her mother walked out the side door of the church to the small attached building that housed the offices of the priests, as well as some classrooms where children attended day camp. They entered the building and began walking through the wide, cool hallway, its hardwood floor gleaming in the light from the skylights. Father Macy was just walking out of his office as they approached.
“Why Mrs. Cato. Daria,” he said with a smile. “What brings the two of you here?” He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and his hair was the color of the sea oats on the Kill Devil Hills beach. He was a good match for St. Esther’s, as approachable and cheerful as the church itself.
Daria felt her mother put an arm around her shoulders. “Go ahead and tell him, honey,” she said.
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said.
Father Macy’s brown eyes grew wide. “A baby?” he repeated.
“Yes,” her mother said. “Daria had the courage to pick her up and bring her home to us, even though she was a newborn with the, uh…afterbirth still attached.” She squeezed Daria’s shoulder. “We would like to talk with you about her, if you have a minute.”
“Of course,” Father Macy said. He stepped back into his office. “Come right in.”
They followed him into the small room. A massive desk stood in front of the one large window. It looked out toward the sound, and in the distance, the grand, golden dunes at Nag’s Head. The priest sat casually on the edge of his desk, and Daria and her mother sat in two armchairs on the opposite side of the room. Father Macy’s easygoing demeanor irritated her father, Daria knew. “He’s too informal,” he had said, and she doubted that the Norfolk priests ever sat on the edge of their desks. But Father Macy was very young; it was his third year being a priest and his second year at St. Esther’s. Even Daria thought he was handsome, with those large, brown eyes and long eyelashes. He had an easy laugh that made her feel relaxed around him.
“So tell me more about this baby you found, Daria,” he said.
“I was on the beach very early this morning to watch the sunrise and to beach-comb,” Daria said. “And I kicked over a horseshoe-crab shell, and underneath was the baby.” She didn’t want to tell him about the blood.
“And obviously, it had been born quite recently?” He looked at Daria’s mother for confirmation, and she nodded.
“Someone had simply given birth to her right there or very nearby, and left her to die,” Daria’s mother said.
“My, my.” Father Macy looked gravely concerned. “Is the baby…alive?”
“Yes, by the grace of God, she is,” she said. “She’s at the hospital in Elizabeth City. We just visited her and she’s doing well, and in a few days she should be able to go home. But she has no home, and that’s why I’m here.” Daria’s mother looked uncomfortable for the first time since they’d entered the priest’s office. She looked into her lap and played with the clasp of her purse, and Daria wished she would just get to the point.
“My husband and I would like to adopt her,” she said finally. “That is, if no one claims her. And I was wondering if you could help with that. If you could intercede on our behalf.”
Father Macy looked thoughtful. “Do you realize what a miracle this is?” he asked. “That Daria found this baby in time to save her? That the baby was found by someone who belongs to a family as devout, as holy and blessed as the Cato family?”
For the second time that afternoon, Daria felt close to tears.
“Yes,” her mother said softly. “Yes, we’re very aware that the Lord selected us.”
“I’ll be in touch with the hospital,” Father Macy said, standing up. “And I’ll be in touch with the state adoption agency. I’ll do whatever I can to plead your case. I can think of no better home for that little one.”
One week later, the baby arrived at the Sea Shanty, and became the instant celebrity of the neighborhood. Everyone from the cul-de-sac stopped by to stare at the little blond-haired infant and to shake their heads over her rude beginning in life. Daria’s mother named the infant Michelle, calling her Shelly for short. The irony of that name had seemed lost on everyone except Daria, who had delighted in how fitting a name it was. People often commented, though, on the other irony: that this tiny, blond, brown-eyed child was now part of the dark-haired, Greek Cato clan.
All that summer, Daria’s mother would sit on the porch, rocking the tiny baby in her arms and telling all who approached that Shelly was her gift from the sea.
“Daria?”
Daria started at the sound of Chloe’s voice. She sat up on the bed, freeing herself from the memories.
“Shelly’s back,” Chloe called from downstairs. “Come have some cake.”
“Coming!” Daria called, relieved that Shelly had returned safe and sound. She ran her fingers through her hair and headed downstairs to hug the young woman who was both her joy and her heartache, her blessing and her burden.
2
THE PLANE CAME TO A STANDSTILL AT THE GATE, AND RORY unfastened his seat belt and stood up to reach into the overhead bin. He pulled out the backpack and handed it to his son, who was still buckled into his seat and looked disinclined to leave the plane. Zack stared out the window, tapping out an imagined drumbeat on his knee. He was fifteen years old and annoyed at the prospect of spending the entire summer with his father on the East Coast. It had been a painful flight, at least for Rory, who had vainly tried every ploy he could think of to get his son to talk to him.
“Come on,” Rory said. “Let’s go find our rental car and get on the road.”
With a loud sigh, Zack unbuckled his seat belt and followed Rory down the aisle.
“Welcome to Norfolk, Mr. Taylor,” the flight attendant said as Rory passed her to leave the plane. She’d chatted with him off and on during the flight from Los Angeles, telling him how True Life Stories was her favorite show on TV. He doubted that was true, but as host and producer of the popular show, he was accustomed to the adulation. Women tended to know him from television, men from his days on the football field. Either way, he attracted attention, and even that seemed to irritate Zack. “We can never go anywhere without people staring at us,” he’d said when the third or fourth passenger on the plane had approached Rory for an autograph.
“Welcome to Nor-fuck,” Zack said now, under his breath, and Rory pretended not to hear him.
They checked in at the car-rental counter, and there was a subdued flurry of excitement between the two female clerks as they recognized their customer.
“You reserved a Toyota FJ Cruiser,” one of the clerks said as she checked his reservation.
“You did?” Zack sounded incredulous.
“Sure,” Rory said. He’d specifically requested a Cruiser. It would give them room for their considerable luggage, plus, he knew a Cruiser would please Zack. If Zack was pleased, though, the boy was determined not to show it.
The Cruiser was cobalt blue and looked new. Rory spread his map over the steering wheel and studied the route they would take to the Outer Banks. “It’s an easy drive,” he told his son, who said nothing in reply.
It was only an hour and a half from Norfolk to Kill Devil Hills, and Zack was no easier to talk with in the car than he had been on the plane. Rory gave up after a while, deciding to simply enjoy the scenery on this much-changed road, with its antique stores and vegetable stands. Zack pressed the scan button on the car radio, hunting for a station that was not too “pitiful.”
Rory had his hopes pinned on this summer. He’d been divorced from Glorianne, Zack’s mother, for nearly two years, and he and Glorianne had joint custody of Zack. Technically, at least. Rory was supposed to have Zack for weekends, holidays and summers. But several months ago, Glorianne had married the movie producer with whom she’d been having an affair during her marriage to Rory, and she now had a house in Beverly Hills, along with every other material possession she could desire. Rory found himself unable to compete with the glitzy, seductive new life-style Zack was enjoying in Glorianne’s home. Zack was at that age where possessions and grandeur mattered. He was slipping away from his father, and Rory hoped that this summer would bring him back. Rory knew that behind his son’s offensive, defensive adolescent facade, Zack was still hurting from the divorce and angry with both his parents for letting it happen. Intellectually, Rory understood all that. He just didn’t know what to do about it.
“So,” Zack asked dryly as he poked at the scan button, “are we there yet?”
“Another twenty minutes, I’d guess,” Rory said. “This road we’re on used to be narrow and sleepy, with just a few vegetable stands along it.”
“It still looks narrow and sleepy to me,” Zack said. He was a true Southern California kid. Anything tamer than the San Diego Freeway was going to look sleepy to him.
Rory didn’t bother to argue. He knew Zack hated hearing about the way “things used to be,” and he supposed he hadn’t cared for that sort of conversation, either, when he was Zack’s age.
“I miss L.A. already,” Zack said, gazing out the car window.
“Well, we haven’t reached the Outer Banks yet.”
“I still don’t get why we had to come here,” Zack said.
Rory thought he’d explained his reasons for spending the summer in Kill Devil Hills to his son, but either Zack hadn’t heard them or they hadn’t been persuasive enough for him to remember.
“Well, you know I spent my summers here when I was a kid,” he said.
“Right. And it’s got some kind of nostalgic pull on you or something.”
“That’s true.” Rory tried not to sound defensive. “It was a very special place for me. I still own my family’s old cottage there, and I haven’t seen it since I was seventeen.”
“You mean the cottage has just been standing there, empty all this time? Won’t it be rotted out by now?”
“I sure hope not,” Rory said. “I’ve had a real estate agency looking after it. They’ve rented it to people visiting the beach, and supposedly they’ve taken care of the upkeep, as well. I guess we’ll see about that soon.” That was something he was worried about.
“You could have come back for, like, a week or even just a couple of days to check on the cottage,” Zack said. “Instead we have to stay here the whole stupid summer.”
“I have a good reason for wanting to stay the summer,” Rory said, glancing at his son. This part of his plan he had not told him. “There’s an old incident I want to research here for True Life Stories. Want to hear what it is?”
Zack shrugged.
“When I was fourteen, a baby was found on the beach close to my cottage. She was a newborn. The little girl across the street found her early in the morning and brought her back to her cottage. The police got involved, of course, but they were never able to figure out who had left the baby there. A few months ago, I received a letter from the baby, who’s grown up now, of course.”
“What did she want?” Zack actually sounded interested.
“She said she knows I try to solve old mysteries on True Life Stories and that I’d lived near where she was found. She said she always wanted to know who her mother was and asked if I could try to figure it out.” He glanced at Zack again. “The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it,” he continued. “I’d always wondered about that incident, especially lately. You know how we’ve been hearing about all these teenage girls having their babies and trying to flush them down toilets or leave them in Dumpsters as if they were nothing more than a Popsicle wrapper? Doesn’t it make you angry when you hear things like that?” He didn’t wait for a response from Zack; he didn’t expect one. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that sort of cruelty. When I hear those stories on the news, it makes me remember that baby. Shelly, her name is.”
“So, where does this…Shelly live?” Zack asked.
“She was adopted by the family of the girl who found her, and apparently she still lives in the house on the cul-de-sac.” He tried to remember the name of that cottage, but failed. “At least, that was the return address on the envelope.” Shelly had given him very little information. It had been a short letter—more of a plea, actually. “She was only about three years old the last time I saw her.” Rory remembered a slender little girl with long platinum hair and large, brown eyes. Even as a teenager, he’d thought it was odd to see that leggy little waif living in the midst of the dark, exotic-looking Cato family. He’d forgotten her name until receiving the letter, remembering only that it was Sandy or Shelly, something to do with the beach. “I never wrote back to her,” Rory said. “I thought I’d surprise her, instead.”
The long bridge across Currituck Sound was directly ahead of them, and Rory felt a rush of excitement. “Kitty Hawk is on the other side of this bridge,” he said to Zack. “And right next to Kitty Hawk is Kill Devil Hills.”
After crossing the bridge, Rory spotted one of the milepost markers along the road and smiled. “People here locate things by the milepost markers,” he said. “Watch the side of the road, there. The next marker should be 3. Our cottage is between milepost 7 and 8.” He was secretly glad of the markers. He wasn’t sure he could remember where to turn, especially since the landmarks had changed drastically since he’d last been here.
“There’s 3,” Zack said.
“Uh-huh.” Rory could not help but feel some disappointment at what he was seeing. This portion of the Outer Banks was overgrown. The landscape was dotted with the trademark cottages on stilts, the main road was littered with shops and restaurants, and there were far too many people and cars.
“What’s that?” Zack pointed ahead of them in the distance and Rory saw the obelisk jutting up from one of the hills after which Kill Devil Hills was named.
“It’s the Wright Brothers’ Memorial,” Rory said. “This is where they took their first flight, over a hundred years ago.”
“That’s cool,” Zack acknowledged, as if finally admitting there might be some small reason to like this place.
After passing milepost 7, Rory turned the Cruiser toward the ocean and drove a short distance to the beach road. He turned right, hoping that was the correct choice, and in a moment he saw the cul-de-sac on his left.
