Chloe slipped off her side of the bench and moved around the table to sit next to Shelly. She rested her hand on her younger sister’s arm, and Daria saw tears brimming in Chloe’s eyes.
“I think Daria’s right, honey, and you misunderstood what Father Sean was saying,” she said.
“So, I think that what you just told us has to stay between the three of us. Understand? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and if you were to spread it around, I’m afraid it would just fuel the fire right now.” Chloe pressed her lips together, her glistening eyes fixed on the picnic table. “The thing we need to keep in mind is that Sean was a good man. Maybe he did do something that would make him a sinner in the eyes of the Church, but not in the eyes of God, and that’s what counts. God could never think of such a person as a sinner. So, maybe you got confused in what you heard, or maybe Sean himself was confused by what he was thinking or feeling. Either way, we need to keep what he told you in this house. Okay?”
Shelly nodded, and Daria could see that she was relieved to have told them what she knew and that she’d been comforted by Chloe’s words.
Chloe stood up, leaning over to give Shelly a hug.
All three of them looked up at the sound of a car door slamming.
Across the cul-de-sac, Grace was walking from her car toward the front door of Poll-Rory. Daria wondered if she had a clue what was waiting for her inside that cottage. She fervently hoped Rory could get to the bottom of the game she was playing.
Chloe looked down at Daria, who had not yet told her what she knew about Grace.
“And how about you, sweetheart?” Chloe said to her, nodding in the direction of Rory’s cottage.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine now,” she said. At Chloe’s disbelieving look, she repeated to herself with a smile.
“Really, Chloe,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
Rory let Grace into the cottage. He’d been both dreading and looking forward to this moment since his talk with Daria the day before. Grace greeted him with a smile, obviously unaware that she had been unmasked. What truly lay beneath that mask, he couldn’t say, but he planned to find out in the next few minutes.
She stood inside the cottage door, and she must have seen the seriousness in his face, because her smile quickly faded.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You and I need to have a talk,” he said.
The apprehension in her eyes was instantaneous. “What about?” she asked.
He walked into the living room, and she followed him, but remained standing when he sat down in a chair.
“I know you’re not really separated,” he began, “and I know you had a child who was killed in a plane crash in April.”
Grace let out her breath. Shutting her eyes briefly, she sat down on the sofa. “How do you know all that?”
“Did you know that Daria was one of the EMTs involved in trying to rescue your daughter?” he asked.
The color drained from her face so quickly that he was certain she had not known. She probably knew nothing about Shelly’s involvement, then, either.
“I had no idea,” she said.
“Well, she was,” Rory said.
“And the fact that she wasn’t able to save your daughter really distressed her. It got bad enough that she quit being an EMT, and she was so upset about it, that she decided to track down your daughter’s family to speak with them about it. So, she went to Rodanthe and talked to your… husband.”
“Oh my God…” “And I guess your husband mentioned you, and Daria put two and two together and realized that you and the pilot’s mother were one and the same person.”
Grace lowered her head to her hands.
“Oh, Rory, I’m so sorry. This must all seem insane to you. I had no idea Daria was involved in that accident. That’s just a crazy coincidence. I lied about not having children because I didn’t want to talk about Pamela. It’s too painful to talk about. She was my baby.” Grace began to cry in earnest,
and Rory felt the hard edges of his heart begin to soften.
“And I only partly lied about being separated,” she said. “Daria said you live on the same property as your husband.”
Grace nodded.
“I live above the garage,” she said.
“I’d live somewhere else, if I could afford to. But right now, I can’t. If Eddie doesn’t know we’re separated, then he’s in denial.”
Her lower lip trembled, and Rory knew that Daria was mistaken about Grace’s ulterior motives. This was a woman who had recently lost a child, and she obviously did not have support from her husband in grieving for that child. Plus, she’d recently had a serious illness.
He could only imagine the emotional pain she’d been suffering. So she’d gone a little crazy. He’d been crazy after his separation, and that had not been coupled with the loss of a child. His throat tightened at the thought of losing Zack.
He moved to the sofa, sitting down next to her, close to her.
