“Oh, it’s easy, once you know how,” Shelly said.
“It looks very nice on you.” She turned suddenly to Zack. “Have you gone crabbing yet?
Your father and Daria went crabbing the other day. They said they used to go all the time when they were kids. “
Rory was certain Shelly hadn’t meant to be rude, but she’d practically cut Grace off mid-sentence. He felt Grace grow quiet at his side. He reached for her hand beneath the table, and was relieved when she allowed him to take it. Their relationship had been platonic so far.
They had seen each other several times, but only during daytime hours, which didn’t lend themselves to any sort of physical intimacy. They’d spoken on the phone, but Grace was always straightforward, simply wanting to make plans rather than get into prolonged conversations.
And so far, she had vetoed the idea of him coming down to Rodanthe to see her, saying she preferred coming up to Kill Devil Hills. Grace always seemed to keep her distance from him, physically and emotionally. He’d been ready for rejection when he took her hand and was pleased she hadn’t balked.
The waitress cleared away their dishes, then took their dessert orders. Grace ordered nothing.
“God, Daria could sure beat you at swimming, couldn’t she?” Ellen was speaking to Rory, and he turned his attention to her.
“I let her win,” he said simply.
Daria smiled at him.
“We’ll have to have a rematch,” she said.
“We’ll see,” he said. He’d worked out with her at the athletic club once this past week and feared she could probably still beat him.
“Do you remember that time,” Ellen continued, “when Daria stuffed toilet paper in her bathingsuit top and it got wet and started coming out in the water?”
Zack laughed at that, and Daria groaned.
“I tried to forget that, Ellen,” she said.
“I don’t remember it at all,” Rory said.
“That’s because you were ignoring me by then,” Daria said.
He did remember the time Chloe lost her entire bathingsuit top when she was body surfing though. He was about to mention that, but then wondered if it was in poor taste to tell such a story about a nun.
“Daria said you’ve got some crazy notion that you can uncover the secrets to Shelly’s past,” Ellen said.
“Well, I’m trying to, anyway,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, I met with the police detective who covered Shelly’s case this afternoon.”
He caught Daria’s dark look, and knew he probably shouldn’t talk about this with her present. She still disapproved, but it was hard for him to keep quiet about the topic when it was so much on his mind, and Ellen had given him the invitation to speak. “What did he say?” Grace asked. “What were the police able to find out back then?”
The waitress brought their desserts, and Rory leaned back to let her set his chocolate mousse on the table in front of him. Grace let go of his hand then, and reached onto the table to take a sip from her water glass.
“Not a whole lot, I’m afraid.” Rory looked apologetically at Shelly.
“The detective I spoke with thinks that Shelly’s mother was probably one of two teenage girls who had been reported missing at that time and who were never found.”
“It seems strange that no one saw what happened on the beach that morning,” Grace said.
“Aren’t people usually out early to beach-comb or watch the sunrise?”
“There’d been a huge storm the day before,” Daria said.
“No one had been on the beach for at least twenty-four hours. I think I was the first person out there. Or, at least, the second.”
Ted leaned toward Rory, his soft facial features suddenly creased with concern.
“Chloe and Daria think you should leave the past alone,” he said quietly, obviously not wanting Shelly to hear.
“You shouldn’t disrupt Shelly’s life.”
Ellen dismissed her husband with a wave of her hand.
“Let Rory find out for himself that it’s pointless,” she said.
“The police did a thorough investigation back when Shelly was found and they didn’t come up with a thing. Nobody is going to find anything twenty-some years later.” She looked at Rory, false contrition in her eyes.
“Sorry, Rory. I just think you’re on a wild-goose chase.”
“Could be,” he admitted, more to ease the tension than to agree with her.
A pager beeped on the other side of the deck, and although the sound was barely audible where they were sitting, Daria jumped. She looked across the deck, and Rory saw her friend, Mike, raise a small cell phone to his ear. Daria pretended to return her attention to her dessert, but Rory knew she was still focused on Mike, and he wondered if she was interested in him as more than a “pal.”
