Shelly hesitated, then sat down heavily on the front steps. Daria sat down with her, her arm still around her shoulders.
“I’m afraid,” Shelly said.
“Of what?” Daria asked.
Shelly frowned. She looked down in her lap, where she was pressing her fingers together so firmly that the knuckles were white.
“That Father Sean is going to kill himself.”
Daria almost laughed. Where had Shelly come up with this one? “Why would you think that, honey?” she asked.
Shelly shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I know it sounds silly. I just started thinking it while I was out walking.”
“Well, sometimes our imaginations can run away with us, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah. I guess.”
It was unlike Shelly to be this distressed unless she was facing a trip away from the Outer Banks.
“You know Father Macy would never do anything like that, don’t you?” Daria asked.
Shelly shrugged, her gaze still glued to her fingers.
“He’s a Catholic priest, for heaven’s sake. Shelly. He’s the last person you would expect to commit suicide.”
Shelly pressed her lips together. She looked up at Daria and forced a weak smile.
“I guess you’re right,” she said.
Daria studied her sister’s face. Her eyes were truly red, ;
her nose a bit swollen. “You don’t usually have unpleasant ^ fantasies like that,” she said.
“I know,” Shelly said.
“But I think I’m over it now.” ;
Daria laughed.
“That was quick,” she said. This was-just another of Shelly’s peculiar, wayward thoughts.
“To? morrow, we’ll go watch the hang-gliding competition, and | maybe Father Macy will win. Wouldn’t that be great?”
The weak smile again.
“Yeah,” Shelly agreed, and Daria was not at all certain her sister was “over it,” as she’d said.
She looked across the street at Poll-Rory. “I need to go have a chat with Rory.”
“He’s not home,” Shelly said, and Daria realized the S red Jeep was not in the driveway.
“Do you know where he is?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Shelly said.
“I talked to Jill earlier today, and she said that she and Rory were taking Zack and Jason out to dinner and a movie.”
Dinner and a movie. What time would he be home? She was anxious to tell him what she’d learned in Rodanthe.
Daria shaded her eyes and looked up toward the crest of the tallest dune on Jockey’s Ridge. The dune was covered by a sea of spectators, and above their heads, a hang glider dipped and turned in the air.
“How are we ever going to find them?” Andy said as they stopped climbing to survey the scene.
“I told them I’d meet them as close to the crest as I could get, so they should be watching for me,” she said.
The hang-gliding competition was about an hour into its run, and Daria had planned to meet Shelly, Chloe, Ellen and Ted when she got off work. Even though it was Saturday she and Andy had put in a couple of hours this morning. When she was ready to leave the job, Andy asked if he could go with her to the dunes. She’d readily agreed. Andy always seemed a bit lonely to her. He had friends on the crew, but he didn’t seem to socialize much with them outside of work.
“Daria!”
Daria looked up to see Rory standing near the crest of the dune, waving at her. She spotted Shelly and Chloe with him, and as she and Andy made their way through the crowd, she saw that Ellen and Ted were there as well. Zack and Kara sat a short distance away, so close to one another, that at first, Daria thought they were one person. It was a minute before she noticed Grace sitting next to Rory. Damn. She would have no chance to tell Rory what she’d learned in Rodanthe the day before. She wondered if Grace’s husband had spoken to her about Daria’s visit. Did | Grace now realize that Daria had been at the plane crash? j Or, she thought with a shiver, had she known it all along? ;
They’d saved just enough room on the sand for Daria, j but Andy managed to squeeze in between her and Shelly. 1 Daria introduced him to Grace, the only person in their | party he didn’t know, and Grace smiled warmly at him. Her husband hadn’t told her, Daria thought. If he had, surely she could not sit here looking so innocent. Grace was wearing long white pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, | white visor and blue sunglasses. She wasn’t taking any
