bed.
“I happened to overhear your conversation with Bonnie,” her mother began.
“And I heard what you said about Brad.”
Grace had been in her bedroom with the door closed while talking with Bonnie. Her mother must have had her ear pressed against the door, eavesdropping. Either that, or she’d been listening on the extension.
Grace swallowed her rage; it would do no good to express it.
“I was talking to Bonnie,” she said, “not you.”
“I think it’s wonderful.” Her mother ignored the barb.
“Do you realize how lucky you are? Do you know how many women would give their right arm for a man like Brad Chappelle? He has money. He has power.”
“But I’m not in love with him,” Grace said, shocked that her mother would want her involved with a man as old as Brad.
“Love can come later. Love can grow,” her mother philosophized.
“You just have to be willing to allow it to happen.”
“He’s too old for me,” Grace said.
Her mother leaned toward her, clutching Grace’s arm in her hand.
“You owe him a great deal. Grace,” she said.
“Have you thought about that?
About how much he’s done for you? You need to keep him happy. “
“You sound like you’re more concerned about Brad’s happiness than you are about mine,” Grace said, freeing her arm from her mother’s grasp.
“I don’t think you know yet what will make you happy,” her mother said, standing up.
“I want you to think seriously about this, all right? You need to give Brad a chance.”
Grace lay back on her bed after her mother left the room. She shut her eyes, remembering Brad’s kind, open face as he admitted his feelings for her. She was afraid. Afraid of needing Brad’s approval so much that she’d hurt him to get it.
She never realized that she was the one who would end up being hurt.
1 he pilot’s eyes were brown. Brown and huge and terrified as her face slipped into the black water. Daria clung to her arm, trying to hold her above the water’s surface, but the plane was going down. She turned to see Shelly hanging by her hands from the propeller, dragging the plane and the pilot under. She screamed at Shelly to let go, but Shelly hung on.
“You don’t really want me to let go,” she called out to Daria. And the plane slipped under, taking the pilot with it, dragging Daria beneath the water’s surface as she tried vainly to pull the pilot up again.
Daria sat up in bed, gasping for air as if she had in fact been underwater for far too long. Her sheets were soaked with sweat, and it took her a moment to get her bearings. She was in her bedroom at the Sea Shanty, and the room was dark and eerily still. She could barely hear the waves breaking on the beach.
Relief washed over her at finding herself on dry land, but it was relief tainted with sorrow: it had been a dream, yes, but a dream too rooted in reality.
Sleep would never come now, she knew, and she didn’t dare close her eyes again for fear of the pilot’s return. Getting out of bed, she pulled on her robe, then walked barefoot downstairs and out onto the front steps of the Sea Shanty. The night was warm and balmy, the sort of Outer Banks summer night she had treasured all of her life, but the soft air and rhythmic lapping of the ocean on the shore didn’t soothe her the way it usually did. She leaned back against the porch door and looked up at the stars.
Poll-Rory’s porch door squeaked open, and in a moment Rory was walking across the cul-de-sac toward her. She sat up straight.
“What are you doing up?” His voice was quiet, as though he didn’t want to wake anyone. He sat down next to her on the steps.
“I could ask you the same question,” she said.
“I’m a night person,” Rory said simply.
“What’s your excuse?”
She rested her head on her arms.
“Nightmare,” she said. “That plane crash. The pilot drowned in front of my eyes one more miserable time.”
He put his hand on the back of her neck, massaging lightly, and she closed her eyes, willing him to keep it there.
“You can’t get away from that night, can you?” he said.
“Shelly was a bitch in this one,” Daria said, shuddering at the memory of her sister’s belligerence.
“She wouldn’t let go of the propeller.
She said I didn’t want her to. What the heck does that mean? “
Rory’s fingers dug a little deeper, slipping beneath her hair.
“I’m not much of a believer in the deep meaning of dreams,” he said.
