wrapped up in himself, too selfish to deserve someone as good as Daria, and he had those stupid tattoos that made Shelly embarrassed to be seen with him in public. But Daria had loved him, so Shelly could not help but feel anger at him when he ended that relationship. How dare he hurt Daria? Daria had been so devastated that she’d even quit being an EMT. It was as though she’d quit living altogether, at least until Rory showed up.
Everyone in the church suddenly moved forward to kneel on the padded benches, and Shelly joined them. She wasn’t paying attention to where they were in the service, but now that she was on her knees, she began to pray.
She prayed that Daria and Rory might somehow get together.
She prayed that she was indeed pregnant—although the thought of breaking that news to Daria was truly frightening.
When she’d finished with those prayers, she focused all her concentration on the most important prayer of all: Dear Lord, please forgive Father Scan. She repeated this over and over again, praying very hard, because she was carrying the burden of that prayer alone. Everyone else thought that Father Sean’s death was an accident.
She, alone, knew better.
J-Jaria found Rory after the funeral. He’d sat near the rear of the church and waited for her outside afterward. His feelings about the priest were mixed, and Daria was pleased he had come at all. He knew how much Sean Macy meant to their family.
Silently, Rory put one arm around her, the other around Shelly, and led them away from the church toward the parking lot. For some reason, the light, warm weight of his arm across her shoulders threatened to make her cry all over again. She breathed through her mouth to keep the tears in check.
The events of the past few days had squelched her enthusiasm for telling him about Grace, yet she knew she still needed to fill him in on what she’d learned. Shelly was with them, though; once again, the timing wasn’t right. But Shelly was intuitive.
“I feel like walking home,” she said, somehow picking up on Daria’s need for time alone with Rory.
“Are you sure?” Daria asked. She didn’t think Shelly had yet come to terms with Father Macy’s death, and she was concerned about her.
“I’m sure,” Shelly said.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you at the Sea Shanty.”
Daria watched her walk away from them, then turned to Rory.
“Do you have your car here?”
“Uh-huh. Do you?”
“Yes. But…” She looked into his green eyes. He appeared to be studying her.
“I need to talk with you,” she said. “Can we take my car and go somewhere? I can bring you back here after.”
“Is this about Shelly again? About me researching” — “No,” she interrupted him.
“No. This is something else.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Where are you parked?”
She drove across the island to the sound, and they walked onto the pier where they had crabbed together a few weeks earlier. There were children on the pier this afternoon, crabbing, fishing, and threatening to push one another into the water. Daria and Rory walked past them to the pier’s end, where they took off their shoes and sat down in their good funeral clothes to dangle their legs above the water.
Daria was not sure how to begin.
“I never got to tell you how my visit went with the parents of the pilot,” she said.
“I wondered about that,” Rory said.
“But with Father Macy and everything, we haven’t really had a chance to talk.”
She looked into the green-brown water. A crab swam just below the surface, slipping sideways through the water.
“So?” Rory prompted.
“How did it go?”
She glanced at him, then looked back at the water.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” she said, trying to warn him about what was coming.
“Only the pilot’s father was there. I met with him at a little cafe he and his wife own. And as I talked with him, I realized that his wife—that the mother of the pilot—is Grace.”
For a moment, Rory’s face was impassive. Then he slid demy seemed to understand what she was saying and turned toward her.
“Grace?” he asked.
“Grace Martin?”
“That was my reaction, too,” Daria said.
“I still don’t understand. I still don’t quite know what’s going on. She may go by the name Martin, but her husband’s name is Fuller. Eddie Fuller.”
“Her ejc-husband, you mean,” Rory said.