“Here we are,” he said, turning into the short, broad cul-de-sac. After the jarring sights on Route 158, he felt enormous relief. The cul-de-sac looked the same as it had when he was a child, and nostalgia washed over him. The same handful of cottages was there—less one. The cottage at the end of the cul-de-sac, the one built right on the beach, was gone. Cindy Trump’s cottage. He could picture her even more readily than he could her cottage. She’d been a couple of years older than him, with sun-bleached hair, a killer tan and the skimpiest bikini in Kill Devil Hills.
His eyes were drawn to his old summer home, the last of the three cottages on the right. He laughed. “Well,” he said to his son, “looks like we now own beachfront property. There used to be one cottage between ours and the beach, but that’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Zack asked.
“Into the sea, I’d imagine,” Rory said. “Probably went in during a storm.”
Rory pulled into the driveway of his old home. The cottage looked the same, except cleaner, freshly painted. The rental agency was doing a good job taking care of it.
“Poll-Rory.” Zack read the sign above the front door. “Was that you and Aunt Polly?”
Rory looked at the sign himself. It was not the same old wooden sign from his youth; this one had white lettering on a blue background. But it surprised him to see any sign at all after so many years.
“That’s right,” he said. “My parents named the cottage after us.” He felt a pinprick of pain in his heart. Staying here was going to bring back many memories of his sister.
Looking across the cul-de-sac at the Catos’ cottage, he saw that a sign still hung above their porch door as well. The Sea Shanty. Yes. That had been the name of their cottage. It was no shanty, though. It was the largest cottage on the cul-de-sac, rising three stories above its stilts, and stained a light taupe color. Above the third story was the widow’s walk, where he and Daria used to play when they were small.
“God, we’re right on the beach,” Zack said, opening the car door. “I’m going to go check it out.” He took off toward the water, and Rory let him go.
Getting out of the Cruiser, Rory noticed the two cars in the Sea Shanty driveway and wondered who they belonged to. Were Mr. and Mrs. Cato still living? How did they feel about Shelly’s desire to track down her roots? Would Chloe be around? Growing up, Chloe had been clearly out of his league. She’d had a bunch of boyfriends, all of whom Rory, in his adolescent yearning, had envied. Three years older than him and in college by the time she was sixteen, Chloe had been knockout gorgeous, with dark eyes and long, wavy black hair. All the Cato girls had that same thick, dark hair. Ellen—she was the cousin, if he was remembering correctly—had been pretty as well, but her cute facade had hidden a mean-spiritedness that had scared him at times. He suddenly remembered an incident he hadn’t thought about in years. He’d been about thirteen, sitting with Ellen and a group of kids on the beach. He was watching an attractive girl walking along the water’s edge, when Ellen saw fit to point out to the rest of the group that he had an erection. He’d rolled rapidly onto his stomach, hating Ellen and her big mouth. Even now, he cringed remembering that moment.
Then there had been Daria, his little buddy, the girl who could run faster, swim better and catch bigger fish than he could. She’d been three years younger than him, but she’d been his competitor, nevertheless. He’d always pretended that he was letting her win at whatever they attempted. Inside, though, he’d been filled with admiration for her. He wondered what had become of the three Cato girls.
He opened the back of the Cruiser and pulled out two of the suitcases. He carried them up to the porch, then took a moment to look toward the ocean himself, breathing in the still-familiar scent of the beach he loved. It would be a good summer. He was in one of the finest places on earth, about to delve into an intriguing story, and he had Zack with him. Zack would come away from this summer with a healthy tan, sun-kissed hair and his good values restored. And with, Rory hoped, renewed love for his father. He could hope for the moon, couldn’t he?
3
THE LAUNDRY BASKET WAS FULL OF DARIA’S CLEAN WORK clothes—several pairs of shorts and a dozen T-shirts—and she dumped them onto her bed and began folding. She had the windows wide-open, and a warm ocean breeze lifted the blue and white curtains and sent them floating into the room like the wings of a tired gull. It was the sort of early-summer day that used to make her feel light and carefree, but she no longer seemed capable of experiencing those feelings.
She carried the stack of folded shirts across the room and set them on top of the dresser. Pulling open the dresser drawer, she took out the photograph she kept tucked beneath her T-shirts. She stepped closer to the window to study it, as she did nearly every time she opened that drawer. The picture was of Pete. He was leaning against a split-rail fence at a friend’s house in Manteo, a beer in his hand, a five-o’clock shadow on his face, and he was grinning at her, the photographer. His dark hair, as smooth and straight as hers was full and wavy, fell over his forehead. It was torture to look at the picture, and yet she did it anyway, over and over again. He’d been a part of her life and her future for six years. Now he was only a part of her past, and it was taking her longer than she liked to get used to that fact.
She replaced the picture, then lowered the stack of T-shirts on top of it and returned to the bed and the laundry basket, but her mind was still back with the photograph. Pete and his callous feelings about Shelly were linked together in her mind with the night of the plane crash, the night the young female pilot died. For two months now, Daria had been visited by that pilot’s last moments in her nightmares. She could not seem to free herself from the young woman’s pleading gaze.
That morning, she’d received a call from her old Emergency Medical Services supervisor, a call she’d half expected but had hoped would never come. They were pulling her off CISD duty, he said, and she’d winced as though he’d slapped her in the face. She’d worked as a critical incident stress debriefer for five years. After traumatic incidents anywhere in the county, she’d be called in to help distraught emergency technicians cope with what they’d endured. Now she was the distraught technician. Her supervisor summed it up for her when she begged him to reconsider. “If you can’t manage your own stress,” he said, “how do you expect to be able to help someone else with theirs?”
She was finishing folding the shorts when her gaze was drawn through the window to the cottage across the cul-de-sac, where this week’s vacationers were moving into Poll-Rory. Something made her move closer to the window, brushing aside the billowing curtain, to stare hard at the newcomers. A man and a teenage boy were unpacking a blue SUV in the driveway. Even from that distance, and even though she hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years, she knew the man was Rory Taylor. She’d watched every game the Rams had played on television when he’d been with them, and she’d watched him on True Life Stories for years. She had given up on his ever returning to Poll-Rory, though, especially now that both his parents were dead. He probably had more glamorous vacation spots in which to spend his free time. Yet here he was. Most likely, that was his son with him. She had read he’d gotten a divorce.
For some reason, the first memory that came to mind was of a hayride they’d gone on with some of the neighborhood kids. Her father was the group chaperon, and Rory, who must have been about twelve and full of early-adolescent bathroom humor, told joke after joke that Daria had felt unable to laugh at because her devoutly religious father was along. Rory, of course, understood her predicament and tortured her with ever more raucous stories. The memory made her smile. Rory had been her best friend during the summers of her childhood. When she was ten or eleven, that friendship began turning into a genuine crush, on her part at least. But that’s when he began to snub her in favor of the older kids. She knew that she had never truly lost that attraction to him. When she watched True Life Stories, she was not simply excited by the fact that someone she had known had become a celebrity; she was excited by Rory himself.
Rory carried a suitcase across Poll-Rory’s sandy yard and up the front steps to the porch, and Daria noticed the slight limp in his gait. She remembered that he’d been injured playing football. That’s what had ended his career.
She watched until Rory and the boy disappeared inside the cottage for the last time, then she walked downstairs to the screened porch. Chloe was sitting in one of the three blue rockers, reading a book titled Summer Fun for Kids 5–15, and Shelly sat at the blue-painted picnic table, stringing shells for a necklace, her long, blond hair falling over her shoulders.
“Did you see who just moved into Poll-Rory?” Daria asked, more to Chloe than to Shelly. Shelly knew that the host and producer of True Life Stories was someone who used to live on the cul-de-sac, but she had been very small the last time she’d seen Rory, and it was unlikely she remembered him.
Chloe glanced across the street. “I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said. “Was it a man and a boy?”
For a moment, Daria wondered if she’d only seen what she wanted to see. But she remembered the man’s limp, the breadth of his shoulders, the sandy color of his hair.
“It was Rory Taylor,” she said.
“Really?” Shelly asked. “True Life Stories Rory Taylor?”
Chloe said nothing. She stared across the street.
“I’m sure it was him,” Daria said.
“Why would he come here?” Chloe asked.
“Well, he still owns the cottage,” Daria said.
Chloe stared at Poll-Rory a moment longer before lowering her gaze to her book. Rory’s return was probably of little interest to her, Daria thought. Chloe had been older than Rory; she had not known him well. She had not looked forward to spending time with him every day during the summers of her childhood.
“Let’s go say hi to him.” Shelly started to stand up.
Daria felt instantly intimidated. He probably would have little memory of her. How full his life had been since the last time she’d seen him, while here she was, still firmly rooted in Kill Devil Hills.
“Let’s give them a chance to settle in first,” she said, glancing across the street once more before walking into the cottage to finish folding her laundry.
4
DAYLIGHT WAS FADING, AND RORY FELT THE PINCH OF A mosquito bite. If he and Zack stayed on the deck much longer, they would need to light the citronella candle. They’d eaten dinner on the rear deck, which jutted from the second story of the cottage and gave them a view of the ocean to the east as well as the sun falling over the sound to the west. Between Poll-Rory and the sound, though, were many, many cottages. Far more than Rory remembered. Still, little could ruin his pleasure at being in Kill Devil Hills.
They’d eaten carryout North Carolina barbecue for dinner—one of those culinary delicacies he’d been craving ever since deciding to make this trip.
“Let’s have takeout every night,” Zack said, closing the disposable box and lifting a can of soda to his lips.
“Well, a few times a week, anyhow,” Rory said. The truth was, he loved to cook, and two years of cooking primarily for himself had grown old. He was looking forward to spending time in Poll-Rory’s rudimentary kitchen this summer.
“This is crazy,” Zack said, looking above him at the darkening sky. “I’m never going to get used to East Coast time.”
“You will,” Rory said, although they had eaten dinner very late because their stomachs still thought they were back in L.A. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll have breakfast at nine, and then we’ll be on track.”
“Nine? Forget it. It’s summer. I’m sleeping in.”
“Okay,” Rory said. This was not worth arguing about. “You can sleep as much as you like.” He slapped a mosquito on his thigh. “I’m going across the cul-de-sac to see the neighbors,” he said. “Want to join me?”
“I saw some kids over on the beach before you got back with dinner,” Zack said. “Think I’ll go see if they’re still there.”
Well, at least Zack wasn’t shy. Or maybe he simply wanted to get away from his father for a while after this long day of togetherness.
“Okay,” Rory said. “I’ll see you later.”
Rory walked down the steps from the deck, through the cottage, and out to his sandy front yard. The warm, humid air smelled strongly of the sea, and he couldn’t shake a sudden bittersweet wave of nostalgia as he walked across the cul-de-sac. The screened porch light was on at the Sea Shanty, and as he neared the cottage, he saw a blond-haired woman inside, sitting in one of the rocking chairs, engrossed in something on her lap. She stood up when she spotted him and walked to the porch door.
“Hi,” Rory said. “Are you Shelly?”
“Sure am.” The woman pushed open the screen door. “And you’re Rory,” she said.
“Right.” Still standing in the sand, he put his hands on his hips and cocked his head to study her. Her smile was wide, her teeth straight and white, and she was very pretty. Her long hair was a silky, pale blond. “You were about three years old the last time I saw you.”
“Well, you were about thirty-five the last time I saw you.” She grinned. “I saw you just the other night on True Life Stories.”
He laughed. “Thirty-six,” he said.
“I don’t remember you from when I was little,” Shelly said. “Daria and Chloe remember you, though.”
“Who are you talking to, Shelly?” A female voice came from the living room, beyond the porch.
“Are they here?” Rory asked. “Daria and Chloe?”
“Yes, they’re inside. Come in.” She stood back to let him walk past her onto the porch, and he noticed she was tall—nearly as tall as he was. “Did you get my letter?” she asked in a near whisper.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Oh, thank you!” She gave him a quick, sideways hug, then led him into the living room.
“Rory Taylor’s here,” Shelly announced to the woman who was sitting on the couch, a book on her lap.
It took him a minute to recognize the woman as Chloe. She rested the book on the couch and stood up. “Hello, Rory,” she said.
