She felt as though she’d been a bit harsh with him and decided to open up, if only a little.
“Finding Shelly changed my life,” she said.
“In a whole lot of ways. I learned the facts of life overnight. I didn’t know what the placenta was—I was disgusted by it—but when my mother explained how the baby was nourished by it, it fascinated me. I decided then that I wanted to become a doctor, probably an obstetrician. It had been an amazing feeling, having that little life in my hands, and I wanted to experience that again.” Daria had not thought about this in a long time, not consciously, at any rate, but it seemed that the memory of carrying the newborn infant, when she had been little more than an infant herself, was still inside her after all these years.
“So, what happened?” Rory asked.
“Why didn’t you become a doctor?”
“I really wanted to,” Daria said.
“I was passionate about it. I took premed courses in college and everything. But Mom got sick. She had a fast-moving colon cancer. I quit and came home. Mom was terrified of dying, not because of dying itself, but because of leaving Shelly. She made me promise to take care of her, which was what I would have done, anyway. She told me I was like Shelly’s mother. She said it was me who truly gave her life, and it used to blow me away to realize that if I hadn’t gone out on the beach that morning. Shelly would never have been part of our family. Mom always let me help with her. Shelly was so beautiful and so… spirited, right from the start. A real smiley baby. She brought joy back into our house. My mother had been going through a depression before I found Shelly. I didn’t realize it then, but of course I do now. Shelly brought her back to life.”
“You sound as though you think there’s something almost… magical about her.”
She smiled at him.
“Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“She’s definitely out of the ordinary.”
“But she needed a ton of supervision back then,” Daria said.
“I know you think I’m exaggerating when I tell you she can easily be taken advantage of, but it’s true. Right before Mom died. Shelly was kidnapped by this guy who was preying on young girls in our neighborhood. She didn’t even realize she was in danger, just got out of the car when he stopped at a light. She knew she wasn’t supposed to go off with strangers, but the man told her he wasn’t a stranger, so she went with him.”
“But, Daria, she was only eight then. We all did idiotic things when we were eight. You don’t have to protect her to that extent anymore.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said defensively.
“She still doesn’t have good judgment, though. Trust me on it.”
Rory didn’t argue. He pulled up the string, looked at the untouched fish head and dropped it into the water again.
“Didn’t you feel some resentment about having to take care of her, since it meant you had to give up your dream of being a doctor?” he asked.
“None at all,” she said honestly.
“I thought taking care of Shelly was my life’s calling, the way religious life was Chloe’s.” She remembered talking over her decision with Chloe back then. Chloe had cried; she’d wanted Daria to be able to finish school. Once Daria had reassured her that she was doing what she wanted to do in taking care of Shelly, Chloe seemed to accept her decision more readily.
“I got more carpentry training. Do you remember how I used to make furniture with my father?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Well, I loved building things, and I found an outlet for my medical interest by becoming an EMT. I have no regrets.”
“Why aren’t you an EMT now?” he asked.
“Ten years was long enough. I really loved it, though.” Her throat closed up on that last sentence, and she began pulling the trap from the water, hoping for a crab to help her change the subject. She was lucky.
“Look,” she said.
“We’ve got two of them.” She pulled the trap onto the pier and emptied the two large blue crabs into the bucket.
Rory extracted another fish head from the bait box and put it into the trap. He was less vigorous in wiping his hands on the towel this time, and Daria lowered the trap back into the water.
“You said that Shelly can’t leave the Outer Banks,” Rory said.
“Does that mean you plan to live here forever?” She hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead.
“I don’t know,” she said, although she did not see how her situation would ever change. “Right now, though. Shelly needs to be here, and I love it here, so there’s no problem.”
“But it’s so sparsely populated. How do you meet people? How do you meet men?”
Daria laughed.
“There are men here,” she said. She had dated numerous men on the Outer Banks, but dating had never played the critical role in her life that it seemed to play for other women. She’d been different: she raised her sister, wore sloppy clothes, worked as a carpenter. Chloe had told her she lacked the “primping hormone,” and she guessed that was the tmth. That didn’t mean, however, that she didn’t have longings. And the man she longed for most was sitting right next her at that moment.
