“It’s ridiculous, Rory,” Chloe said. “And it’s not helpful to give any credence to that sort of gossip.”
“I don’t know,” Rory said. “I think it’s kind of suspicious. I mean, he died just a few days after I spoke with him, and he’d been very upset during his conversation with me. Maybe he knew something about Shelly’s background, and that’s why he killed himself. He wanted to take that information with him to the grave.”
Daria noticed that the tops of Chloe’s ears were red, a sure sign of anger that she had not seen in her sister in many, many years.
“I’m certain your conversation with him had nothing whatsoever to do with it,” Chloe said coldly. Her hands were on her hips, her eyes blazing. “You think everything revolves around you and your damn TV program. Probably now you’ll decide to do one of your shows on this new mystery, huh? ‘The Secret Agony of Sean Macy.’” She turned abruptly to Daria. “I need to get over to the church,” she said. “I hope none of the parishioners has heard any of this slander.”
Turning on her heel, Chloe marched out the front door, slamming it shut behind her.
“Whoa,” Rory said. “Why do I get the feeling she’s not pleased with me?”
Daria sighed, leaning against the back of the sofa. “We had a conversation with Shelly last night about the same thing,” Daria said. “I think hearing about the rumors again was just too much for her.”
“Maybe I should go after her,” Rory said, looking toward the front door. “Apologize.”
“I’d leave her alone right now.” Chloe’s anger was so out of character that Daria could not predict how her sister would react to Rory’s apology. “Maybe in a few days, when the wounds aren’t so fresh, she’ll be more receptive. Right now, though, I want to hear about your visit with Grace last night.” She drew her bare feet onto the sofa and turned to face him.
“Well,” Rory began, “she’s screwed up, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think she had a clue about Shelly being involved in her daughter’s death.” He went on to tell Daria about his conversation with Grace, and Daria listened quietly. She didn’t feel as trusting of Grace as he did.
“I felt really sorry for her,” Rory said. “I think she just got caught up in the lies about the separation and having no kids. She told me those things the first time I met her, and she didn’t know that we were going to end up having a relationship. Once we did, I guess she figured it was easier to stick with her original story. She didn’t have a mastectomy, like we thought. She had heart surgery. She has a disease called Marfan’s syndrome.”
“Pamela—the pilot—had that.”
“Yeah, Grace said it’s hereditary. She’s in a lot of pain over her daughter. I think that’s why she’s drawn to Shelly. Shelly’s close in age to her daughter. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.”
“I hope you’re right,” Daria said. “It still seems like a pretty amazing coincidence that she stumbled into our little cul-de-sac.” She heard the callous tone of her words and wished she could take them back. It was obvious that Rory felt sympathy for Grace. She had not wanted that, or expected it. Why couldn’t he see that, for whatever reason, Grace was manipulating him?
“If you could have seen her last night, I think you would stop worrying about it,” Rory said.
“So,” Daria said, “where do things stand now with the two of you?”
Rory laughed. “Funny you should ask,” he said. “I was thinking to myself that I was an adulterer for having had an affair with a married woman. But there was no affair. Grace had made sure of that. It was only an affair in my fantasies. So, to answer your question, I don’t know.” He locked his hands together and stretched his arms out in front of him. “I still want to see her. I’m not angry with her. I just—”
A sudden noise came from upstairs, and Daria cocked her head to listen. “I didn’t think Shelly was home,” she said in a near whisper, her heart beating a little faster.
There was a thud, followed by the sound of voices. One of them was a man’s, and Daria was instantly alarmed. “It’s coming from Shelly’s room,” she said. “Who could be with her?”
Rory looked toward the stairs. “Does she have any male friends?” he asked.
Daria shook her head. “None that she should have in her bedroom,” she said. “God, Rory, what if it’s someone she picked up? Some stranger? She befriends everyone. What if it’s some psychopath?”