She was still beautiful, although she looked quite different from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was very short, capping her head in dark curls. She looked like a Greek goddess.
“Hi, Chloe,” he said. He wanted to move forward to give her a hug, but her stance, stiff and uninviting, kept him rooted near the door. The sound of an electric saw came from somewhere in the cottage, and he wondered if Mr. Cato was still building furniture in the Sea Shanty’s workshop.
“It’s been a while,” Chloe said. “You remember Shelly, I guess?” She looked at her sister.
“Very well,” he said. “Although I can’t say I would have recognized her.”
“I’ll get Daria,” Chloe said, heading for the door to the porch. “She’s down in the workshop. Shelly, why don’t you get Rory something to drink?”
“We have lemonade or iced tea or soda pop,” Shelly said once Chloe had left the room. “Orange, ginger ale or Coke.”
“Orange sounds good,” he said.
“Be right back. Don’t go away!”
He watched her disappear into the kitchen. It was strange to be in this cottage again. The furniture was different—of course it would be, after all these years. Poll-Rory’s furniture, purchased for him by the real estate agency, was the boxy wood and nubby upholstery type that would hold up to the abuse of renters. The Catos’ furniture, with its blues and yellows and traditional lines, had a homier feel to it. The walls were lighter, and he noticed that the wood paneling had been painted a soft cream color. Were Mr. and Mrs. Cato still living? he wondered once again. Daria was in the workshop, Chloe had said. Was she with her father down there? He remembered that workshop. It was on the ground floor, built into a space among the stilts, and it smelled of wood and metal. He recalled that every time a major storm came through, the Catos would have to pack up the tools and carry them up to the first or second story of the cottage to get them out of harm’s way.
“Rory!” Daria strode into the living room and over to him, wrapping him in a welcome hug. “I can’t believe you’re in Kill Devil Hills.”
He drew away to look at her. She’d probably been about fourteen the last time he’d seen her. He guessed she’d been pretty back then, but now she possessed the rare, exotic sort of beauty that had once attracted him to Chloe, with those dark eyes and long, thick, unruly black hair. Unlike Chloe, though, she still had the body of a tomboy—tight, small-breasted, compact and tan in her shorts and T-shirt. Her hair was barely contained in a ponytail and there was something pale and feathery scattered through it. Sawdust?
“I’m happy to see that you guys are here,” he said, glancing at Chloe, who stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, a small smile on her lips. “I was hoping you would be.”
Shelly walked into the room and handed him a glass of orange soda. “We’re always here,” she said.
“How long are you staying?” Daria asked.
“All summer,” he answered. “My son is with me.”
“Well, sit down,” Daria said, motioning toward one of the chairs.
He took a seat. Chloe and Daria sat at opposite ends of the sofa, while Shelly sat on the floor, her back against one of the other chairs in the room. She was wearing a deep purple sundress, and her long, slender legs looked very tan against the pale carpet.
“So, bring me up to date,” he said. “Your parents? Are they…?”
“Mom died fourteen years ago,” Daria said. “And Dad, just last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rory said. “I guess you know I lost my parents.”
“Yes,” Daria said. “The real estate agent who handles your cottage told us. What about Polly? How is she doing?”
“She died two years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Rory,” Daria said.
“Me, too,” Chloe added. “Polly was truly special.”
“Mmm, very,” he said.
“I read about your divorce,” Daria said.
He laughed. His life was open to the public. “I guess I have no secrets,” he said.
“That must be strange,” Daria said. She sounded sympathetic. “But the news just reports the facts about a celebrity. So and so got divorced. So and so landed in a mental hospital. They don’t say how so and so feels about what happened to him.”
“Good point,” Rory said. “Well, I can sum up my feelings about those events pretty quickly. Losing my parents was the pits—they were too young. Losing Polly was even worse, as you can imagine.”
“I bet,” Daria said.
“My divorce was…difficult, but a relief in the long run. And my son is the best thing that ever happened to me, although he hasn’t figured that out yet.”
“Who is Polly?” Shelly asked.
“My sister,” he said.
“Why did she die?” Shelly asked.
“She had Down’s syndrome,” Rory said. “It affected her heart.”
“She was so fair,” Daria said. “I remember she’d always burn, every summer, no matter how much lotion your mom put on her.”
“That was Polly,” Rory agreed. “She wasn’t much of a beach person.” He looked at Chloe. “So,” he said, “now all of you know what I’ve been up to. How about the three of you? Chloe? You were so smart. You were in college before I could even spell the word. I remember you were studying history, right? You wanted to be a teacher. Is that what you are?”
The three women laughed, and he raised his eyebrows, surprised. “I’m wrong, I take it?” he asked.
“Well, no, you’re not wrong,” Chloe said slowly, coyly. “I teach history and English at a Catholic school in Georgia during the year.”
Shelly giggled. “Chloe is really Sister Chloe,” she said.
“Sister Chloe?” he repeated, confused.
“I’m a nun,” Chloe said.
“Oh!” He knew he couldn’t prevent the shock from showing in his face. Chloe Cato was a nun? He suddenly remembered that the Cato family had been very religious. Mr. Cato had gone to church early every morning, and he and his wife had been very strict, requiring Daria and Chloe and their cousin, Ellen, to come inside as soon as it got dark, while the other kids were still playing on the beach. Still, this was hard to believe. Chloe’s head might be telling her she was a nun, but her body and beauty were doing their best to deny it. He still remembered how she looked in a bikini: those large breasts, tiny waist and narrow hips. The boys on the beach had followed her around with their tongues hanging out. He remembered everyone ruling Chloe out as a suspect in the deserted-baby incident because, except for those breasts, she had been notoriously thin. Anorectic, almost. Yet that body was hidden now beneath long, loose shorts and a baggy T-shirt.
“I think you’ve rendered him speechless,” Daria said to Chloe with a laugh.
“I just…hadn’t expected that.” He laughed himself. That explained Chloe’s reserve in greeting him. “So, do nuns get the summer off? Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m working at St. Esther’s, the Catholic church in Nag’s Head, for the summer,” Chloe said. “I’ve been doing that the past few summers, running a day camp for kids.”
“Well, I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re doing, Daria,” he said.
“I’m a carpenter,” she said.
Rory laughed. “I should have guessed,” he said. “For real?”
“For real,” she said. “I probably have sawdust in my hair right now.”
“I was wondering what that was,” he said. “I thought maybe it was a new Outer Banks trend.”
“It’s just a Daria Cato trend.” Shelly grinned.
“I was working on a bookshelf for a cottage in Duck when Chloe told me you were here. There’s always a lot of building going on in the Outer Banks.”
“Are you living here year-round?” he asked. Despite the fact that Shelly’s letter bore the Kill Devil Hills return address, it was hard for him to imagine anyone living here year-round. For him, the Outer Banks had always meant summer and the beach.
“Uh-huh,” Daria said. “Shelly and I have lived here for the past ten years.”
“Wow.” He wondered what it would be like to live smack on the beach during the winter.
“Daria’s also an EMT,” Shelly said. There was pride in her voice.
“An EMT?” he asked. “Emergency medical technician?”
“Well, I was,” Daria said. “I’m taking some time off.”
“A lifesaver.” Rory studied her with admiration. “You started that avocation early, didn’t you?” He looked at Shelly. “She was only ten years old when she saved your life.”
“Eleven,” Daria corrected.
“I know,” said Shelly. “People around here call her Supergirl.”
“I remember!” he said, flashing back to the newspaper articles that followed Shelly’s discovery on the beach. “They still call you that after all this time?”
“’Fraid so,” Daria said. “I’ll be sixty and they’ll still call me Supergirl.”
“It’s because she’s kept on saving people,” Shelly said. “She’s the local hero.”
“I’ll never forget that day.” He wondered if he should tell them now that Shelly’s letter had prompted his visit to Kill Devil Hills this summer, but he had more catching up to do first. He set his empty glass on the coffee table. “Is there anybody else left on the cul-de-sac from the old days?” he asked. “I noticed Cindy Trump’s cottage is gone.”
“There was a bad storm more than a decade ago,” Daria said. “The ocean swallowed their cottage in one gulp. It did a lot of damage to the Sea Shanty, too, but your cottage was spared.”
“The Wheelers are still around,” Chloe said. “Do you remember them? They live next door.”
“Still?” He remembered a quiet older couple who often strolled on the beach in the evening, hand in hand. “They’re still living?”
“They’re only in their seventies,” Daria said. “Their cottage is filled with their grandchildren all summer long.”
“Did he know Linda and her dogs?” Shelly asked.
“Yeah, you knew Linda, right?” Daria asked.
He narrowed his eyes in concentration, picturing a mousy young girl lying on the beach with her nose in a book. “I think so,” he said.
“She lives in that same cottage with her partner, Jackie,” Chloe said. “They raise golden retrievers. Linda is a lesbian.”
Chloe revealed that fact as easily as if she’d said that Linda was a teacher or a swim coach. Rory had had little experience with nuns, but he’d assumed that Chloe had become moralistic and judgmental. He hoped her matter-of-fact description of Linda meant that she had not.
“Well, you never can tell how people are going to turn out, can you,” Rory said. “What about your cousin? Ellen? What’s she doing?”
“She’s married,” Chloe said. “She comes down every few weeks or so with her husband and kids.”
“Not this summer,” Daria said. “I mean, Ellen and Ted will be here, I guess, but not her daughters. They’re traveling in Europe as part of a high-school exchange program,” she explained to Rory. “Ellen’s a medical technician. She does mammograms all day.” Daria and Chloe laughed at that. “I don’t know if you remember what she was like, but that job suits her perfectly.”
Rory smiled. “She had a bit of a…sadistic streak, if I recall,” he said.
“You’ve got it,” Chloe said.
“What about the twins who lived next door to me?” Rory asked. “Jill and…her brother. I can’t remember his name.”
“Jill and Brian Fletcher,” Daria said. “Jill is still around.”
“The bonfire lady,” Shelly said.
“Yes.” Daria looked at Rory. “Remember the annual bonfire we had on the beach near the end of each summer?”
He had forgotten, but the memory slipped back easily. The huge, roaring fire. Great food. The sound of the ocean. Willing girls and the sheltering darkness. He nodded.
“Well, Jill has kept that tradition going,” Daria said. “She has to get special permission each year, because bonfires are no longer allowed on the beach. She has to make the fire closer to the water, but she’s fanatical about it. She’s got a couple of teenagers, and her husband comes down on the weekends. I don’t know what happened to Brian, her brother.” Daria looked at Chloe, who shrugged.
“Haven’t seen him in years,” Chloe said.
Rory was pleased to hear that some of the old residents were still around, although he was disappointed that Cindy Trump was not one of them. He’d always thought that Cindy somehow held the key to the mystery of the foundling.
He looked at Shelly. She was a striking young woman, with large, light brown eyes, that long blond hair, a willowy body and perfect tan. Sitting there on the floor of the living room, she was all legs and arms and gossamer hair. She’d been wearing the same ingenuous smile since his arrival, and he realized that she had a childlike way of speaking, a simplicity about her. He’d lived with Polly long enough to recognize it, and he wondered if Shelly’s rude introduction to the world had left her with some brain damage.
“How about you, Shelly?” he asked. “What are you up to?”
“I work at St. Esther’s Church as a housekeeper,” she said proudly. “And I design shell jewelry.”
“Shell jewelry?” he repeated.
“Uh-huh.” She stood up and walked out to the porch for a moment. Back inside, she handed him a choker, a small, gold-plated starfish set in the center of a strand of tiny shells. He was impressed. He’d expected shell jewelry to be a bit on the tacky side, but this was certainly not.
He looked up at Shelly. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Was this a real starfish?”
“Yes,” she said, taking the choker back from him. “I collect the shells on the beach. It’s hard to find a starfish that size, though.”
“It’s wonderful, Shelly,” he said. “What do you do with the jewelry after you’ve finished it?”
“I sell it at the gift shop on…” She looked to Daria for help.
“Consignment,” Daria said.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Shelly said, grinning at him.
“Yeah, it is.” He felt the broad smile on his face. Something about Shelly touched him. Reminders of Polly, perhaps, or maybe it was just the simple joy that emanated from her.
