“Are you getting ready to evacuate down there?”
She hesitated.
“That’s why I was calling,” she said. “Eddie—my husband—and I usually go to a hotel on the mainland, but I can’t go with him. I just can’t.” Her voice quivered.
“Maybe it would be good,” Rory said, although he would rather she were with him. “Maybe the two of you need some enforced time together.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere near him,” she said. She hesitated a moment. “I wanted to find out where you were going to be,” she added.
“Zack and I are getting a room in a motel in Greenville,” he said.
“We’re leaving early tomorrow morning.”
“Is that … is that where Daria will be, too?”
“Yes. And Chloe and Shelly.”
“Do you think it’s too late for me to get a room there? Would you mind if I’m there?”
Maybe she was ready to talk with Daria about her daughter’s death, he thought. Maybe that’s why she’d asked if Daria was going to be there.
He didn’t want to deprive her of that opportunity. “Of course not,” he said. “But it’s so far for you to” — “I want to, Rory.”
“All right.” He heard hammering on the side of the cottage and was surprised that Zack would start covering the windows without him. He gave her the name and phone number of the motel.
“I’ll see you there,” he said.
Daria handed her hammer to Zack, and while she and Chloe held the sheet of plywood in place, Zack pounded nails into the woodwork. Rory walked out of the cottage, and she saw the surprise in his face at finding her and Chloe there.
“Hey, thanks,” he said, helping her lift another sheet of wood in place. He looked toward the ocean, and she followed his gaze. The sea was glassy and calm, and the blue sky was reflected in the water. It was still hard to imagine that something foreboding lurked beyond the horizon.
Rory shook his head.
“Are you sure we’re not wasting our time with this?” he asked her.
“Unfortunately, I’m sure,” she said.
“The storm is picking up speed as it heads this way,” Chloe said.
Chloe was merely being neighborly, coming over to help Rory with the windows. Daria knew the gesture changed nothing about her ill feelings toward him.
“I just can’t believe the ocean could get up as far as our cottage,” Zack said.
The sheet of plywood in place, Daria lowered her arms to her sides and faced Zack. “When your dad and I were little, there was a cottage right there.” She pointed to the sea-oat-covered sand where Cindy Trump’s cottage had once stood.
“A storm swept it away. It could make our cottages disappear just as easily.”
“Scary,” Zack said.
“Yes, indeed,” Daria said. Her stomach still had that unsettled, agitated feeling that always dogged her when a storm was heading to Kill Devil Hills, but she knew her anxiety was nothing compared to Shelly’s. Backing away from the windows for a moment, she stood at the edge of Poll-Rory’s porch, looking north and south along the beach.
Shelly was out there somewhere, walking. She’d grown very quiet and pensive over the last twenty-four hours, and Daria knew it was not the storm itself that terrified her; it was the prospect of leaving her beloved Outer Banks.
“Does everybody have to leave?” Zack asked as he helped Chloe lift another sheet of plywood against the cottage.
“Is that what they mean by ‘mandatory’?”
“They always say ‘mandatory,” ” Chloe said.
“But what it really means is, if you stay behind, you’re on your own.
There might be no services available to help you in an emergency. “
“Does anyone stay?” Zack asked.
“There are always people who think they’re being brave to stay behind,” Chloe said, “but they’re really being foolish. Some of the emergency workers will still be here, but even they—the sheriff’s department and the ambulances-aren’t allowed on the streets once the wind hits sixty miles per hour. It’s too dangerous.”
Daria and Rory hammered the plywood into place, and when they stood back from their work, Rory looked at her.
“Grace is planning to meet us at the motel,” he said.
She wondered if her disappointment showed on her face.
“Why would she come all the way to Greenville?” she asked.
“Well” — Rory stepped back from the window to admire their work “—two reasons, I think. One, she doesn’t
