He gave Ellen a peck on the cheek.

“See you tonight, honey,” he said.

“Be ready to fire up the grill when I get home.” “Why?” Ellen asked. “Are you picking up some steaks on the way back from the pier?”

“Very funny,” he said as he left the porch to walk out to his car.

Shelly carried a bowl of fruit onto the porch.

“Let’s eat,” she said, and the four of them sat down at the picnic table.

“How are your girls doing in France?” Daria asked Ellen, scooping some of the fruit onto her plate.

“Oh, they’re loving it. It sounds like they’re doing more shopping and man hunting than studying, though.” Ellen laughed.

“I’m going to miss not having them around this summer,” Daria said honestly. Ellen’s daughters were nothing like their mother, and they always tried to include Shelly in their activities, despite the fact that they were five years younger.

“I can’t say that I miss them,” Ellen said.

“It’s finally peaceful at our house. No loud music. No teenagers running in and out of the house day and night.” She suddenly looked at her watch.

“How come you’re not working today?” she asked.

“You always used to do your EMT work on Saturdays, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m taking a break from it,” Daria said.

Ellen looked surprised.

“Supergirl’s getting too old for that regimen, huh?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Daria said, taking the easy way out.

“And where’s Pete?” Ellen asked.

“Feels strange not to have him hanging around here.”

“We broke up,” Daria said.

“You’re kidding.” Ellen looked genuinely sympathetic.

“You were so perfect for each other,” she said.

“He was your type, I always thought. You need that super masculine sort of guy, you being the athletic type yourself. You only look feminine next to a man like Pete.”

“Well, it just wasn’t meant to be,” Daria said, thinking that Ellen had even managed to turn her condolences into an insult.

Daria heard the slamming of the porch door across the cul-de-sac and instantly turned in the direction of the sound, as if she’d been waiting for it. Rory was walking across his yard to his car. Daria extracted herself from the picnic-table bench and opened the porch door.

“Hey!” she called.

“Do you want to go to the athletic club later?”

Rory stopped to look at her, his car door half-open.

“I have company coming today,” he said.

“Oh, okay. See ya.” She closed the door and took her seat at the table again, trying to mask her disappointment. She wondered if “company” meant Grace.

Ellen was staring across the cul-de-sac.

“Is that…?”

“Rory Taylor.” Shelly finished the sentence for her.

“Well, my, my, my,” Ellen said.

“After all these years.”

“He’s going to find my real mother,” Shelly said.

“He’s going to try, hon,” Daria corrected her.

“You know he might not be able to.”

“Well, that’s an asinine waste of time,” Ellen said.

“What does asinine mean?” Shelly asked.

“Oh, come on, Shelly, you know that word,” Ellen said.

“Stop playing stupid.”

“I don’t know it,” Shelly protested.

“It means, what on earth is the point in him trying to find your mother?” Ellen said.

“What will you do with her once you find her?

Take her on the Jerry Springer Show so you can yell at her for screwing up your life? “

“Ellen.” Chloe made a very un-nun like face.

“Be kind.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Shelly said.

Daria knew that when her younger sister’s voice took on that tinny edge, she was two seconds away from crying.

“We would all rather Shelly didn’t pursue this,” she said to Ellen, “but it’s important to her.”

Shelly looked surprised at her sudden support.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Well, good,” Ellen said.

“Shelly’s finally being allowed to make a decision on her own. After twenty years of you telling her when to blow her nose.”

Daria could think of no suitable retort that would not upset Chloe, so she kept her mouth shut. Ellen had always complained about Daria’s over protectiveness toward Shelly. Right from the start, she’d tried to change Daria’s approach with her. Shelly should have been in regular public-school classes, she’d argued. She would have learned to keep up eventually. She should be forced to live on her own and get a real job like everyone else. Daria babied her too much. Shelly had never learned to stand on her own two feet. And on and on.

Ellen had no sympathy for Shelly’s fears. Even at Sue Cato’s funeral, when Shelly was beside herself with grief and battling a whole new crop of fears precipitated by the loss of her mother, Ellen saw fit to torment her. After the funeral, everyone went back to the Catos’ house for a dinner of sandwiches and salads. Shelly was sitting on an overstuffed chair in the living room, and Ellen, knowing full well her cousin’s irrational fear of earthquakes, snuck up behind the chair and shook it, sending eight-year-old Shelly flying out of the room in terror. Daria, then nineteen, had smacked her older cousin across the face, starting a brawl that left few physical injuries but plenty of hard feelings.

Chloe suddenly stood up. “I have to go over to St. Esther’s,” she said.

“Do you mind cleaning up?” She was looking at Daria.

“No problem.” She thought Chloe was rather brave to leave her there with Ellen, when she had to know Daria was ready to rip her cousin’s throat out. But she managed to get through the washing and drying of the dishes without incident, and then she escaped to the athletic club, alone.

Ivory handed Grace the glass of lemonade, then sat down in one of the other chairs on Poll-Rory’s porch. They had the cottage to themselves.

Grace had arrived just as Zack left for the water park with Kara and her various siblings and cousins. Rory had felt nervous about this meeting between Zack and Grace, when it would be apparent she was there for some purpose other than to borrow the phone. Zack had merely mumbled a greeting to Grace, then left the cottage with Kara. He seemed truly indifferent to what ever Rory wanted to do. Maybe he was even pleased that Rory had someone to keep him occupied and off his back. ;

Grace was wearing an emerald green sundress, sandals and the blue see-through sunglasses. Her light brown bangs were long and sexy. He liked looking at her.

