“So, what happened?” Rory asked.

“Why didn’t you become a doctor?”

“I really wanted to,” Daria said.

“I was passionate about it. I took premed courses in college and everything. But Mom got sick. She had a fast-moving colon cancer. I quit and came home. Mom was terrified of dying, not because of dying itself, but because of leaving Shelly. She made me promise to take care of her, which was what I would have done, anyway. She told me I was like Shelly’s mother. She said it was me who truly gave her life, and it used to blow me away to realize that if I hadn’t gone out on the beach that morning. Shelly would never have been part of our family. Mom always let me help with her. Shelly was so beautiful and so… spirited, right from the start. A real smiley baby. She brought joy back into our house. My mother had been going through a depression before I found Shelly. I didn’t realize it then, but of course I do now. Shelly brought her back to life.”

“You sound as though you think there’s something almost… magical about her.”

She smiled at him.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“She’s definitely out of the ordinary.”

“But she needed a ton of supervision back then,” Daria said.

“I know you think I’m exaggerating when I tell you she can easily be taken advantage of, but it’s true. Right before Mom died. Shelly was kidnapped by this guy who was preying on young girls in our neighborhood. She didn’t even realize she was in danger, just got out of the car when he stopped at a light. She knew she wasn’t supposed to go off with strangers, but the man told her he wasn’t a stranger, so she went with him.”

“But, Daria, she was only eight then. We all did idiotic things when we were eight. You don’t have to protect her to that extent anymore.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said defensively.

“She still doesn’t have good judgment, though. Trust me on it.”

Rory didn’t argue. He pulled up the string, looked at the untouched fish head and dropped it into the water again.

“Didn’t you feel some resentment about having to take care of her, since it meant you had to give up your dream of being a doctor?” he asked.

“None at all,” she said honestly.

“I thought taking care of Shelly was my life’s calling, the way religious life was Chloe’s.” She remembered talking over her decision with Chloe back then. Chloe had cried; she’d wanted Daria to be able to finish school. Once Daria had reassured her that she was doing what she wanted to do in taking care of Shelly, Chloe seemed to accept her decision more readily.

“I got more carpentry training. Do you remember how I used to make furniture with my father?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, I loved building things, and I found an outlet for my medical interest by becoming an EMT. I have no regrets.”

“Why aren’t you an EMT now?” he asked.

“Ten years was long enough. I really loved it, though.” Her throat closed up on that last sentence, and she began pulling the trap from the water, hoping for a crab to help her change the subject. She was lucky.

“Look,” she said.

“We’ve got two of them.” She pulled the trap onto the pier and emptied the two large blue crabs into the bucket.

Rory extracted another fish head from the bait box and put it into the trap. He was less vigorous in wiping his hands on the towel this time, and Daria lowered the trap back into the water.

“You said that Shelly can’t leave the Outer Banks,” Rory said.

“Does that mean you plan to live here forever?” She hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead.

“I don’t know,” she said, although she did not see how her situation would ever change. “Right now, though. Shelly needs to be here, and I love it here, so there’s no problem.”

“But it’s so sparsely populated. How do you meet people? How do you meet men?”

Daria laughed.

“There are men here,” she said. She had dated numerous men on the Outer Banks, but dating had never played the critical role in her life that it seemed to play for other women. She’d been different: she raised her sister, wore sloppy clothes, worked as a carpenter. Chloe had told her she lacked the “primping hormone,” and she guessed that was the tmth. That didn’t mean, however, that she didn’t have longings. And the man she longed for most was sitting right next her at that moment.

“Men tend to see me as their pal,” she said.

“I don’t understand that,” Rory said.

“You’re attractive and smart and athletic and interesting.”

“Thanks.” She felt herself glow despite her attempt to conceal how much those words meant to her.

“But in a way, it makes sense,” Rory recanted his first statement.

“You’re straightforward and don’t play games. Not like a lot of other women. And I fear Grace is one of them,” he added as an aside.

“So, I could see how guys might treat you like you’re one of them.”

“Well, I haven’t been totally antisocial,” she said, wanting to correct any warped image of her he might be getting.

“I’ve had a few… love interests,” she said, for want of better words to describe the men she’d dated. She remembered the man to whom she’d lost her virginity at the age of twenty. Several days after that momentous occasion, he’d dumped her for a pretty, prissy eighteen-year old and Daria feared it had been her performance in bed that led him to leave her. For a couple of years after that, she was afraid to make love.

She would not tell Rory about that particular guy.

“I had a long-term relationship with someone,” she said.

“I met him when I was twenty-three, right after I moved here, and we dated for a couple of years. He wanted me to quit my carpentry job and wear a dress and red lipstick, and needless to say, we fought a lot. He finally moved away. Then when I was twenty-seven, I met Pete. The infamous fiance Shelly mentioned to you. He was a carpenter and an EMT, so we saw eye to eye on most things and got along great for a long time.”

“What happened?”

“Shelly was a problem for us,” she said.

“Just like

Polly was a problem for you and your ex-wife. Pete said I let Shelly run my life and that I should just”-Daria shook her head ” —cut ties with her, I guess. Or at least let her fend for herself. “

“I can’t see you doing that.”

“You’re right, there was no way I would. It wasn’t an issue at first.

