“Can she leave the Outer Banks at all?”
“Her doctor is in Elizabeth City,” Daria said.
“But she freaks out when we go to see him. He always thinks she needs tranquilizers, because she’s such a mess when she’s at his office. He doesn’t realize that she’s completely calm and peaceful when she’s back here.”
“What happens when there’s a hurricane and you have to evacuate?
Shelly said she hates that, but it’s mandatory sometimes, isn’t it?
“
Daria laughed.
“She hides,” she said matter-of factly “I found her in the storage closet once, and just a couple of years ago, she hid out in one of the neighbor’s cottages that had already been evacuated.”
“Poor Shelly,” Rory said.
“She’s still a little girl in so many ways,” Daria said.
“She’s not even interested in men, and I’m really glad about that.
Otherwise, I’d have birth control to worry about, too. “
Rory frowned.
“Even Polly was interested in men and sex,” he said.
“Are you sure about Shelly?”
“Oh, a few years ago she went through a couple of boyfriends, but they were not the nicest fellas. I was afraid they were using her.” She remembered one of them talking Shelly into buying him a television set. “I broke them up. Shelly was angry with me at the time, but I think that now she’s frankly relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about dealing with a boyfriend.”
“So,” Rory said, “in your heart of hearts, who do you think abandoned Shelly on the beach twenty-two years ago?”
She stared at him, incredulous.
“You’re incorrigible,” she said.
“Seriously,” he persisted.
“Do you think it was someone on the cul-de-sac, or” — “I’m certain it was Cindy Trump,” she interrupted him.
“If you must know, that’s who I think it was. I found Shelly on the beach right in front of her cottage. Cindy could have just walked out her back door, dropped the baby close to the ocean, expecting the waves to wash it out to sea, and walked back into her cottage. Job done.”
“So, where is Cindy?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Shelly is a Cato, Rory,” she said.
“Cindy, or whoever Shelly’s mother was, didn’t want her then.
She doesn’t deserve to have any part of her now. “
Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a woman walking toward the bay, a short distance from the pier, and it wasn’t until Daria spotted the three golden retrievers with her that she recognized the woman as Linda. The dogs splashed in the water. Linda threw a stick far into the bay for them to swim after.
“That’s Linda,” she said to Rory.
Rory turned to look at the woman.
“I met her already,” he said.
“And one of her dogs has a thing for me. She sure has changed.”
Daria could barely remember the timid girl from the old days on the cul-de-sac. This Linda was a tall, impressive-looking woman with short frosty-blond hair.
They watched Linda and her dogs play together for a while. Daria was glad to be off the topic of Shelly and Cindy Trump. But then Rory brought up an even less pleasant topic: Grace. Daria knew that Grace had been at Poll-Rory at least twice in the past few days.
“I introduced Grace to Shelly,” he said.
She knew. Shelly had said that Grace asked her many questions.
“She told me,” she said.
“She has or had, I guess some sort of illness. Do you think it would be crude of me to ask her what it was?”
Daria looked at the crabs in the bucket. One of them raised his claw at her in an angry fashion, but she barely noticed. Rory didn’t even know what Grace’s serious illness was? Exactly how intimate could they be?
“If you ask her in a supportive way, I don’t see why not,” she counseled, hating herself as she slipped willingly into the role.
“You can sympathize with what she’s going through, with her divorce,” he said, “since you and Pete were together so long. All three of us have been there. Except you’re much stronger than Grace.”
His marriage counselor had been right when he’d called Rory a caretaker. He was.