“Well,” Grace said, “tell me more about the child who was found on the beach.”

He was hoping she would ask that question. They’d talked about the shop she ran in Rodanthe it was part sundries and part cafe, she said and they talked a bit about Zack, and he began to wonder if his story about Shelly was not all that compelling after all. But now she seemed interested, her gaze focused on the cottage across the cul-de-sac.

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

“What do you think people would want to know about her?”

“What her life has been like,” Grace said.

“What she looks like. You said she’s beautiful?”

“She’s a beauty, all right,” Rory said.

“Tall and blond.”

“And brain-damaged.” Grace pursed her lips as though this fact made her angry.

“She’s just a little…” He didn’t want to say simple. Somehow that word was not appropriate.

“She’s… ingenuous, if you know what I mean. I don’t know her well, I’ve only spoken to her a few times, but she seems very trusting in an innocent sort of way.”

“Was she treated well by her adoptive family?” Grace asked.

“She’s loved,” he said.

“Her mother died when she was eight, though, and one of her sisters took over her care.”

“Oh…” Grace frowned.

“Poor little thing. She lost two mothers.”

“I think Daria took terrific care of her, though.”

“What about… holding a job? Can she work? How did she do in school?

What about socially? Did she”— ” Whoa. ” Rory laughed, pleased. He should be writing down her questions so he’d be sure to address them in the program.

“One question at a time. I think she had some special classes. I guess I’ll have to find out more about that. And she works as a housekeeper at a Catholic church, but Daria—her sister—told me she needs a lot of supervision.

Shelly is pretty dependent on her. “

“The brain damage… what do they attribute that to?”

“Something to do with her birth, I guess, or with the time she spent abandoned on the beach. I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone really knows.”

“I don’t see how you can possibly find out who left her on the beach after all this time,” Grace said.

“I mean, I’m a little worried about you being disappointed. It seems like an impossible task.”

He was not worried. All he had done so far was sift through the police records, but he was making a list of people to talk to, including the detective involved in the case and everyone on the cul-de-sac. He didn’t feel rushed. He had the whole summer.

“You’d be amazed the things we’ve found out through researching incidents for True Life Stories,” he said.

“Sometimes the mysteries are solved during the research itself, like the time we figured out who had murdered a little boy, even though the police and FBI had been on the case for years and had turned up nothing. Our researchers brought a different perspective to the case and were able to uncover the real murderer.” He guessed that Grace was not a regular viewer of True Life Stories or she would have known the incredible success the program had had in solving the unsolvable.

“That’s amazing,” Grace said.

“But how exactly will you try to find out who the baby’s mother is?” “By questioning people. Sometimes people remember things now that didn’t seem important enough to report to the police at the time. And they’ll disclose those things to me. Another way we’ve solved mysteries is by presenting all the details of the story on the show, and then people come forward with the truth. You’d be surprised at how often that happens.”

“How sure are you that you’ll be able to solve this one?” Grace asked.

:

“I have a feeling about it,” Rory said.

“Probably whoever abandoned Shelly confided in someone over the years. Or maybe she’s suffering from having made that decision. Maybe she would want to be reunited with her daughter after all this time.”

To his delight, the door to the Sea Shanty opened and

Shelly walked out into the yard. She was wearing her white bikini, her gauzy skirt. She turned in the direction of the beach.

“Speaking of Shelly,” Rory said, nodding in the direction of the Sea Shanty.

“Is that her?” Grace leaned forward in her chair. She lifted the sunglasses off her nose for a better look.

“It sure is,” he said.

“Would you like to meet her?” He was anxious for another opportunity to talk with Shelly himself, but she had already disappeared over the dune.

“We can catch up to her,” he said, and glanced at Grace’s fair skin.

“I have some sunscreen in the cottage you can use.”

Grace stood up.

“I already have some on,” she said.

They began walking toward the beach.

“I used to be a sun worshiper,” Grace said. She held her arm out in front of her as they walked, and studied the pale skin.

“I guess that’s hard to believe right now.”

“Well,” Rory said, “at least you won’t get skin cancer.” He winced.

That had been an insensitive thing to say. Maybe she’d had skin cancer, or some other form of cancer, and that was her problem. He wanted to ask her about her illness, but it felt too much like prying.

“Hey, Shelly!” he called as they crossed over the dune.

Shelly turned at the sound of her name and waved to him as she started walking toward them. The breeze tossed her blond hair into the air and blew her skirt against her long legs, and he wondered if Grace was as captured by the sight of her as he was.

“Hi, Rory,” she said.

“I just wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine,” Rory said.

“This is Grace.”

Shelly smiled and held her hand out to Grace.

“I’m Shelly,” she said.

She wore small, rose-colored sunglasses,

and Rory had to smile. They certainly suited her view of the world.

Grace shook Shelly’s hand, but said nothing.

“Can we walk with you awhile?” Rory asked.

“Sure,” Shelly said.

“Down by the water, okay? I want to get my feet wet.”

Once they began walking. Grace was no longer quiet. She bombarded Shelly with questions. What was her job like? What did she like best about it? What did she like least? What was growing up like for her?