“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here,” Chloe said.
“How far along are you. Shelly?”
“Not very,” Shelly said.
“She’s only missed one period,” Andy said.
“But she’s not having an abortion.”
“Well, we have time, then,” Chloe said.
“Time to look at your options and figure out what’s best for both of you and the baby.”
Chloe continued talking, impressing Daria with her calm, supportive approach. Daria knew enough to stay out of the conversation, because right now she was not thinking clearly. Her mind was torn between what was going on here on this porch, and the sound of Rory working on the windows across the street. How did Rory feel this morning? What was he thinking?
Soon Zack would return with the Wheelers, and soon Grace would swoop down again on Poll-Rory. Her one sister was grieving an illicit affair and facing the end of her life as a nun. Her other sister was pregnant with a child she couldn’t possibly raise herself. And neither sister had seen fit to confide in her.
And she felt, suddenly, very much alone.
1 he muscles in his arms ached when Rory went inside the cottage after taking the plywood off the windows. He could have waited to do it until Zack came home and could help him, but he’d been anxious to get some sunlight back into Poll-Rory. The cottage had sustained very little damage in the storm, and he knew he’d been lucky. There were some bare patches on the roof where he would need to reshingle, and a piece of driftwood blown up from the beach had torn a chunk from the siding, but other than that, Poll-Rory was relatively unscathed.
The answering machine blinked from its perch on the kitchen counter.
The phones must be working again; the electricity had come on sometime before he’d gotten out of bed that morning. There were two messages, the first from Zack, telling him he would be returning to Kill Devil ^ Hills that afternoon. The second message was from Cindy Trump.
“Are we still on for today, Rory?” she asked.
“I don’t know if you’re back yet—I assume you evacuated. But I’m around, if you still want to get together. You don’t need to call. Just show up when you can. I’ll be here all day, mopping up.”
He’d forgotten his appointment with Cindy, but he was pleased by the reminder and the fact that she was able to meet.
Just as he clicked off the answering machine, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.
“Rory?”
“Grace,” he said.
“I’m sorry if you went to the motel and I wasn’t there. We ended up not evacuating.” “I wondered what happened,” Grace said. “I was just hoping all of you were all right.”
“We’re fine,” he said.
“It seemed like a horrendous storm when it was over our heads, but at least here on the cul-de-sac, it didn’t do too much damage. Are you in Rodanthe? How is it down there?”
“Some of the cottages close to the water really took a beating,” Grace said.
“But our… my house is fine. So, why didn’t you leave?”
“It’s a long story.” It seemed as though all that had occurred the night before had taken days to transpire, not mere hours.
“Shelly was afraid to leave the Outer Banks,” he said.
“So when it came time to evacuate, we couldn’t find her.”
“Oh my God,” Grace said.
“Where was she? Is she okay?”
“We searched everywhere, looking in abandoned cottages and all over the beach. We finally had to give up. Daria was really upset.”
“I can imagine.”
“The power went out and the phones weren’t working.” He remembered listening to Chloe’s confessions in the darkness. He would skip over that part.
“Then Daria’s coworker, Andy, suddenly showed up to tell us that his neighbor’s boat had flipped up on the pier, and a woman and little boy were trapped beneath it. So, Daria and I went over there to help.” The image of Daria throwing herself beneath the boat to save the child was still fresh in his mind.
“And that’s where Shelly was.
It turns out she and Andy have been involved for a while. “
Grace was silent for a minute, probably trying to absorb all he had just said.
“Involved?” she asked.
“You mean, dating?”
“I don’t know if dating is the right word,” Rory said.
“But they’ve obviously been more than friends. We didn’t get to talk about it much because things were too
