“Men tend to see me as their pal,” she said.
“I don’t understand that,” Rory said.
“You’re attractive and smart and athletic and interesting.”
“Thanks.” She felt herself glow despite her attempt to conceal how much those words meant to her.
“But in a way, it makes sense,” Rory recanted his first statement.
“You’re straightforward and don’t play games. Not like a lot of other women. And I fear Grace is one of them,” he added as an aside.
“So, I could see how guys might treat you like you’re one of them.”
“Well, I haven’t been totally antisocial,” she said, wanting to correct any warped image of her he might be getting.
“I’ve had a few… love interests,” she said, for want of better words to describe the men she’d dated. She remembered the man to whom she’d lost her virginity at the age of twenty. Several days after that momentous occasion, he’d dumped her for a pretty, prissy eighteen-year old and Daria feared it had been her performance in bed that led him to leave her. For a couple of years after that, she was afraid to make love.
She would not tell Rory about that particular guy.
“I had a long-term relationship with someone,” she said.
“I met him when I was twenty-three, right after I moved here, and we dated for a couple of years. He wanted me to quit my carpentry job and wear a dress and red lipstick, and needless to say, we fought a lot. He finally moved away. Then when I was twenty-seven, I met Pete. The infamous fiance Shelly mentioned to you. He was a carpenter and an EMT, so we saw eye to eye on most things and got along great for a long time.”
“What happened?”
“Shelly was a problem for us,” she said.
“Just like
Polly was a problem for you and your ex-wife. Pete said I let Shelly run my life and that I should just”-Daria shook her head ” —cut ties with her, I guess. Or at least let her fend for herself. “
“I can’t see you doing that.”
“You’re right, there was no way I would. It wasn’t an issue at first.
Shelly was only sixteen when Pete and I started seeing each other, so it was a given that I was responsible for her. But as she got older, he wanted me to place her somewhere. “
“Place her? She doesn’t really need that, does she?”
Daria had never thought so, but ever since the plane crash, she was not sure exactly what Shelly needed. She thought of telling Rory about that incident. It would be so good to tell someone, and she was certainly doing her fair share of gut-spilling here. But she didn’t want to burden him with that, or to color his positive feelings about Shelly. She still wondered what the family of the pilot had been told about how she had met her death. Whatever they’d been told, they’d been lied to.
“No, I don’t think she needs a placement,” she said.
“But she does still need me. Pete was offered a job in Raleigh, and he wanted me to go with him, which, of course, meant leaving Shelly behind, and I couldn’t consider that. Even if Shelly would have been willing to move to Raleigh, Pete would never have allowed her to live with us.” Saying this out loud, reliving it, made her angry with Pete all over again.
“He doesn’t sound like a very sympathetic sort of guy,” Rory said.
“Not when it came to Shelly, anyway.”
“You’re right. It does sound like our problem with Polly, although in retrospect, Glorianne and I had drifted apart on a lot of other issues as well. I don’t like thinking about it,” he said with a shudder.
“It was a terrible time,
with Polly getting stuck in the middle. That’s when she died, and I can’t help but think that the stress of living with me and Glorianne contributed to that. “
Daria touched his arm.
“I think it was better that she was with you, no matter what the circumstances, than to be left alone after your parents died. Don’t you?”
“I think so,” he said.
“I hope so.” He looked out to sea, and she saw sailboats reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses. Two small lines creased the skin above his eyebrows, and she wanted to touch them, erase them.
“You’re a good person,” she said softly.
“Iwish you weren’t so hot on digging into Shelly’s past, but I’m still glad you’ve come to Kill Devil Hills this summer.”
He smiled.
“Me, too.”
“I do worry about Shelly’s future, though,” she said. “Is she going to clean the church for the rest of her life? The jewelry she makes has given her an ego boost, and she really needed that, but it hardly earns her a living. I know she should really be in some sort of vocational training program, but there is no such thing here.”