“Tell us about your son,” Chloe said.
“Oh.” Rory looked out the window at the darkening sky and wondered if Zack had made any friends on the beach. “He’s a California kid,” he said. “He doesn’t want to be here. But—” he stretched and sighed “—I’m hoping he’ll adjust to it. He’s a good kid, just screwed up a little from the divorce.” He wondered what Chloe thought about divorce—or the phrase “screwed up,” for that matter. Did he have to watch his language around her?
He leaned forward abruptly. “Well,” he said, getting down to business, “I received Shelly’s letter a few months ago, and I’ve decided to follow up on her request to find out who left her on the beach twenty-two years ago. I plan to make it an episode on True Life Stories.”
Dead silence filled the room. Chloe and Daria looked at each other, and Rory didn’t miss the disapproval in their faces. Shelly wore a sheepish smile, and Rory suddenly realized she had written the letter without her sisters’ knowledge.
“That is so cool!” Shelly said finally. “Thanks, Rory.”
Daria looked at her younger sister. “You wrote to Rory?” she asked.
Shelly nodded.
“I wish you’d told me that, honey.” Daria’s voice was disapproving, but not unkind. Even so, he instantly felt sorry for Shelly.
“I thought it was a wonderful letter,” Rory said quickly. “A wonderful idea. And if I can’t uncover the answer during my research, Shelly, maybe someone watching the show will know what really happened and contact me.”
Chloe tucked her legs beneath her on the sofa. “I don’t think this is such a good idea, Rory,” she said. “Why dredge up something that happened twenty-two years ago?”
“Chloe’s right,” Daria said. “I’m sorry to put a damper on your idea, but Shelly’s a Cato, Rory. She has been, right from the start. Of course, she’s always known what happened to her, but she’s one of us, an integral part of us. Who her birth mother was doesn’t matter.”
For the first time since his arrival, Shelly lost her smile. “I know I’m a Cato,” she said to Daria. “But I’m also something else. I’ve always wanted to know what that something else is.”
Daria looked surprised. “You never said anything about it, Shelly. Nothing at all.”
“Because I figured there was no way to ever find out,” Shelly said. “But I was watching True Life Stories one night, and I knew Rory lived here when I was found, and he always can figure out those mysteries, so…if he wants to try—” she shrugged “—I want him to.”
He had not expected resistance. It was understandable, though, that Chloe and Daria would find his plan unsettling if they hadn’t known about Shelly’s letter. Was he being intrusive? Was Shelly’s plea enough reason for him to tamper with their lives?
“Well,” he said, standing up. “I guess I’ll have to give this some more thought.” He saw Shelly bite her lip. A crease formed between her eyebrows. “And right now, I’d better go home and see what my son is up to.”
“Good seeing you, Rory,” Chloe said. She did not stand up, but Daria did. She walked him to the porch door.
“Don’t be a stranger, Rory,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “I won’t be.”
“I’m sorry Shelly bothered you about…”
“It’s not a bother at all,” he said.
Daria brushed a few flakes of sawdust from her hair, and in the porch light, Rory saw a world of worry in her eyes. “I think it would be a mistake to pursue the story,” she said.
“Well,” he said, touching her arm, “we’ll talk about it again, all right?”
He left the Sea Shanty and was halfway across the cul-de-sac when Shelly caught up to him.
“Rory, wait a second,” she said.
He stopped walking and turned around. Poll-Rory’s porch light lit her face.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Please, Rory. I still want you to try and find out who my real mother was,” she pleaded. “I really want to know.”
He hesitated. “Your sisters have some genuine concerns,” he said.
“Yes, but I’m the one who counts, right?” Shelly asked.
He studied her face. She was a stunning young woman with hope in her eyes, and he couldn’t help but smile at her. “That’s right, Shelly,” he said. “You’re the one.”
5
DARIA’S MOOD WAS LIFTING. SITTING IN HER PARKED CAR IN the Sea Shanty driveway as she waited for Shelly and Chloe to join her for the drive to Sunday mass, she felt a lightness she had not known for the past two months. She’d felt it when she’d awakened that morning and found herself getting out of bed with a smile on her face. She only had to look across the street at Poll-Rory to know the reason for her altered mood. Her lightness was tempered, though, by Rory’s desire to pry into Shelly’s past. Nothing could be gained by that…and too much could be lost.
The Wheelers—seventy-something Ruth and Les—were getting into their van in the driveway next door. A few of their grandchildren climbed into the van with them, and Daria knew they were going to St. Esther’s for mass, as well. She waved, and Ruth Wheeler called out a greeting.
Chloe and Shelly walked down the wooden front steps of the Sea Shanty. Shelly got into the front seat of the car, Chloe the rear.
“St. Christopher,” Chloe prayed as Daria backed the car out of the driveway, “guard and protect us on our journey.”
For as long as Daria could remember, Chloe had uttered that prayer every time she got in a car—even after St. Christopher had been desainted. Chloe had a bit of the rebel in her.
“There’s Rory Taylor.” Shelly pointed toward Poll-Rory, where Rory and his son were crossing their yard, carrying beach chairs and towels under their arms.
Daria tapped her horn. Rory waved at the car with a smile as she passed them. Rory’s son reminded her of the boy she had known many years ago—the handsome, blond-haired boy with the broad-shouldered build that would later serve him well on the football field. She remembered what a strong swimmer Rory had been and how she’d liked to watch him swim far out into the ocean until the lifeguards whistled at him to come in. He’d been a lifeguard himself one year, and he’d rescued an elderly man caught in the undertow. He’d been seventeen then, and by that time he’d definitely forgotten she existed. The local newspaper printed his picture after he rescued the man, and she’d carried that picture around with her for years, even after he’d gone off to college and stopped coming to Kill Devil Hills.
“Your cheeks are red, sis,” Chloe teased from the back seat of the car.
“Are not.” Daria tilted her chin to look at her reflection in the mirror. She feared Chloe was right: she could feel the flush rising from her stomach all the way to her ears.
“What do you mean?” Shelly studied Daria’s face. “Why would her cheeks be red?”
“’Cause Daria has a thing for Rory,” Chloe said.
Shelly lit up at that news. “You do?” she asked.
“I don’t know what Chloe’s talking about,” Daria said.
“A new man for you!” Shelly exclaimed.
“Oh, no,” Daria protested. “No way.” She glanced over her shoulder at Chloe. “Thanks a lot,” she said.
Chloe laughed.
“I’m not interested in Rory Taylor that way at all,” Daria said to Shelly. “Chloe just remembers back when we were kids, and it’s true, I did have a crush on him then, but that was a long time ago, so don’t get your hopes up.” She knew that Shelly had been worried about her ever since Pete fell out of her life. Shelly didn’t know how much of a role she’d played in his leaving, of course, and Daria intended to keep it that way.
“I think he’s really nice,” Shelly said.
“Yes, he is,” Daria agreed. She’d been particularly touched the night before by the warm and easy way Rory had related to Shelly. That was a sure way to Daria’s heart.
St. Esther’s was packed with the summer crowd. The church had expanded physically since that day Daria and her mother had lit candles for the infant abandoned on the beach, but the atmosphere inside was the same—clean and light and filled with the scent of the sea. Daria knew she could be considered part of the summer crowd herself, since she rarely attended church any other time of year. Shelly went most weeks, either walking or riding her bike or catching a ride from a fellow parishioner. But in the summer, Daria felt a need to attend mass out of respect for Chloe. She’d somehow missed out on the devout genes that had coursed through her family for generations. Perhaps Chloe had received her share.
Communion was a problem for her this summer. Although she’d left behind church dogma and ritual, she still felt guilty about receiving communion when she had not confessed the truth about the plane crash. Yet she received it, anyway. Otherwise, Chloe would have known she was carrying around some sin in her heart. Daria told herself she had done her best the night of the crash. Everyone had done their best. No one had any intent to harm. Nevertheless, she had covered up their human failings. That was her sin.
A group of children mobbed Chloe—Sister Chloe—in front of the church after mass, badgering her with questions about what they would be doing in day camp the coming week. Daria liked watching Chloe with the kids. Her sister was animated and affectionate with them, unlike the nuns Daria remembered from her own Catholic school childhood.
Sean Macy approached them as they were walking to the car, and the three of them turned to greet him.
“Hi, Shelly, dear,” the priest said when he’d caught up to them. “Sister.” He nodded at Chloe, then looked at Daria. “Good to see you at church, Daria,” he said. He had a teasing twinkle in his eye, and Daria smiled at him. All of the Catos had a special place in their hearts for Father Macy, since he’d helped Sue and Tom Cato adopt Shelly long ago. He’d also gotten Shelly her housekeeping job at the church, and he worked side by side with Chloe in the day-camp program.
“I need a moment with Daria,” the priest said to them. He took Daria by the arm and led her away from the car, and she waited for him to speak again. “I’ve been asked to talk with you, Daria,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “What about?”
“About resuming your EMT duties.”
She groaned. Someone at the Emergency Medical Services must have been bending Father Macy’s ear. “Who told you to speak with me?” she asked.
“Several people, actually,” the priest said. “You are sorely missed. And the community suffers without you, you know.”
“Thanks for the guilt trip,” she said.
“Seriously, Daria.” His face lost its smile. He was handsome, his hair still that wheat-blond color, but when he didn’t smile, he looked tired. “I don’t know what demons you’re grappling with,” he said, “but I want you to know that I’m here, if you ever want to talk about it.”
“Thanks, Father,” she said. “But I really have nothing to talk about. I just needed a break for a while.”
“I can understand that,” he said. The smile was back again. “I feel that way myself sometimes.” He squeezed her hand warmly, then told her goodbye, and she turned and began walking, slowly, toward her car.
She had certainly considered counseling. That’s what she would suggest for anyone else who’d suddenly relinquished their EMT duties. But counseling wouldn’t help. She’d lie to the counselor, so what would be the point?
In the car, she found that Shelly was now in the back seat, Chloe in the front. She started the engine.
“What did Father Sean want to talk to you about?” Shelly asked.
Daria pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road. “He just wanted to see if I could help out with the charity auction this year,” she said.
“Oh,” Shelly said, satisfied, but Chloe gave Daria a dark look.
“With a lie like that,” she said under her breath, “you’d better go to confession before you receive communion next Sunday.”
Daria thought she was only half joking.
6
GRACE SPOONED A DOLLOP OF WHIPPED CREAM ON THE mocha latte and handed the cup across the counter to Jean Best, one of the regular customers at Beachside Café and Sundries.
“How are you doing, Grace?” Jean asked. Her eyes bore concern, and the question was sincere, but Grace busied herself cleaning the espresso machine.
“Just fine, Jean,” she said. “Thanks for asking.” She knew she should ask Jean how things were going with her elderly mother and the house she was trying to sell, but she didn’t want to engage her—or anyone, actually—in conversation.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Jean said, taking her cue from Grace’s reticence and backing away from the counter. “Thanks for the coffee.” She carried her coffee to one of the small tables near the window overlooking Pamlico Sound, and Grace was relieved to see her go.
Beachside Café and Sundries was small, cramped and popular among locals and tourists alike. She and Eddie had opened it eight years ago with money Eddie’s mother had left him. They carried a few staples, but they were most beloved for their coffee and sandwiches, which ran the gamut from avocado and cheese to Italian subs, something for everyone. The shop had been a labor of love, a reflection of love, and people used to comment on the warm, supportive relationship she and Eddie still enjoyed after twenty years of marriage. No one was commenting on it now, though.
Grace made a couple of sandwiches for a man and woman she didn’t recognize. She was more comfortable these days with the strangers, with people who didn’t know her and know all she’d endured these past few months. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want sympathy. And most of all, she didn’t want to talk about it. Because if she talked, she would disintegrate into little pieces. And that she couldn’t afford to do.
She knew her regular customers worried about her. They worried about how much weight she’d lost and how fragile she seemed to be, both physically and emotionally. They commented about her pallor and her inability to concentrate on what anyone was saying. A few weeks earlier, she’d overheard a conversation between two of her customers, one of whom said, “Grace just isn’t herself these days.” That had become her mantra. Whenever she found herself thinking or doing something out of character for her—which was often, lately—she heard that voice inside her head: Grace just isn’t herself these days.