“Calm down,” Rory said. “The likelihood of that is pretty slim. But…maybe you should go check on her, anyway.”
“I don’t want to humiliate her,” she said, looking toward the stairs, “but I’d never forgive myself if somebody was hurting her.”
“I’d say her safety is more important than her pride right now,” Rory said.
Daria stood up. “Call the cops if I start screaming,” she said, walking toward the stairs.
In the upstairs hallway, she knocked on Shelly’s door. “Shelly?”
There was an ominous silence from behind the door, then hushed voices and the rustling of sheets.
“Shelly, are you all right?”
She heard footsteps, and the bedroom door was opened a few inches…by Zack. Daria could see Kara in Shelly’s bed, the sheets pulled up to her chin, and she was too surprised to speak.
“I’m not Shelly,” Zack said with a sheepish grin. “Shelly said we could use her room while she was out on a walk.”
Daria heard Rory’s footsteps on the stairs. It sounded as though he was taking them two at a time, and Zack’s grin faded. “Is my dad here?” he asked, eyes wide, and Daria nodded.
“Zack?” Rory called as he neared the top of the stairs.
“Oh, shit.” Zack started to shut the door, but Rory had already reached the hallway. He pushed past Daria to hold the door open with his hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said to his son, the question so idiotic and unanswerable that Daria almost laughed. She remembered having asked the same thing of Shelly years earlier, when she’d caught her in bed with one of the sleazy guys she used to see.
“Shelly said we could use her room,” Zack said weakly.
“Well, I think you two better get dressed and get out of here,” Rory said. “I’ll see you at home in a few minutes.” He pulled the door shut, ran his hands through his hair, then looked at Daria. “Yikes,” he whispered, and she stifled a laugh.
She followed him down the stairs. “I apologize for my sister’s lousy judgment,” she said.
Rory opened the living-room door and looked up at the ceiling. “What do I do now?” he asked, although he didn’t sound as though he actually expected an answer.
“Be understanding,” Daria said. “Be kind. Be all the things I wasn’t when I caught Shelly doing the same thing.”
Rory smiled. “I’ll try,” he said. He turned and left the Sea Shanty.
Treat Zack with the same kind of sympathy you so easily lavish on Grace, she thought as she watched him walk across the cul-de-sac and into Poll-Rory, where he’d wait to have it out with his son.
35
IT WAS NEARLY FORTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE ZACK DARED TO come home, and Rory was waiting for him in the living room, still not sure what he was going to say.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dad,” Zack said as he walked past him toward the bedrooms.
“Well, I do.”
Zack stopped walking and turned around, a look of resignation on his face, and Rory noticed for the first time that his son was nearly as tall as he was. When had that happened?
“Did you at least use a condom?” Something told him that was not the best way to start this conversation, but the words slipped out before he could stop them.
“Kara’s on the Pill,” Zack said.
“A fifteen-year-old girl on the Pill?” Rory asked. “That says something about her right there, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Zack said. “It says she’s smart and careful.”
“Wh
at it says to me is that she’s probably had a number of partners, which opens her up to all sorts of diseases. AIDS and a dozen others. You should have used a condom, anyway. What if she’s lying to you? What if she’s not on the Pill at all and is just trying to trap you? And, damn it, you’re too young for this, anyhow.” Whew. He sounded judgmental. Irrational. Hysterical. But he couldn’t seem to shut up.
Zack simply stared at him. “What’s the problem, Dad?” he asked. “Are you telling me you did it for the first time on your wedding night, or what?”
Be understanding, Daria had said. Be kind. With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the sofa.
“I know I’m not doing a good job of this, Zack,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I just worry about you, that’s all.”
“Well, you don’t have to,” Zack said.
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “I was fifteen once, too, hard though that may be for you to believe. And I know how you can be drawn into things without thinking through the consequences.”
“I’m thinking things through, Dad. Have a little faith in me, all right?” Zack turned to leave the room.
“I think it’s time I had a talk with Kara’s grandparents. The Wheelers,” Rory said.
