She uttered a small laugh, and he knew his words sounded pale, meaningless and, he feared, patronizing.
“I didn’t know how you felt,” he said.
“And … it caught me off guard when you told me.” There was more he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her he needed time to sort out his feelings for her, to figure out why, if she were to kiss him at that moment, he would do it all over again. But he knew it wouldn’t be fair to say that to her right now.
It would only ease his burden and add to hers.
She looked at him squarely.
“Shelly’s pregnant,” she said. And then she began to cry, drawing her knees up to her chest and burying her head against them.
“Oh, no.” He wanted to pull her into his arms to comfort her, but remembered that was how things had gotten out of control the night before. Instead, he held her ham tighter.
“What is she going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“She wants to marry Andy and have the baby.
I just can’t see it. “
“How… pregnant is she?” He thought of Shelly’s slim figure.
“She must not be very far along.”
“Only a matter of weeks,” she said.
“So there’s time to ” “Yes.” She sighed, as though tired of the discussion.
“There’s time.”
He hesitated.
“Look,” he said.
“I’m on my way up to Corolla to see Cindy Trump. Why don’t you come with me?”
She shook her head. Tears still streamed down he cheeks, and he reached up to smooth them away with thi back of his fingers before standing up.
“I’ll see you later,” he said.
“Take care.”
The beach road was littered with shingles and shutter;
and the branches of small trees. Water pooled in spots, and traffic was thick with people returning to their homes and vacations. The landscape of Corolla was washed clean, its huge houses sprawling from the road to the sea. These were true houses up here, not cottages.
Many of then. could be considered near-mansions.
He followed the directions Cindy had left on his machine and found her house on, of all things, a cul-de-sac He parked in the driveway, and had to skirt an uprootec tree as he walked to her front door.
Before he had a chance to knock, the door was opened, and there stood Cindy Trump in an orange bikini, looking very much as she hac twenty years ago.
“Rory!” She stepped back to let him in and gave hirr a hug. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You look even bet lei than you do on TV.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“And you haven’t changed a bit.” The trite words were the truth. Of all the people he’d met from the cul-de-sac that summer, Cindy had changed the least. She was tan, slender, blond and still did a bikini justice. She reminded him of some of the women he knew in Hollywood, and wondered if she’d paid a visit or two to a plastic surgeon or if she’d just been lucky with her genes.
She led him out to the stone patio behind her house and handed him a glass of iced tea.
“Sorry about the noise,” she said, pointing to the house in the lot behind her, where workers were repairing storm damage on the roof.
“It’s usually very quiet here.”
Rory looked at the house under repair and was reminded of the day he saw Daria working on the roof. All of these workers were men, but in his mind’s eye, he was seeing Daria up there, and he felt that same rush of desire that had gotten him into trouble the night before.
“Did you evacuate?” he asked as they sat down at a glass-topped table.
“No,” she said.
“We’re back so far from the beach, and nothing’s going to blow this house away.”
He was glad she didn’t ask him if he had left the Outer Banks. He didn’t feel like recounting last night’s events yet again.
Cindy was a chatterbox. She told him about her husband, who sold real estate, and her two boys, who were just entering their teens. They commiserated for a few minutes about teenage boys, while Rory explored her face for hints of Shelly. There were none. The blond hair, he had to admit, was about it.
He explained the reason for his visit: he was researching Shelly’s past, trying to uncover her parentage.