She could hear Eddie in the small office behind the counter area, typing on the computer, and she wondered how many of the regulars knew that things had fallen apart between the two of them. It had to be obvious. The jovial atmosphere that had once existed in Beachside Café was gone, and now there was a palpable tension between Eddie and herself. Several customers even knew that Grace had moved into the above-garage apartment she and Eddie used to rent to tourists in the summer. How they’d found out, she didn’t know, but the year-round population in the Outer Banks community of Rodanthe was small, and it wasn’t hard for people to learn each other’s business. And, of course, everyone knew the reasons for the change in Grace, as well as for the change in her marriage.
“Grace?” Eddie poked his head out from the back office of the café. “Phone.”
Grace wiped her hands on the towel hanging below the counter and walked into the office. She took the phone from his hand.
“I’ll watch the front for you,” he said as he left the office.
She nodded, avoiding his eyes. Once he was out in the café, she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”
“Hi, Grace, it’s Bonnie.”
“Bonnie!” There was only one person Grace could handle talking to at that moment, and it was Bonnie, her oldest, dearest friend. But Bonnie rarely called. She lived in San Diego and sent an occasional letter or e-mail once or twice a month. A phone call was rare, and it worried her. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything is fine here,” Bonnie said. “I’m more interested in how things are going there.”
“Oh, you know.” Grace sat down on the desk chair and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s been rough.”
“Well,” Bonnie said, “I wish I could do something to help you, and I’m worried that my reason for calling might just make things worse for you. But I wanted you to—”
“I don’t see how you could make things worse, Bon,” Grace interrupted her.
Bonnie hesitated. “Do you know who Rory Taylor is?” she asked finally.
“Of course. True Life Stories.”
“Right,” Bonnie said. “Well, I was reading one of the L.A. magazines and there was this tiny little blurb—I almost missed it. It said that he’s going to be in Kill Devil Hills for the summer.”
Grace frowned, trying to figure out why that would be of any significance to her. “So?” she asked.
“He’s there—” Bonnie let out a long sigh “—to look into that baby that was found on the Kill Devil Hills beach twenty-two years ago. He wants to do a story about it for his television show.”
Grace was silent, a chill racing up and down her spine. “For what purpose?” she asked. Her voice sounded tremulous, she thought, even though she was struggling for control.
“I don’t know, specifically,” Bonnie said. “But he’s usually trying to solve some sort of mystery. Like, who the baby’s mother was.”
Grace shut her eyes. “You know,” she said softly, “that baby has been on my mind a lot lately.”
“Of course she has,” Bonnie said. “Of course she would be.”
“Why now?” Grace asked, a bubble of anger forming in her chest. “Why, after all this time, does somebody have to delve into that—”
“I know,” Bonnie said. “It’s the wrong time. Not that there ever was a good time for it. Gracie, how are you doing otherwise? What does the doctor say?”
Grace ignored her question. “You know who I hate?” she asked. “Who I despise? Even after all these years?”
Bonnie hesitated a moment before asking, “Who?”
“The nurse,” Grace said. “Nurse Nancy. I would love to get my hands on that woman.”
“I know,” Bonnie said, her voice soothing. “So would I. Look, Grace, I’m worried about you. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t want you to find out some other way. Do you want me to come to North Carolina to be with you? Maybe I could help out somehow?”
“No, no,” Grace said. “I’m all right.”
“I know Eddie would be there for you if you’d let him,” Bonnie continued. “But he said you’re freezing him out.”
“He froze himself out,” Grace said, although that was not the truth and Bonnie probably knew it. Eddie would be there for her, but right now she couldn’t even stand the sight of him. She could hear his voice, a deep voice she had once found mesmerizing, coming from the café. He was laughing with one of the customers. Laughing. She pressed the phone more tightly to her ear to block out the sound.
Bonnie uttered more words of concern, more words of comfort, but Grace barely heard her. She was too absorbed by the thought of Rory Taylor hunting for clues to how that baby came to be on the beach. And by the time she hung up the phone with her old friend, Grace had a plan.
7
THE SUN WAS SLIPPING INTO THE SOUND AS DARIA DROVE into Andy Kramer’s driveway.
“You have an incredible view, Andy,” she said to her co-worker, thinking of how he must enjoy this spectacle every evening.
“I know,” Andy said, opening the car door. “I’m a lucky guy. Now if I just had a decent van.” His van was in the shop again, the third time in the past few months.
Daria spotted the boat tied to the pier behind Andy’s cottage. “I didn’t know you were into boats,” she said. “Is that new?”
Andy laughed, his earring glowing a vibrant rose color in the muted sunlight. “Brand-new,” he said, “but it’s not mine. I share the pier with my next-door neighbors, and it’s theirs. Raises my property value, though, having it behind my cottage.”
She could see his neighbors, a man and woman and a little boy, on the side deck of their cottage, grilling their dinner. She could even smell the steak. “Well, I hope they at least take you out in it sometime,” she said.
“Me, too.” Andy got out of the car and shut the door, but bent over to look in the window. “Thanks for the lift,” he said. “And have a good soak in your tub tonight.”
“I plan to.” She pulled out of his driveway, already thinking about spending a leisurely half hour in the whirlpool tub later that night. The tub was the one extravagance in the Sea Shanty, but it was truly a necessity after a day like this one. She and Andy had spent the day building wall-to-ceiling bookshelves in a huge house in Corolla, and her shoulders and arms ached. Before she could take a bath, though, there was something she needed to do.
She drove the mile and a half across Kill Devil Hills to the cul-de-sac, where she parked in the Sea Shanty driveway. But instead of going inside the cottage, she walked across the street to Poll-Rory.
Rory answered the door in shorts, sky-blue T-shirt and a handsome grin that threatened her resolve. She had to keep the purpose of this visit firmly in her mind.
“Come in, neighbor,” he said, pushing open the screen door for her.
Daria stepped into the living room and took off her sunglasses. She had been in Poll-Rory many times over the years, so the changes in its interior were no surprise to her. She imagined they had been to Rory, though. The furniture, the new paneling on the walls, the artwork and knickknacks had all been selected by the real estate agent handling the property.
Daria spotted a computer on the table in the dining area. Papers and books were strewn across the table’s surface.
“Looks like you’re working,” Daria said.
“Working and playing,” Rory said. “That’s my plan for this summer.” His hands were on his hips, and she felt him appraising her. She probably had more sawdust in her hair. She knew she had paint on her white T-shirt and a smudge of varnish on her cheek.
She looked at him squarely. “I need to talk with you about Shelly,” she said and felt the apology forming on her face. Rory had come all the way across the country to get to the bottom of Shelly’s story, and she planned to make him stop that search before he’d even begun.
He must have seen the concern in her eyes, because his grin faded. “Well,” he said, “this looks like a serious, sitting-down kind of conversation. Let’s go up on the deck.”
She followed him out the back door and up the stairs to the small deck, with its view of both ocean and sound. Nearly as good a view as from the Sea Shanty’s widow’s walk.
“I’d offer you something to drink,” Rory said, “but all I have right now is water and milk. Zack already drank the soda I bought. I’d forgotten how much food he can go through.”
Daria sat in an Adirondack chair and slipped her sunglasses on again, even though the sun had fallen well below the horizon. Rory’s green eyes were uncovered, and she wished that were not the case. There was something about his eyes that had always made her weak-kneed, even when they’d been kids.
After a few moments of chatter about Zack and the view and the changes that had taken place in Kill Devil Hills during Rory’s absence, she got to the point of her visit.
“I know Shelly asked you to find out about her past,” she began, “but it’s really not a good idea. You don’t understand Shelly. She’s not—” Daria hunted for the right choice of words “—like everyone else,” she said. “I know she seems perfectly fine. I know she’s beautiful, and a wonderful person, but—”
“I think I do understand,” he said. “I picked up on what you’re saying when I met her. Did she suffer some brain damage when she was born?”
Daria was surprised that he’d grasped that fact; she hadn’t thought Shelly’s problems were that obvious. She nodded. “Yes, that’s what they figure. Her IQ is in the very low-average range, but on top of that, she has some learning disabilities that kept her back in school. Plus, she has a seizure disorder and, although she’s on medication for it, it’s not under very good control. She’s not allowed to get her driver’s license because she’s never been seizure free for a year, and that’s the requirement.” She glanced toward the Sea Shanty, but the only part of the cottage she could see from back here was the widow’s walk. “She’s a bit phobic,” she continued, “and very dependent on me. After Mom died, she became my responsibility. She was only eight, and I was just nineteen. Now she gets scared when I’m not around.”
“Why was she your responsibility?” Rory looked puzzled. “What about your dad? He was still living then, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but Shelly was too much for him to handle. She really needed a woman. A mother.”
“What about Chloe? She was the oldest. Why didn’t she help?”
Everyone asked that question, and Daria was ready with her answer. “Chloe was already a nun,” she explained. “She was living in Georgia, and there really wasn’t much she could do.”
“What did you mean about Shelly being phobic?” he asked.
“She’s afraid of a lot of things—earthquakes and snakes, for example, even though she’s never encountered either. But mostly, she’s afraid of being away from the Outer Banks. Pathologically afraid.” Daria wasn’t sure how to explain this. She’d tried over the years to describe Shelly’s fears to doctors and teachers, but no one really seemed to understand. “Shelly is only happy on the beach,” she said. “When she was little, we came to the Sea Shanty for the summers and spent the rest of the year in Norfolk, and we began to notice that she had a sort of…split personality. She’d be anxious and down in the winter, and relaxed and up in the summer.”
“Well, aren’t most kids that way?” Rory smiled. “I sure was.”
“Yes, but for a different reason,” she said. The light on the deck was fading, and she took off her sunglasses. “At first, we thought it was because she was in school in the winter and free in the summer, the way it is with most kids. But gradually we realized it was the beach itself that made her calm and happy. One time, when she was only about seven years old, we came down at the beginning of the summer. Dad had just pulled the car into the driveway—he hadn’t even come to a stop—when she jumped out and ran to the beach, right to the exact spot where I’d found her, although there was no way she could have known that. She sat down there and watched the ocean, all by herself, all afternoon. It was as if she could finally relax.”
Rory actually shivered. “That’s a little spooky,” he said.
“It was,” Daria agreed. “But after all these years, I’ve just come to accept that about her. She needs the beach. Period. After Mom died and I realized how happy Shelly was here, I started bringing her down on weekends. Just Shelly and me. Dad was…” She remembered her father’s years as a widower as one long fall into a life barely lived. “Dad withdrew after Mom died. He never dated or did things with friends, even though he was only in his fifties. He spent more and more time at church. Chloe and I used to say that he and God were dating.” She laughed at the memory. “He loved Shelly and me, but essentially, we were on our own. So, anyhow, Shelly had to settle for weekends at the beach. But then, when she was twelve and went on a field trip with her class to a museum in Norfolk, she disappeared. We didn’t know if she’d been kidnapped or what.” Shelly had been kidnapped once before, but she didn’t want to get into that.
“The police looked for her,” Daria continued. “The next day, when she was still missing, I called Chloe in Georgia to tell her about it. Chloe wondered if Shelly might have gotten here to Kill Devil Hills somehow. It seemed impossible, but it turned out that’s where she was. We never did find out exactly how she’d managed to get here—some combination of buses and hitchhiking, I guess. She’d broken one of the Sea Shanty’s windows to get in and had pretty much set up house for herself. I decided that was it—we’d move here.” She glanced at the widow’s walk again. “I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do for her. Maybe she should have been forced to tough it out somewhere else, because—to be honest—I think she’s even worse than she was. Whenever we have to go to the mainland now, to visit someone or to see a doctor, she gets panicky. But I love her.” She looked directly into Rory’s eyes and saw sympathy there. “To see her miserable tears me apart,” she said. “To see the total joy in her face when she’s safe on her beach makes it all worthwhile to me.”
“Maybe it was the right move for her,” Rory said. “She’s able to hold a job here, it sounds like. Would she be able to do that if you lived back in Norfolk?”