Zack spun around. “What?”
“Not to tell them about what happened tonight,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry about that. I just think I should get to know them a bit better, since you and Kara are seeing each other.”
“That is really not necessary.”
“I’d like to talk with them, anyway,” Rory said. He’d had a few short conversations with the couple this summer, reminiscing about old times on the cul-de-sac, but he hadn’t yet spoken with them about Shelly. “Now is as good a time as any.”
“What a coincidence,” Zack said. “You decide to talk to them right after you find Kara and me….”
“I told you, I won’t say anything about that,” Rory said. “That’s a promise.”
“I’m going to bed,” Zack said.
“It’s still early.”
Zack looked at him suspiciously. “You mean, you’d let me go out?”
“Of course.”
“If I go out, I’m going to see Kara.” It sounded like a threat.
“I’m sure you will,” he said. “I know there isn’t anything I can do about that, Zack. Just…use good judgment, please. That’s all I ask.”
The Wheelers’ cottage was swarming with grandchildren of all ages the following day, but the older couple invited Rory onto their screened deck, away from the noise and clutter. Rory remembered the Wheelers fondly from his childhood. Every evening, they would stroll arm in arm on the beach together, and he’d thought of them as a kind old couple, although they must only have been in their fifties then. Now, in their mid-seventies, Mr. Wheeler was tall and lean and looked fit, while Mrs. Wheeler had grown quite heavy and walked with a cane. He did not know their first names; they would probably always be Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler to him.
“We watch you every week on True Life Stories,” Mrs. Wheeler said as she poured him a glass of iced tea from a plastic, childproof pitcher. She handed the tea to him, then lowered herself into a deck chair.
“Well, thanks,” Rory said. “I’m sorry I haven’t stopped by yet this summer. I guess you’ve seen my son more than you have me.”
“He’s a sweet boy,” Mrs. Wheeler said.
“Thanks. He’s a good kid.” Rory took a sip of tea. It was overly sweet. “I do worry that he and Kara might be getting a bit too serious, though,” he said.
Mrs. Wheeler raised her eyebrows. “Do you?” Rory had the feeling she knew exactly what was concerning him.
“Oh,” Mr. Wheeler said, “it’s just a little summer romance. Nothing to get upset about.”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure you don’t mind how much Zack is around,” Rory said. “How much the two of them are together.”
“He’s about the nicest boy she’s gone out with,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “So, no, we don’t mind a bit.”
For a moment, Rory worried about what the other boys Kara had dated had been like—and what diseases they might carry—but he put those thoughts aside.
“I’ll tell you the girl we need to worry about,” Mr. Wheeler said. “That Bernadette. They say she’s heading straight for the Outer Banks now.”
“I didn’t know that,” Rory said. He hadn’t listened to the weather report yet that day.
“There’s still a chance she’ll veer off course,” Mr. Wheeler said. “I just hope we don’t have to evacuate. Remember doing that when you were a kid?”
“I think we only had to do it once or twice,” Rory said. “I don’t remember where we went.” He supposed he and Zack would go to a hotel on the mainland somewhere, if they needed to evacuate.
“Oh, we usually end up in one of the shelters,” Mr. Wheeler said. “Cheaper than a motel, with our crew, and the kids wind up having a lot of fun.”
Rory took another swallow of tea. “Well,” he began, “I guess you know why I’m here this summer.”
Mrs. Wheeler nodded. “Shelly,” she said.
“That’s right. I’ve been talking to people on the cul-de-sac about what they remember. Do you two have any thoughts on who left Shelly on the beach that morning?”
“I always figured it was that Cindy girl who lived at the end of the street,” Mr. Wheeler said.
“Oh, it wasn’t Cindy,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “She was too thin. Remember? We talked about it back then. She was a skinny minnie.”
“Well, you were skinny back in your baby-having days, yourself,” Mr. Wheeler said, and his wife made a sound of mock annoyance.
