“Let’s go crabbing.” The voice came from behind her, and she turned to see Rory approach her chair. He had on a gold T-shirt, black shorts and a straw hat that made her laugh.
“Crabbing?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ve done that since we were kids.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Rory said.
“We spent half our time crabbing back then, and I didn’t even like the way crabs tasted. But I do now, so how about it? I even got some bait in anticipation of you saying yes.”
Daria thought of the old crab net and traps gathering dust in the Sea Shanty’s storage shed. She looked up at him.
“You deserted me back then, do you know that?”
“Deserted you?” He looked like Huck Finn in that straw hat.
“Yeah. You dumped me for the older kids.”
Rory studied the horizon, as though pondering what she’d said.
“Yeah, I guess I did. I remember that hanging around you began to seem like a liability, ‘cause I was trying to fit into a different group. Never did succeed, anyhow.” He smiled at her.
“Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.” She stood up, deciding to leave her chair and umbrella right where they were.
“Let’s go crabbing,” she said.
“Great! Should we drive?”
“How about bike?” she suggested. She knew that he and Zack had rented bicycles for the summer, and she had one of her own.
Rory got the bait from his cottage, while Daria gathered the old equipment from the storage shed. She met him in the cul-de-sac, where they split the equipment between her bike and his, and they set off across Kill Devil Hills for the sound side pier.
She rode behind him, trying to focus on the cars instead of the way he looked on his bike. They’d had a few conversations over the past few days—on the beach and at the Sea Shanty and once at the athletic club—and every conversation had the same focus: Grace or Zack. Rory had seen Grace several times now, and Daria wondered how far that relationship had gone. He talked about being enamored of her, but not about the intimate details Daria both longed to know and hated to imagine. She’d met his adorable son, Zack, who looked so much like Rory at that age that she’d had a hard time looking him straight in the eye. While riding on her bike behind Rory’s, she had to admit that she had herself one more good male friend. Great.
The pier was remarkably empty for the time of year, but the day was so splendid, that Daria imagined everyone was at the beach. They carried their equipment to the end of the pier, put a fish head in the trap and lowered the trap into the water. Rory tied a second fish head to a string and dropped it over the side of the pier. He wiped his hands on a rag with a grimace.
“Been a while since I’ve had fish head on my hands,” he said.
“You might as well just give in to it,” she said.
“No way you can crab all afternoon and not go home smelling like the sound.”
He sat next to her on the pier, their legs dangling above the water.
The sound was littered with Hobie Cats and Sunfish and windsurfers, and in the distance, a parasail soared above the water.
“Weird,” Rory said.
“For a minute, I felt like I was a kid again, sitting here with you. Then I looked down at our legs and saw these grownup legs and it gave me a jolt.”
She smiled. So he’d looked at her legs and seen grownup legs, nothing more. She guessed he preferred Grace’s long white legs to the tanned, muscular ones she possessed.
Rory had a beach bag with him, and he opened it and handed her a can of Coke.
“Thanks.” She took the can from him and popped it open.
“So,” Rory said after taking a swallow of the soda, “What do you remember about the morning you found Shelly?”
Daria felt a deep disappointment. In the conversations they’d had over the past week or so, Rory had not brought up this topic, and she’d been pleased that he seemed to be letting it go. Now she felt betrayed. Was this why he wanted to spend time with her today? To pick her brain about Shelly for his show?
“I don’t want to help you with this, Rory,” she said.
“You know I’m not happy that you’re looking into the story. I think it’s a big mistake.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I was just making conversation,” he said.
“You were not.”
“Was too. I was just remembering how you became Supergirl. An eleven-year-old hero. I didn’t know any other kid, myself included, who could have picked up a blood-covered baby and carried it home. I would have run home and gotten my mother. And by that time, the baby probably would have been dead.”