“I don’t think she would have been able to get out of bed in the morning if we’d stayed in Norfolk,” Daria said. “And she’s very responsible about her work. But frankly, there really isn’t much she can do to earn a living or to allow her to live independently. Sean Macy—the priest at St. Esther’s—and the others who supervise her give her a lot of direction in the housekeeping she does. Sometimes I think they keep her there out of pity. She probably wouldn’t be able to hold a job anywhere else.” Daria suddenly felt as though she had painted a one-sided picture of her sister. “She does have skills, though. She’s very kindhearted and likable. She’s creative. Her jewelry is actually in demand. She’s a terrific swimmer. Physically, she’s very graceful.”
“Yes,” Rory said, “I noticed that.”
“She can’t work, but she sure can play volleyball.” Daria smiled. “She excels at just about everything that’s fun. She just can’t do the serious things in life very well.”
Rory laughed. “Maybe we should all take a lesson from her,” he said. Then he leaned forward, his face now sober and not far from hers, and she saw the fine lines around his eyes. “I understand what you’re saying about Shelly and why you’d be concerned about her,” he said. “But she certainly knew what she was doing when she wrote to me about True Life Stories. She understood what the show is about and how it might be able to help her.”
Daria felt tears of frustration form in her eyes. He still didn’t get it. “Shelly is so vulnerable,” she said. “She’s fragile. She needs protection. People take advantage of her very easily. She’ll do anything if she thinks it’s helping someone else.”
“Are you saying she’s only enthusiastic about me telling her story because she wants to help me out? To give me an episode for the show?”
Daria shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. She really does seem to want you to do it, I can’t deny that. But I think it would be a mistake to unearth that sordid mess, or to make her face the reality of the woman who…who essentially tried to kill her.”
Rory leaned back in his chair again at that, and Daria continued.
“Shelly feels secure with us,” she said. “She knows she’s loved, she knows she’s been loved from the very first day. Why tamper with that? I don’t know what it would do to her to have the truth come out.”
“Maybe the truth would be positive, though,” Rory argued. “Maybe her birth mother regrets what she did and would love to know that Shelly is alive and doing well.”
“You’re fantasizing a happy ending, Rory,” Daria said. She felt a twinge of anger at his perseverance.
“You know, I understand better than you think,” Rory said. “The way you feel about Shelly was the way I felt about Polly.”
She had forgotten his devotion to his sister. “I can still picture Polly perfectly,” she said. Polly’d had a short, boxy build, white hair and the almond-shaped eyes of a Down’s syndrome child. She remembered how Rory had defended her against the teasing of other children and taken time out from his own activities to play with her. Seeing him with Polly was one of the reasons she’d been attracted to him.
“Remember the incident with the fish hook?” Rory asked with a laugh. “When you said you were an EMT, that’s what I thought of.”
She’d forgotten about that, but the memory came back to her instantly. Polly had managed to get a fish hook stuck through her toe. Neither Rory nor his mother seemed to know what to do to get it out, and Daria, then only twelve, had performed the feat.
“You knew exactly what to do,” Rory said. “It makes sense that you got involved in medicine.”
“Dad had told me how to extract a fish hook in case I ever got stuck by one,” she said simply. She didn’t want to discuss her EMT work and answer the inevitable questions about why she was no longer doing it, so she changed the subject. “I don’t remember Polly and your parents ever coming to Kill Devil Hills again after you went off to college,” she said.
“That’s right,” Rory said. He let out a long sigh and stretched. His T-shirt strained across his chest, and she looked away for the sake of her own sanity. “They stopped coming,” he said. “That’s when I realized they’d bought the cottage primarily for me, so I could get to spend time on the beach in the summer. But my parents never sold Poll-Rory. I’m sure they were hoping I might use it for my own family one day. Until this summer, that just wasn’t possible.”
“Why not?”
“Glorianne. My ex-wife.”
“She didn’t want to come here?”
“An understatement. She and I were very different. She was…” He looked toward the ocean for a moment, as though carefully selecting his words. “When I first met her, she was very young and shy and…unassuming. Her parents had been killed in an accident. They’d had little money and left lots of debts, so Glorianne had essentially nothing. She needed me, and I liked being needed. She changed over time, though. Once we had money, it was as though it all went to her head. I’d always wanted us to live in a middle-class neighborhood, with Zack attending public school and experiencing the sort of down-to-earth upbringing I’d had. Glorianne thought we should live in Beverly Hills and send Zack to a private school, since we could afford it. I didn’t want Zack to think that being famous and having money was more important than being honest and having good values.”
Rory paused before continuing. “So, the upshot was that we did live in a very nice upper-middle-class neighborhood and Zack did attend public schools, but I had to compromise. And that compromise took the form of where we vacationed. I would have loved to have spent all our summers here in Kill Devil Hills, but Glorianne hated the beach and she didn’t like the East Coast altogether. She always wanted to travel during the summer, and said that if I was going to limit Zack in what he could be exposed to during the year, then the least we could do was take him to Europe for the summer.” Rory looked perplexed, as though he was still amazed that his simple, unassuming wife could have changed so much. “So, that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said. “Till now, anyhow.”
“This summer with you should be good for Zack.”
Rory laughed. “He doesn’t seem to think so,” he said. “At least he’s doing a lot of complaining about it. But I do have hope. I think he’s already making some friends. He’s out on the beach right now.”
“Is that what ended your marriage?” she pried, curious. The article she’d read had claimed irreconcilable differences as the cause, and she’d always wondered. “Your disagreements over where to live and how to raise Zack?”
“And a million other things,” he said. “Actually, Polly turned out to be a big reason for the demise of my marriage,” Rory said.
That surprised her. “Why?” she asked.
“Well, after my parents died, I took Polly in. I moved her from Richmond to California to live with us. I wanted Zack to get to know her,” he said. “I wanted him to understand that people with Down’s syndrome were still lovable and valuable. And I think that really did work. Zack got along well with Polly.” Rory looked up at the darkening sky, as if searching for the words. He returned his gaze to Daria. “But having Polly there put a terrific strain on Glorianne and me,” he said. “We were already shaky enough to begin with, and Glorianne always felt as though Polly was an intruder in her family. And Polly never really adapted to living on the West Coast or to losing our mother. Plus, she had cardiac problems and needed a lot of medical care, and making sure she took her medications and running her to doctors’ appointments just wasn’t Glorianne’s thing.”
“That must have been hard on you,” Daria sympathized, moved by the way Rory talked about his sister. She was struck by the similarities between Rory’s situation with his wife, and her situation with Pete. At least Glorianne had allowed Polly to move in with them. “I know by the way you talk about Polly that you understand how I feel about Shelly,” she said. “You must understand why I want to protect her.”
He nodded. “Of course I do, Daria,” he said. “But Shelly is very different from Polly. Shelly is still able to analyze a situation and make up her own mind as to what she wants.”
He was right, though only to a degree. She sighed. “I haven’t succeeded in getting you to change your mind, have I?” she asked, standing up.
“I’ll think about what you said,” he promised, “although I think the decision is ultimately up to Shelly.” He stood up as well and followed her to the stairs. They were quiet as they walked through the cottage.
“Is there a gym around here?” he asked when they neared the front door.
“There’s a health club,” she said. “A nice one. I go there a few times a week.” She told him where it was located and suggested he check into the summer fees.
They walked onto the porch. “Do you still beach-comb every morning like you did when you were a kid?” Rory asked.
Daria laughed. “I have to be on the job early in the morning these days,” she said. “And those mornings I’m not working, I’d rather sleep in.”
She looked through the screen door at the Sea Shanty. It was Shelly who loved the beach at dawn now. Shelly who sifted through the shells and basked in the sunrise, taking her energy from the sea. Daria could not, would not, let Rory or anyone else harm her sister’s world.
8
RORY SAT ON THE PORCH OF HIS COTTAGE, LISTENING TO THE breakers swell and collapse in a sleep-inducing rhythm as he watched for Shelly to leave the Sea Shanty. He planned to begin his research by talking with her. He felt almost as if he needed Daria’s permission to do so, especially after his conversation with her the day before, but Shelly was twenty-two years old, for heaven’s sake.
A golden retriever sat next to him on the porch, her massive head resting comfortably on Rory’s knee. Rory buried his fingers in the dog’s thick coat, scratching her neck and behind her ears. He didn’t know where the dog had come from—she had simply appeared after Rory sat down on the porch—but he was glad for her company.
From the porch, he could see the ocean, but not the beach. He knew the beach would be crowded, though, and he knew Zack was part of the crowd. Zack was out there with his new friends. He’d had little to say when Rory questioned him about who he had met and who he was hanging out with. Zack was not about to admit that spending the summer in Kill Devil Hills might not be such a bad idea after all.
Rory thought he saw some movement on the Sea Shanty’s front porch, but no one emerged from the cottage. Since Daria’s visit, he’d considered her concerns, wondering if he should indeed go forward with his exploration of the past. He knew his motivation was mixed. Shelly had felt strongly enough to write to him about the situation, and given his link to her and his memory of the event, he had a personal desire to pursue the story. There was no doubt that the tale of a beautiful foundling would make a great episode on True Life Stories. Plus, the person who left the baby on the beach might finally have to face what she had done. He often wondered about that young woman. Had she just blindly, guiltlessly, gone on with her life? He knew he had a hostile attitude toward her, perhaps too much so. He was not ordinarily a punitive sort of guy, so that feeling surprised him, but the cruelty of her actions seemed unforgivable to him. Especially now that he had met Shelly and knew how close she had come to losing her chance at life. But what if the woman was remorseful and had been able to make a normal, healthy life for herself? What right did he have to disturb that?
Despite Daria’s protestations and his own misgivings, he felt that Shelly had the right to make the final decision. He needed to make sure she understood what she was getting into, though; that’s why he wanted to talk with her today. If Shelly still wanted him to pursue the story, he hoped Daria would eventually come around. He respected Daria and treasured the remnants of the childhood bond they’d shared. He would hate to spend the summer as her enemy.
The dog spotted Shelly first. The golden retriever lifted her head and stared in the direction of the Sea Shanty, and a few seconds later, Shelly appeared in the side yard. She must have come out the rear door of the cottage, and now she was headed for the beach. Rory stepped off the porch, the dog at his heels, and walked quickly toward her. She was cresting the low dune at the edge of the beach as he neared her. There was an otherworldly quality about her as she stood there among the sea oats, and he stopped to simply stare at her. She wore a white bikini, set off by her tan. The bikini bottom was covered by a gauzy white skirt wrapped around her waist. The breeze blew her long, pale blond hair away from her face. What a perfectly stunning creature she was. The Foundling. That’s what he would call the episode on True Life Stories.
“Shelly?” he called, taking a step closer.
She turned and smiled at him. “Hey, Rory,” she said. “I see you’ve got one of Linda’s dogs with you.”
Rory looked down at the retriever, now leaning against his leg. “She seems to have adopted me,” he said. He’d met Linda briefly on the beach the day before. She’d introduced herself to him; he would never have recognized her otherwise. She was now an attractive, big-boned woman with short blond hair and round glasses, and he could not get it through his mind that she was the cul-de-sac’s bashful bookworm from twenty-two years ago.
“Can I join you for a walk on the beach, Shelly?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “But Melissa’s not allowed. Go home, Melissa!”
The dog performed an obedient pivot and trotted off down the street.
“Which way do you want to go?” Shelly asked as Rory joined her on the beach.
He pointed south. “You must know that dog well,” he said as they started walking.
“And you must like dogs a lot, because Melissa is Linda’s unfriendliest dog.”
“I didn’t know there were any unfriendly golden retrievers,” Rory said.
“That one is. Though not to me. And not to you, either, I guess.”
They cut through a sea of blankets, beach chairs and umbrellas and began walking along the water’s edge. “I wanted to make sure of something,” he said. “I know that Daria and Chloe worry about me looking into how you came to be on the beach that morning when you were a baby. I need to know that you really want me to do this.”
“Yes, I absolutely do,” Shelly said.
