“He is a great guy,” Daria said. Then she realized what he had spoken to the Wheelers about.
“Shelly,” she said.
“You talked to them about Shelly.”
“Uh-huh.” Rory slouched down on the bench, his hands locked behind his head.
“You’ll be pleased to know that they weren’t much help. As a matter of fact, all they succeeded in doing was rattling me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Mr. Wheeler thinks Shelly’s mother was Polly,” Rory said.
“And guess who Mrs. Wheeler thinks is Shelly’s mother?”
Daria felt momentarily unnerved. What did Mrs. Wheeler know?
“Who?”
she asked.
“My mother.”
Daria laughed. The thought was bizarre.
“You’re kidding. Why would she think that?”
Rory shrugged.
“Well, she made a good point. My mother, I’m sure, was afraid of having any more children after Polly and I were born, fearing that another child might have Down’s syndrome. Mom would have been in her late forties by then, so if she had been pregnant, that would have been a realistic concern. Mrs. Wheeler suggested that my mother might have gotten pregnant and decided that leaving the baby on the beach was the way to go.”
“I don’t remember your mother all that well, but I can’t imagine her doing something like that,” Daria said.
“I don’t know,” Rory said. He unlocked his hands from behind his head, and leaned his elbows on his knees, looking out to sea.
“It’s been bothering me all day,” he said.
“She did have some psychological problems later on in her life. I didn’t think she had them then, but maybe they were already brewing. I mean, someone did it. Someone was a little crazy that night. I guess it could have been my mother as well as anyone else.”
He sounded despondent, and Daria rested her hand lightly on his back. The gesture felt awkward and alien to her, but it was the sort of thing he would do, and she knew how good it felt to be comforted that way. It was the least she could do for him—or the least she was willing to do, at any rate. She had the ability to put his doubts to rest, completely and forever, but there was no way she could tell him what she knew. “What would you do if you found out that it was Polly or your mother?” she asked.
“Would you still do the story?” “Are you kidding?” He turned his head to look at her.
“No way.”
“Then I’m asking you,” she said gently, “to remember that the woman you’re trying to expose might also be someone else’s sister or someone else’s mother, and people can be hurt by the information you uncover.”
Rory studied his bare feet. She could not see his face.
“Most likely it was Cindy,” she continued, “and she probably has a family who would be devastated by learning about Shelly. You need to” — “Oh,” Rory interrupted her, sitting up straight again.
“I found out where Cindy is.” “You did?” This was news Daria did not want to hear. “Right. The Wheelers said she lives up in Corolla with her husband and kids.”
“I didn’t know that.” Daria had no idea Cindy still lived in the Outer Banks. “Are you going to talk with her?”
“Absolutely,” Rory said.
“I’d get on it right now, if it weren’t for the storm coming up. But I figure I’d better spend tomorrow battening down the hatches.”
“Good idea,” Daria said, still shaken by the news about Cindy. It had been easy to pin the blame on Cindy when she was little more than a hazy figure from the past. Knowing that she was a living, breathing woman just up the coast a few miles was something else again.
1 he lumberyard smelled of wood and worry as Rory and Zack fought their way through the crowd. Everyone was buying sheets of plywood to cover the windows of their vulnerable homes, and Rory overheard many of them grumbling about ruined vacations, lost revenue from their rental properties and how long it was going to take to drive over the bridge to escape the Barrier Islands.
He and Zack tied the plywood to the top of the Jeep, then headed back to the cul-de-sac. The sky was still clear, the sea still calm, when they reached Poll-Rory. Across the street, Daria and Chloe were closing the storm shutters on the Sea Shanty, and Rory waved to them as he and Zack unloaded the plywood. They rested it against the side of the cottage facing the ocean, near the windows most in need of protection, then Rory went into the cottage to get a couple of hammers and some nails.
The phone rang as he was pulling the toolbox from the storage closet.
He’d left a phone message for Cindy Trump about the possibility of getting together in a couple of days, and he figured she was returning his call. He picked up the receiver. “Rory?” It was Grace. He had not spoken to her since the other night, when he’d confronted her with her lies. He was glad to hear her voice.
“Hi, Grace,” he said.
