Ellen rested her empty plate on the edge of the fire ring.
“So, was this just an end-of-the-summer fling for the two of you?” she asked bluntly.
“What happens next?”
Rory took Daria’s hand again.
“No,” he said calmly.
“It’s not a summer fling. We’ll have to figure out how to keep things going. I’d like to have Daria and Shelly move to California, but Daria doesn’t think that would work out.”
“Shelly would never survive in California,” Daria said. “And she needs me too much for me to just pick up and move three thousand miles away.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ellen said.
“When are you going to start living your own life, Daria?”
Rory felt Daria bristle next to him, and Ellen continued.
“It’s like you’re married to her,” she said.
“Ellen, that’s really not fair,” Rory said. He wondered how Ellen could talk that way to Daria, when Daria had been the one to so lovingly raise the child Ellen had abandoned.
“Daria’s done the best job possible with Shelly,” Chloe said to Ellen.
“I agree,” Grace said firmly.
“From what I’ve seen, Daria’s been fantastic for Shelly.”
“Give me a break,” Ellen said.
“If anything, she’s ruined Shelly.”
The atmosphere around the bonfire was suddenly thick with tension.
Mrs. Wheeler told her granddaughters to “go over to the picnic table and get some dessert.” Jill studied her fingernails, and Jackie studiously began petting one of the dogs.
“I’m sorry, Daria,” Ellen continued, “but it’s the truth, and it’s time somebody told you. You’ve made Shelly so dependent on you and on this tiny little corner of the world, that living anywhere else is going to be a major hurdle for her. But it’s a hurdle she has to jump over one of these days, and you need to let her.”
“Don’t you dare give me advice about Shelly.” Daria’s voice was even, too even, and in the firelight, Rory saw the rigid set of her jaw.
“You see her for a couple of days at a time, then you go back to your own, self-absorbed life and complain about what I’ve done with her.
That doesn’t help, Ellen. As a matter of fact, you’ve done nothing to help with Shelly, have you? “
Chloe reached across Rory to wrap her hand around Daria’s arm.
“Daria,” she said softly.
“Not here, sis.”
“You wouldn’t have accepted my help even if I’d offered it,” Ellen said.
“You resented any suggestions I’ve ever made. In my opinion, you should move to California and be with Rory. Leave Shelly here, if this is where she wants to be. She’s an adult now. She’ll survive somehow.”
Daria wrenched her arm free of Chloe’s hand.
“Is that what you thought when you left her on the beach twenty-two years ago?” she snapped.
“That she’d survive somehow?”
The bonfire crackled, waves broke and hissed to shore, and the teenagers laughed. But no one around the bonfire uttered a word. People looked from Daria to Ellen and back again.
Ellen’s mouth dropped open in what Rory guessed to be a pretense of shock.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ellen bit off each word as it came out of her mouth.
“I’ve had it with your insensitivity to Shelly,” Daria said.
Rory stroked his hand down Daria’s back, wishing there was something he could do to change the direction of her anger. This was not the place or time for a personal confrontation. But Daria seemed completely unaware that her neighbors were even present, much less paying attention to every word.
“Shelly has special needs,” Daria continued.
“And she probably wouldn ‘t have them if you’d… If she’d been born in a hospital to a mother willing to take responsibility for her, she’d probably be fine. You’ve even been a lousy mother to the two daughters you acknowledge as yours.”
Ted leaned forward.
“Daria, you’re off your rocker,” he said.
“If you’ve got a bone to pick with” — “Are you accusing me of being Shelly’s mother?” Ellen interrupted her husband.
“Is that what you’re saying?”