“Cindy preserved her figure a heck of a lot better than I ever did,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “We see her every once in a while when we go up to Smokey’s restaurant in Corolla for the sweet-potato fries. She’s always so nice.”
Rory leaned forward. “You’ve seen Cindy Trump recently?” he asked. “Does she live around here?”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “She and her husband and kids own one of them huge houses in Corolla. Her last name is Delaney now.”
Rory made a mental note of the name, unable to believe his good fortune. He would be able to talk with Cindy after all.
“You know,” Mrs. Wheeler said, “I’d like to think of Shelly the way Sue—her mother—did—as a gift from the sea, with no parents other than the Catos. Shelly is such a sweet girl, and she gave Mrs. Cato such happiness in her last years. And Daria’s been a saint to take care of her.”
“Maybe it was that retarded girl,” Mr. Wheeler said suddenly. “Maybe she was Shelly’s mother.”
“Hush,” his wife said sharply. “That was Rory’s sister.”
Rory smiled. “I’m quite certain Polly had nothing to do with Shelly,” he said, although he was beginning to wonder why he was so sure of that fact. The thought of Polly having been taken advantage of sexually, the thought of her being confused about being pregnant and delivering a baby by herself, was too horrifying to ponder.
“Rory…” Mrs. Wheeler sounded hesitant. “Did you ever consider that your own mother might have been Shelly’s mother?” she asked.
Rory masked the shock in his face. “No, I’d have to say my mother would be last on my list of suspects,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Wheeler said hurriedly. “And you’re probably right. But your mother and I had a lot of conversations back in the old days. She was very upset that she’d had a Mongoloid child and she’d been terribly worried when she got pregnant with you. She was afraid you might turn out to be slow, too, especially since she was even older when you were born than when your sister came. She told me how relieved she was when you were born normal.” Mrs. Wheeler ran her fingertip over the sweaty handle of the pitcher. “I always wondered if maybe she had gotten pregnant again. Maybe she was so afraid that she’d have another retarded child that she—” Mrs. Wheeler shrugged “—left the baby to the sea, thinking that was the best and kindest t
hing to do.”
“Do you really think that was a possibility?” Rory was incredulous.
“I guess I thought she was just as likely as anybody else on the street.”
Why not his mother? he thought. He’d considered nearly every other woman on the cul-de-sac. But this was one direction his thinking refused to take him.
He took a last swallow of the too-sweet tea. “Well,” he said, standing up, “I should get back to Poll-Rory.”
“Watch out for Bernadette,” Mr. Wheeler said.
“Cindy’s last name was Delaney, you said?” Rory asked.
Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler got to their feet as well. “That’s right,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “And wait till you see her. She hasn’t changed a bit.”
36
“I THINK EVACUATION IS INEVITABLE,” DARIA SAID. SHE WAS sitting next to Rory on the widow’s walk. “They said there’s a high-pressure system that’s going to pull Bernadette straight toward us.”
“It’s hard to believe there’s a storm out there,” Rory said.
They were both sitting on the west side of the widow’s walk, facing the sea, and the water was calm, the glassy waves rolling toward shore with an easy, uniform rhythm. Daria had seen enough storms on the Outer Banks to know that this tranquillity was deceptive. It was difficult to worry when the air and the sea were this quiet, and she could understand how someone not familiar with the area could convince themselves the storm would veer off course and miss them. But she didn’t need the weather to tell her what was coming. She felt it in her gut, that churning apprehension she always had when a storm was heading their way. It could miss them. They might receive no more than a few sprinkles and some harmless wind. Or, the water could cover Kill Devil Hills, destroying the beaches and pulling the cottages out to sea. It was the not knowing that made her stomach churn. She needed to prepare for the worst scenario. She needed to think about lowering the storm windows, closing the storm shutters, bringing the tools up from the workshop, and most important, keeping Shelly as calm and occupied as she could.