“What if I uncover…if I find out something that would be very painful to you? I might find out, for example, that your real—your biological mother—doesn’t want anything to do with you. She might even wish that you had died that day. How would you feel if I learned something like that?”
Shelly looked down at the ground, where the water rose and fell over her feet with the rhythm of the waves. For a moment, he wondered if she had heard him—or understood him. Then she turned toward him, a small smile on her lips. “Well,” she said, “that would be the truth, and what I really want to know is the truth.”
“Okay,” Rory said, relieved. “But if you change your mind at any point, you just say the word, and I’ll back off, okay?” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Okay.”
“Well, then,” Rory said, “tell me what your life has been like.”
“Oh, I’ve had a wonderful life,” Shelly said. “I’ve—” A beach ball suddenly flew across the sand in front of them, and a little boy of about three ran after it, wailing. With a couple of long strides, Shelly grabbed the ball and returned it to the child, patting the top of his head as she sent him back up the beach to his parents. She fell into step once more with Rory.
“Isn’t he adorable?” she asked, turning back to look at the boy. “Isn’t the beach the best place?” She raised her arms out from her sides and tipped her head back to breathe in the salt air. Then she looked at Rory. “I always want to live on the beach,” she said. “It’s where I was born and it’s where I want to die.”
“Isn’t it kind of nasty here in the winter?” Rory asked.
“Oh, I don’t mind the winter at all,” she said. “The only time I ever mind the weather here is when one of those bad storms is coming and they say we have to evacuate. I hate evacuating.” She shuddered at the thought. “I hate going to the mainland.”
“Why is that?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know why,” Shelly said. “All I know is, I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m away from here. I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep, I get real jumpy. Nothing’s right until I get back to Kill Devil Hills.”
He wanted to put a fatherly arm around her shoulders and give her a hug. She was indeed fragile, as Daria had said.
“It’s really windy here, though,” Shelly continued. “Especially in the winter, but really all the time. Daria doesn’t like that, because she says she has bad wind hair. I have good wind hair, though. That’s what I mean. It’s like I was designed to live here.”
He wasn’t sure what good and bad wind hair were, but he got her point.
“There’s Jill!” Shelly said.
He followed her gaze to a heavyset woman sitting on a beach chair, reading a book.
“Jill, from the cul-de-sac?” Rory asked, although the woman looked nothing like the Jill Fletcher he’d known as his next-door neighbor.
“Yes. Let’s go say hi to her.” Shelly was walking toward the woman in the beach chair before he had a chance to say a word.
“Hi, Jill,” Shelly said when they were right in front of her.
The woman looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. She smiled. “Hi, girlfriend,” she said, then looked past Shelly at Rory. Her smile broadened. “Rory Taylor,” she said. “I heard you were here for the summer.”
He wouldn’t have recognized her any more than he had Linda. She’d been a couple of years older than him and had hung around with a different crowd, but he’d seen her nearly every day during the summers of his youth. He remembered her as a little on the skinny side, with very straight, dark hair. Her hair was almost entirely silver now, and it was short and thick and very becoming on her. She was no longer skinny, however. She had to be at least forty pounds overweight, and her breasts formed a deep cleavage above the neckline of her one-piece, black bathing suit.
He leaned over to shake her hand. “Hi, Jill,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”
Jill laughed. “Just don’t go telling me I haven’t changed a bit,” she said.
“You look great,” he said, and he meant it. Despite the weight, she was an attractive woman. She still had those enormous blue eyes rimmed with dark lashes.
“I’ve already met your son,” she said.
“You have?” He glanced around him at the surrounding bodies, slick with tanning lotion, wondering if Zack was nearby.
“Uh-huh. He’s about fifteen, right? Same age as my son, Jason. They met on the beach a couple of nights ago and have been hanging around together. Although I hear your son already has his eye on one of the Wheelers’ granddaughters.”
He did? Rory was definitely out of touch with Zack.
“Probably Kara,” Shelly said. “She is so cute.”
“Daria said you’re in charge of the bonfire this year,” he said.
“This year and every year,” Jill said. “Those bonfires have always been my fondest memory of the summer.”
“They were great,” he agreed.
Shelly suddenly unwrapped her gauzy skirt and dropped it on the sand. “I’m going to take a quick swim,” she said to Rory. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go on without me!”
“I’ll wait.”
“Isn’t she something?” Jill asked as they watched Shelly run toward the water. She offered him a towel to sit on, and he accepted, lowering himself to the sand. “She’s out here every day, walking along the beach like a breath of fresh air.” She looked at him. “I heard you’re planning to feature her on your show,” she said, and he tried unsuccessfully to read the tone of her voice.
“Well, she’s asked me to do a little digging into how she came to be abandoned on the beach when she was a baby,” he said.
Jill kept her gaze on Shelly, who was swimming straight away from shore with long, easy strokes. “I hope she doesn’t come to regret asking you,” she said. “I’ve watched her grow up, summer after summer, and she is a dear, dear soul. Her mother used to call her a gift from the sea.”
“You can’t blame Shelly for wanting to know the truth,” Rory said. “I just need to be sure she’s ready to hear whatever I might uncover.”
“Right,” Jill said. “I’m never sure exactly how much she understands about any given topic.” Jill changed the subject to his sister, and they were still talking about Polly when Shelly returned to the beach, her hair slick over her shoulders. Jill tried to hand her a towel, but Shelly waved it away. “I’m fine,” she said, lifting her skirt from the sand and tying it around her waist. “The sun will dry me off.” She turned to Rory. “Ready to walk some more?” she asked.
“Sure.” He stood up, his knee a bit stiffer than when he’d sat down.
They said goodbye to Jill and began strolling along the water’s edge again. Shelly stopped to speak to a woman who was hesitantly dipping her toes into the chilly water. “It will feel warm and wonderful once you’re in,” Shelly said.
For the first time, Rory understood, and maybe even shared, some of Daria’s concern for her sister. Shelly was open to everyone, friend and stranger alike, and that could indeed leave her vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
“Did you hurt your leg?” Shelly asked when they started walking again.
“I hurt my knee a long time ago, when I played football,” he said.
“Is it very painful?”
“Not too much,” he said. “It’s a chronic pain, so I’m used to it.”
“What does chronic mean?”
“It means ongoing. Not like banging your toe into a table leg. That’s a bad pain, but it’s over in a few minutes, usually. Chronic means it goes on and on.”
“Yuck,” Shelly said, and he laughed.
Shelly reached down to pick up a shell. She examined it, then dropped it on the beach again. “I have a secret friend,” she said abruptly.
“Who might that be?” he asked.
“I’ll never tell,” she teased. Her gaze was still riveted on the sand in front of her. “Daria’s been pretty sad lately,” she said in another rapid change of topic. The way she flitted from subject to subject with no thought of censoring herself reminded him of Polly.
“She has?” he asked. “Why is that?”
“Because Pete—he was her fiancé—broke off their engagement.”
“Oh.”
“I never liked him very much,” Shelly said. “He was one of those he-man types, you know what I mean?”
Rory laughed. “I think so. You mean, sort of macho?”
“Right. He had tattoos on his arms, one of a sea horse.” She wrinkled her nose. “But Daria loved him, and she was really, really upset when he said he wouldn’t marry her. They’d gone out together for six years. He moved away to Raleigh.”
“Do you know why they broke up?” He felt a little uncomfortable, as though this might be information Daria would not want him to know.
“Daria would never tell me,” she said. “She said it was personal, so I figure it must have something to do with sex.”
Rory laughed again. “There are personal issues that don’t have anything to do with sex,” he said.
Shelly looked at him coyly. “Daria likes you,” she said.
“Well, I like Daria, too.” He hoped Shelly was not implying that there might be a romantic relationship between Daria and himself. “She was a good friend when we were little kids,” he said. “I’d like us to be good friends again.”
“You know what, Rory?” Shelly said. She raised her gaze from the beach to look at him.
“What?”
“I have chronic pain, too.”
“You do? Where?”
“No one knows about it,” she said.
“Can you tell me about it?” He felt some alarm. Was she ill?
“Only if you promise not to tell Daria or Chloe. It would upset them to know.”
“I promise,” he said.
“Well, it’s not an arm or a leg that hurts,” she said. “It’s actually all of me. My body and my head and my heart. They all hurt from not knowing who my real mother is.”
Rory looked at her, at those beautiful brown eyes, filled with hope and sadness, and this time he did put his arm around her and gave her a hug. He truly had her permission now.
9
THE HEAT IN THE CAR WAS ALMOST INTOLERABLE. THE DAY WAS not all that warm, and Grace had the windows open, but after sitting in the parked car for nearly two hours, she was beginning to wilt. She’d parked the car at the end of the cul-de-sac, close to the beach road and just two lots away from the cottage she’d learned belonged to Rory Taylor. She’d driven past the cottage before parking and saw the sign: Poll-Rory. Who or what did the “Poll” stand for? she wondered.
She was nervous. She’d been nervous since leaving her tiny apartment in Rodanthe that morning. It had taken her half an hour to drive from Rodanthe to Kill Devil Hills, yet it had seemed an eternity. She knew she was doing something crazy; she almost felt as if she was doing something illegal. Grace just isn’t herself.
Suddenly, the front door to Rory Taylor’s cottage opened, and her heart kicked into high gear, skipping a beat or two, alarming her. Had she taken her medication that morning? She couldn’t remember, and now there was no time to worry about it. The man emerging from the front door was almost certainly Rory Taylor. She knew what he looked like; everyone did. He was carrying a beach chair, and she grimaced as he headed toward the beach. Damn. She’d been hoping he would get in his car and drive out of the cul-de-sac so that she could follow him. She’d pictured him driving to the nearest grocery store, where she could “accidentally” bump into him in one of the aisles. But things were not going her way. Nevertheless, she’d prepared for this possibility as well. She wasn’t supposed to be in the sun, but what did a rash or a sunburn matter at this point? Grabbing the beach blanket from the back seat, she got out of her car.
Rory had just finished the first chapter of the paperback he was reading, when a woman spread her blanket on the sand near his chair. He tried to keep his attention on his book, but he couldn’t help staring at her, and he hoped his dark glasses would prevent her from noticing. The woman was very attractive, tall and slender, with light brown hair that reflected the sunlight. Her one-piece, high-necked navy blue bathing suit made her shoulders look sexy. She was very pale, though, as if she hadn’t spent much time on the beach so far this summer. She lay facedown on her blanket, took off her sunglasses and closed her eyes.
She’s going to burn to a crisp, he thought.
It was a weekday, and the beach was strewn with sunbathers, but not really crowded. He could see Zack sitting close to the water, sharing a blanket with a few other kids his age. Zack already had the sort of tan it took most people a summer to acquire, and his hair was several shades lighter than it had been when they’d first arrived. Had Rory tanned that quickly, looked that good when he was Zack’s age? If he had, he’d never known it.
He returned his attention to his book and was in the middle of chapter three when the woman lying near him suddenly let out a yelp and jumped up from her blanket.
Startled, Rory looked up at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
The woman laughed, her cheeks coloring. “I think something bit me,” she said, brushing her hand over her arm. “Probably just a horsefly.” She had deep bangs that framed her face and accentuated her chiseled features, and she was older than he had first guessed. Late thirties, or maybe even early forties.
“Oh, yeah, there are a few of them around,” he said, although to be honest, he hadn’t seen any yet this summer.
The woman suddenly stood perfectly still, staring at him, and he knew that he’d been recognized.
“You’re Rory Taylor!” she said.
“Guilty.” He rested his book facedown in the sand, glad to have an entrée to talk with her. “And you’re…?”
“Grace Martin,” she said. She sat down again, brushing her hand over the invisible bite on her arm as she smiled at him. She had one of those wide, straight smiles that was impossible to observe without smiling back.
“I live down in Rodanthe,” she said, lifting her sunglasses from the blanket and slipping them on. “I was visiting a friend up here in Kill Devil Hills, and the day was so beautiful that I decided to relax on the beach awhile before heading back.” Her hands were still shaking from her run-in with the fly, and even her voice sounded a bit tremulous, but the flush remaining in her cheeks made her look very pretty. Her sunglasses were see-through blue, and he could still make out her brown eyes behind them. There was something needy about her, and he felt an unexpected desire to comfort her by taking one of those pale hands in his own.
