“Not very often,” Shelly said.
“But I’ve never gone a year without one, so I can’t drive. Which is annoying.” Shelly made a face.
“Daria or somebody has to drive me everywhere. Although I walk a lot. I can walk to St. Esther’s if the weather’s not too bad. Anyhow, I take medicine, and that helps me not have them as much.”
“Rory told me he wants to tell your story on his TV show. What do you think about that?”
“I think it is extremely cool,” Shelly said, grinning. Then she instantly sobered as she looked at Grace’s shoulders.
“Your shoulders are burning,” she said.
Rory saw she was right. The skin next to Grace’s green sundress was turning pink.
“We’d better go back,” he said.
“Or you’ll be sore tonight.”
They stopped walking and Grace glanced at her shoulder, scowling.
“You have to start out really slow getting a tan in the summer,” Shelly advised.
“And use lots of 15.”
“Thanks.” Grace smiled at her. She looked up at the sun, as if wishing it might go away. Then she sighed.
“Yes, I guess we’d better go back.”
“I’m going to keep walking for a while,” Shelly said.
“It was nice meeting you. Grace.”
“And you, too, Shelly,” Grace said. She watched as Shelly took off down the beach, then began walking next to Rory.
“What a delightful young woman!” Grace beamed.
“You were great with her,” Rory said.
Grace looked surprised by the compliment.
“I just talked to her, that’s all. She’s quite easy to talk with. I see what you mean about her being… ingenuous. Someone could take advantage of her way too easily.”
“And I don’t want to do that,” Rory said, instantly defensive.
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you would.”
“Sorry. I’m a little sensitive about it because Daria thinks I shouldn’t delve into Shelly’s past. But Shelly wants me to. You can tell that, can’t you?”
“Yes, she does,” Grace said slowly.
“But maybe she doesn’t know what’s best for her.”
They walked in silence for a while, and Rory wondered how Zack would respond to all of Grace’s questions.
“Would you like to go out to dinner with my son and me tonight?” he asked as they climbed over the diminutive dune to the cul-de-sac.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, “but I have to work.”
Although she seemed far stronger today than she had the first time he’d met her on the beach, she was once again tremulous as he walked her to her car in his driveway.
“Do you need a glass of water or anything before you go?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“You seem shaky all of a sudden,” he said.
“I just…” Grace looked toward the cul-de-sac as she got into the driver’s seat.
“I guess I’m just thinking about Shelly. I feel sorry for her. For what she’s been through.”
Rory nodded.
“I know,” he said.
“She’s had a good life with the Cato family, but I still get angry every time I think about that woman who abandoned her on the beach. Shelly came” -he held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart “—this close to dying.”
Grace stared through her car window toward the beach.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be too quick to pass judgment on that woman without knowing the circumstances, Rory,” she said.
“Who knows what she was going through?”
Daria sat on the beach under an umbrella Saturday afternoon. The beach was crowded, but she’d managed to find a small patch of sand near the sea oats for herself. She was reading an architectural magazine–or at least she was trying to. Guilt was taunting her, sapping her concentration. Her old Emergency Medical Services supervisor had called her that morning, telling her they were desperately short-staffed, begging her to come in. They must think I’m being stubborn, she thought. They didn’t know it was fear and shame that kept her from climbing into the back of an ambulance and rushing off to the scene of an accident.