Shelly was only sixteen when Pete and I started seeing each other, so it was a given that I was responsible for her. But as she got older, he wanted me to place her somewhere. “

“Place her? She doesn’t really need that, does she?”

Daria had never thought so, but ever since the plane crash, she was not sure exactly what Shelly needed. She thought of telling Rory about that incident. It would be so good to tell someone, and she was certainly doing her fair share of gut-spilling here. But she didn’t want to burden him with that, or to color his positive feelings about Shelly. She still wondered what the family of the pilot had been told about how she had met her death. Whatever they’d been told, they’d been lied to.

“No, I don’t think she needs a placement,” she said.

“But she does still need me. Pete was offered a job in Raleigh, and he wanted me to go with him, which, of course, meant leaving Shelly behind, and I couldn’t consider that. Even if Shelly would have been willing to move to Raleigh, Pete would never have allowed her to live with us.” Saying this out loud, reliving it, made her angry with Pete all over again.

“He doesn’t sound like a very sympathetic sort of guy,” Rory said.

“Not when it came to Shelly, anyway.”

“You’re right. It does sound like our problem with Polly, although in retrospect, Glorianne and I had drifted apart on a lot of other issues as well. I don’t like thinking about it,” he said with a shudder.

“It was a terrible time,

with Polly getting stuck in the middle. That’s when she died, and I can’t help but think that the stress of living with me and Glorianne contributed to that. “

Daria touched his arm.

“I think it was better that she was with you, no matter what the circumstances, than to be left alone after your parents died. Don’t you?”

“I think so,” he said.

“I hope so.” He looked out to sea, and she saw sailboats reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses. Two small lines creased the skin above his eyebrows, and she wanted to touch them, erase them.

“You’re a good person,” she said softly.

“Iwish you weren’t so hot on digging into Shelly’s past, but I’m still glad you’ve come to Kill Devil Hills this summer.”

He smiled.

“Me, too.”

“I do worry about Shelly’s future, though,” she said. “Is she going to clean the church for the rest of her life? The jewelry she makes has given her an ego boost, and she really needed that, but it hardly earns her a living. I know she should really be in some sort of vocational training program, but there is no such thing here.”

“Can she leave the Outer Banks at all?”

“Her doctor is in Elizabeth City,” Daria said.

“But she freaks out when we go to see him. He always thinks she needs tranquilizers, because she’s such a mess when she’s at his office. He doesn’t realize that she’s completely calm and peaceful when she’s back here.”

“What happens when there’s a hurricane and you have to evacuate?

Shelly said she hates that, but it’s mandatory sometimes, isn’t it?

“

Daria laughed.

“She hides,” she said matter-of factly “I found her in the storage closet once, and just a couple of years ago, she hid out in one of the neighbor’s cottages that had already been evacuated.”

“Poor Shelly,” Rory said.

“She’s still a little girl in so many ways,” Daria said.

“She’s not even interested in men, and I’m really glad about that.

Otherwise, I’d have birth control to worry about, too. “

Rory frowned.

“Even Polly was interested in men and sex,” he said.

“Are you sure about Shelly?”

“Oh, a few years ago she went through a couple of boyfriends, but they were not the nicest fellas. I was afraid they were using her.” She remembered one of them talking Shelly into buying him a television set. “I broke them up. Shelly was angry with me at the time, but I think that now she’s frankly relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about dealing with a boyfriend.”

“So,” Rory said, “in your heart of hearts, who do you think abandoned Shelly on the beach twenty-two years ago?”

She stared at him, incredulous.

“You’re incorrigible,” she said.

“Seriously,” he persisted.

“Do you think it was someone on the cul-de-sac, or” — “I’m certain it was Cindy Trump,” she interrupted him.

“If you must know, that’s who I think it was. I found Shelly on the beach right in front of her cottage. Cindy could have just walked out her back door, dropped the baby close to the ocean, expecting the waves to wash it out to sea, and walked back into her cottage. Job done.”

“So, where is Cindy?” Rory asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Shelly is a Cato, Rory,” she said.

“Cindy, or whoever Shelly’s mother was, didn’t want her then.

She doesn’t deserve to have any part of her now. “

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a woman walking toward the bay, a short distance from the pier, and it wasn’t until Daria spotted the three golden retrievers with her that she recognized the woman as Linda. The dogs splashed in the water. Linda threw a stick far into the bay for them to swim after.

“That’s Linda,” she said to Rory.

Rory turned to look at the woman.

“I met her already,” he said.

“And one of her dogs has a thing for me. She sure has changed.”

Daria could barely remember the timid girl from the old days on the cul-de-sac. This Linda was a tall, impressive-looking woman with short frosty-blond hair.

They watched Linda and her dogs play together for a while. Daria was glad to be off the topic of Shelly and Cindy Trump. But then Rory brought up an even less pleasant topic: Grace. Daria knew that Grace had been at Poll-Rory at least twice in the past few days.

“I introduced Grace to Shelly,” he said.

She knew. Shelly had said that Grace asked her many questions.

“She told me,” she said.

“She has or had, I guess some sort of illness. Do you think it would be crude of me to ask her what it was?”

Daria looked at the crabs in the bucket. One of them raised his claw at her in an angry fashion, but she barely noticed. Rory didn’t even know what Grace’s serious illness was? Exactly how intimate could they be?