“What’s the beach like in Rodanthe?” he asked, although he didn’t particularly care about the answer. He just wanted to keep her talking.
“Oh, about the same as this. Not as many people, though.”
“Must be nice,” he said.
“So, why are you here?” she asked. “We don’t usually get movie stars in the Outer Banks.”
He laughed. “I’ve never been in a movie,” he said. People made that mistake all the time. “But to answer your question, my family has had a cottage here ever since I was a kid, right behind us on that cul-de-sac.” He pointed behind him. “I haven’t been back to it in a long time, but recently I’ve been thinking about an incident that happened here many years ago that might make a good episode on the show I produce.”
“True Life Stories,” she said.
“Right.”
“What is the incident?” She cocked her head, and he wondered if she was coquettish or merely curious.
“Well, a long time ago, a newborn baby was found on this beach,” he said, “right about where we’re sitting. A little closer down to the water.” Right where Zack was sitting, actually, he realized.
Grace leaned forward, eyes wide behind the glasses. “You’re kidding?” she said. “How long ago?”
It was genuine curiosity, he thought now, and it was gratifying. He’d wondered if the story would capture the interest of the general public. “Over twenty years ago,” he said. “I was fourteen the summer it happened. My neighbor, a little girl who lived across the street from our cottage, found the baby early one morning.”
“Who’d left it there?” Grace asked.
“No one knew,” he said. “They never found out. So I thought, even after all this time, it would be interesting to try to find out who that might have been. Who did it, what prompted her to do it, how has she lived with herself since then. That sort of thing. And I thought that her answers might lend some insight into the reasons for the rash of abandoned newborns we’re seeing these days.”
“It must have been terrible for the little girl who found the baby,” Grace said.
“Oh, I don’t know. She was a pretty tough little kid,” he said. And a tough grown-up as well. “Her name is Daria, and she was considered a hero. There were articles in all the papers about her. Were you living in the Outer Banks at that time? Maybe you remember reading about it?”
“I was living in Charlottesville twenty years ago,” she said. She looked perplexed. “Why was the girl considered a hero if the baby died?” she asked.
“Oh, the baby didn’t die,” he said. “That’s the exciting part of the story. She—the baby was a girl—would have certainly died if Daria hadn’t found her, but she survived, and Daria’s family adopted her. She suffered some mild brain damage, but she’s beautiful and—” he searched for a word “—charming.”
Grace looked astonished, and he knew the story was even more captivating than he had thought.
“So…where is…I guess the baby would be a young woman by now…” Grace seemed to have trouble putting her thoughts into words. “Where does she live?” she asked finally.
Rory turned and pointed behind them at the Sea Shanty. From where they sat, only the white widow’s walk was visible above the sea oats. “Right there,” he said. “She and Daria live together in that cottage.”
“Right there,” Grace repeated. She stared at the widow’s walk as if lost in a daydream.
Rory spotted Zack walking toward him across the beach. “Here comes my son,” he said with some pride, and Grace slipped out of her daydream to turn toward the boy.
“Hey, Dad,” Zack said as he neared him. “Can I have some money?”
Rory should have guessed Zack was not coming over to him for some father-son conversation.
“Zack, this is Grace,” he said. “Grace, meet my son.”
“Hi, Zack,” Grace said.
“Hi,” Zack said without really looking at her. He was waiting for Rory to answer his request.
“I don’t have any money on me,” Rory said. “My wallet’s in the cottage if you want to help yourself to a five.”
“A five? Don’t want to leave you broke or anything, Dad.” Zack grinned, glancing to his left, and Rory noticed that a teenage girl was waiting for him a few yards away. She was as tan and blond as Zack, and wore a skimpy green tankini and some glittery thing in her navel.
“Make it ten,” Rory said.
“Thanks.” Zack nodded to the girl, and both kids headed up the beach toward Poll-Rory.
“He looks a lot like you,” Grace said once Zack and the girl had disappeared over the dunes.
“He’s too much like me for his own good,” Rory said. “Do you have any children?”
“No.” She looked down at her arms, and he wondered if she realized that she was starting to burn. Should he tell her? She spoke before he had a chance to decide.
“I read about your divorce a couple of years ago,” she said. “I’m recently separated. I guess I’ll be divorced myself soon.”
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, feeling instant sympathy for her. “It’s hell to go through, isn’t it?”
“Just kind of…hard to get back on my feet again,” she said.
He remembered what that was like all too well. The loneliness, the roller-coaster of emotions. He could almost see the pain of starting over etched on Grace’s face. He wanted to know if her husband had been the one to leave. Had there been an affair? Had she, too, suffered that agony?
“Well, I had my work to keep me active and prevent me from thinking too much about it,” he said. “Are you working?”
She nodded. “I own a little shop in Rodanthe. I’m usually there, but my partner is handling things while I’m away today.” She glanced at her watch. “I didn’t realize it was so late,” she said. “I really should call my partner and tell him I got delayed. Is there a pay phone nearby?”
“My cottage is right next to the beach,” he said. “You’re welcome to use the phone there.” Her partner was a he. It was crazy, but that disappointed him.
“I hate to put you out,” she said.
He got to his feet. “No problem. Come on. I should check on my son and his friend, anyhow. Probably shouldn’t leave them alone in the cottage for too long.” He held out his hand to help her up from the blanket, and it seemed to take some effort for her to stand. Her shakiness had to be due to more than a fly bite.
“Are you all right?” he asked, not wanting to embarrass her, but her unsteadiness begged the question.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, brushing the sand from the rear of her bathing suit. “I’ve been ill recently, but I’m okay now.” She lifted her blanket from the sand, and he helped her fold it. Her shoulders were quite pink; she would suffer later.
As they walked over the dune to the cul-de-sac, he wondered what illness had left her so tremulous, weak and pale. She walked smoothly across the sand, though, with a fluid ease. Her eyes were on the Sea Shanty.
“You said you’ve met…the woman who was found on the beach?” she asked.
“Yes. She’s a very sweet person.”
“What about the brain damage you said she has?”
“It’s mild. Just makes her seem more childlike than someone her age.” He stepped into his front yard. “This is my cottage,” he said.
“How cute!” Grace said as they neared the front steps. Zack and the girl were just coming out of the door.
“Were you coming to chaperon us?” Zack grinned. The girl punched his arm, obviously embarrassed. “Maybe we’d better stay to chaperon you,” Zack added.
“Very funny,” Rory said. “Grace just needs to use our phone.”
Inside the cottage, Grace made a quick phone call, while Rory put on his shirt and busied himself emptying the dishwasher. It relieved him to hear nothing intimate in her voice when she spoke to her partner. She hung up and turned to him.
“Well, I’d better get on the road,” she said. “Thanks so much for the use of the phone.”
“Where are you parked?” he asked.
“Just at the end of the street.”
“I’ll walk you.” He closed the dishwasher and left the cottage with her.
“So,” she said, glancing toward the Sea Shanty, “will you take…what do you call it? Footage? Will you take footage of the Sea Shanty? Will you have the grown-up abandoned baby on the show?”
They walked side by side down the cul-de-sac toward her car. “I don’t know what shape the story will take yet,” he said. “But I’m pleased that you seem intrigued by the idea. I want to make sure it’s a story that will appeal to the masses.”
Grace laughed, and he realized it was the first time he’d seen true levity in her face. “Well,” she said, “I’m not sure I’m representative of the masses, but I certainly think the story of a foundling is interesting.” She pointed to the sedan parked on the side of the road. “This is my car,” she said.
He couldn’t let her drive away without knowing if he might get to see her again. “Do you visit your friend in Kill Devil Hills often?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “She was just down for the week. She’s leaving tomorrow.”
“Well, now you have a new friend to visit in Kill Devil Hills.” It felt strange to be that forward, yet she looked pleased.
“Why, thanks,” she said, smiling that wide, engaging smile again.
“May I have your phone number?” he asked.
“Sure.” She rattled off the number. Neither of them had anything to write on, or with, but he memorized it. As she drove away, he saw her turn her head to look again at the Sea Shanty, and he knew he had a winner of a story on his hands.
10
“SO,” ANDY SAID, “IF YOU TAKE CARE OF THE WALL UNIT, I’LL make the pantry they wanted for the kitchen. Deal?”
Daria barely heard him. She and Andy were sitting on the Sea Shanty porch, going over the designs for a house in Corolla, but her eyes were fixed on Rory. He and a woman had walked from the beach into his cottage. They’d been in there ten minutes or so, and now he was walking her to her car. He’d been bare-chested from the beach to Poll-Rory; now he wore a broadly striped white and blue short-sleeved shirt. The woman was tall and slim and had the gait of a model. Her dark bathing suit was cut high on her shoulders; her long legs probably bore no trace of cellulite. Damn.
“Earth to Daria,” Andy said. He stood up and slipped the drawings into his portfolio.
Daria smiled at him. “Sorry,” she said. “Yes, I’ll do the pantry.”
“No, you’ll do the wall unit,” he said. “I knew you weren’t listening to me.”
“Was too,” she lied. “I was just teasing you.”
Rory touched the woman’s arm, and Daria felt a strangely familiar sense of loss, the same loss she’d felt when she was eleven and he started hanging around with the older kids. She was losing him again, and she’d never even had him to begin with. She’d be the first to admit this obsession of hers was nuts.
“Do you teach your EMT class tonight?” Andy asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Wish I was in it.”
She smiled at him again. “I wish you were, too,” she said.
“See you tomorrow?” He pushed open the screen door.
“Okay.”
Rory was walking back toward his cottage now, but when he spotted Daria sitting on the screened porch, he waved and turned in her direction.
“Good luck,” Andy said to her with a grin as he closed the door behind him.
God, everybody knew she was in heat.
Rory and Andy exchanged a greeting as they passed each other in the Sea Shanty’s front yard, then Rory opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch. He stopped short and smiled.
“I walked in here just like when I was a kid, without knocking first,” he said. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” Daria said, motioning toward one of the rockers. “Have a seat.” She knew he had taken a walk on the beach with Shelly a few days earlier, and she wanted to be irritated with him for it. She should be; he had intentionally discounted her concerns. But how could she be angry with him when he’d sent Shelly home in such excited good spirits? Shelly had talked of nothing else that night other than Rory this and Rory that and how she felt certain he could find her mother. This yearning for her birth mother was brand-new…at least to Daria. If Shelly had been feeling it, she’d kept it to herself all these years. Daria had talked with her sister about the possibility that Rory might fail to uncover anything new—a very real possibility, since Daria was going to do her best to make sure that was the case. Shelly had merely shrugged. “What will be, will be,” she’d said. It was an expression she’d picked up from Chloe, and Daria wondered if Shelly truly understood its meaning.
“So,” Rory asked as he sat down in the rocker, “was that someone you’re seeing?”
Daria was not certain what he meant at first. Then she understood and laughed. “No, that’s Andy. He’s a bit too young for me.” She wasn’t certain exactly how old Andy was, but he couldn’t have been more than twenty-six or-seven. “He’s a carpenter. We work together.”
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Diane Chamberlain
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Early on the morning of her eleventh birthday, Daria Cato found an unexpected gift – an abandoned baby. Unable to leave the child unclaimed, the Cato family adopt Shelly, but the secrets of her birth continue to haunt Daria.Twenty years later, an old friend of Daria’s, Rory Taylor, returns to his hometown – and something precarious shifts in the community. For Rory will stop at nothing to uncover the mysteries of Shelly’s birth.As closely guarded secrets and sins begin to unravel, piece by piece the mystery of the summer’s child is about to be exposed. A mystery no one involved is prepared to face.A chance to uncover the secrets of her past.A truth that will change her future forever.Praise for Diane Chamberlain ‘Fans of Jodi Picoult will delight in this finely tuned family drama, with beautifully drawn characters and a string of twists that will keep you guessing right up to the end.′ – Stylist‘A marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem’ – Literary Times’Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’ – Daily Mail’So full of unexpected twists you′ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult′s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’ – Candis