“Yeah, I was thinking I might have to get me one of these when I get home.” Rory looked down at Melissa’s kind eyes.

“When do you leave?” Ted asked.

“September third.”

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Ted said.

“It’s great seeing you and Daria together.”

Ellen rested her empty plate on the edge of the fire ring.

“So, was this just an end-of-the-summer fling for the two of you?” she asked bluntly.

“What happens next?”

Rory took Daria’s hand again.

“No,” he said calmly.

“It’s not a summer fling. We’ll have to figure out how to keep things going. I’d like to have Daria and Shelly move to California, but Daria doesn’t think that would work out.”

“Shelly would never survive in California,” Daria said. “And she needs me too much for me to just pick up and move three thousand miles away.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ellen said.

“When are you going to start living your own life, Daria?”

Rory felt Daria bristle next to him, and Ellen continued.

“It’s like you’re married to her,” she said.

“Ellen, that’s really not fair,” Rory said. He wondered how Ellen could talk that way to Daria, when Daria had been the one to so lovingly raise the child Ellen had abandoned.

“Daria’s done the best job possible with Shelly,” Chloe said to Ellen.

“I agree,” Grace said firmly.

“From what I’ve seen, Daria’s been fantastic for Shelly.”

“Give me a break,” Ellen said.

“If anything, she’s ruined Shelly.”

The atmosphere around the bonfire was suddenly thick with tension.

Mrs. Wheeler told her granddaughters to “go over to the picnic table and get some dessert.” Jill studied her fingernails, and Jackie studiously began petting one of the dogs.

“I’m sorry, Daria,” Ellen continued, “but it’s the truth, and it’s time somebody told you. You’ve made Shelly so dependent on you and on this tiny little corner of the world, that living anywhere else is going to be a major hurdle for her. But it’s a hurdle she has to jump over one of these days, and you need to let her.”

“Don’t you dare give me advice about Shelly.” Daria’s voice was even, too even, and in the firelight, Rory saw the rigid set of her jaw.

“You see her for a couple of days at a time, then you go back to your own, self-absorbed life and complain about what I’ve done with her.

That doesn’t help, Ellen. As a matter of fact, you’ve done nothing to help with Shelly, have you? “

Chloe reached across Rory to wrap her hand around Daria’s arm.

“Daria,” she said softly.

“Not here, sis.”

“You wouldn’t have accepted my help even if I’d offered it,” Ellen said.

“You resented any suggestions I’ve ever made. In my opinion, you should move to California and be with Rory. Leave Shelly here, if this is where she wants to be. She’s an adult now. She’ll survive somehow.”

Daria wrenched her arm free of Chloe’s hand.

“Is that what you thought when you left her on the beach twenty-two years ago?” she snapped.

“That she’d survive somehow?”

The bonfire crackled, waves broke and hissed to shore, and the teenagers laughed. But no one around the bonfire uttered a word. People looked from Daria to Ellen and back again.

Ellen’s mouth dropped open in what Rory guessed to be a pretense of shock.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ellen bit off each word as it came out of her mouth.

“I’ve had it with your insensitivity to Shelly,” Daria said.

Rory stroked his hand down Daria’s back, wishing there was something he could do to change the direction of her anger. This was not the place or time for a personal confrontation. But Daria seemed completely unaware that her neighbors were even present, much less paying attention to every word.

“Shelly has special needs,” Daria continued.

“And she probably wouldn ‘t have them if you’d… If she’d been born in a hospital to a mother willing to take responsibility for her, she’d probably be fine. You’ve even been a lousy mother to the two daughters you acknowledge as yours.”

Ted leaned forward.

“Daria, you’re off your rocker,” he said.

“If you’ve got a bone to pick with” — “Are you accusing me of being Shelly’s mother?” Ellen interrupted her husband.

“Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Daria said.

“You are losing it, Daria,” Ellen said.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Shelly being dumped on the beach.”

Daria started to stand up, but Rory caught her arm. She looked at him and must have seen the plea in his eyes, because she dropped into the chair again. When she spoke, her voice was calmer.

“I know this isn’t the time for this,” Daria said.

“I’m sorry I spilled it out this way. But it’s the truth, Ellen, and it’s time you admitted it. I found your pukka-shell necklace lying right next to the baby. I’ve known all along. I didn’t say anything back then because I didn’t want to get you in trouble. But it’s twenty-two years later, and it’s time to own up to the fact that Shelly was yours.”

Rory’s gaze was suddenly drawn to Grace. She looked truly ill, her face more ashen than usual. Even the golden flames from the fire brought no color to her cheeks. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but Chloe spoke first.

“I took Ellen’s necklace that night,” Chloe said.

All heads turned in her direction. Sitting right next to her, Rory could see the resolve in Chloe’s face.

“I borrowed it without her permission,” Chloe continued.

“I never knew what happened to it. I guess it fell off while I was…” Her voice trailed off. She stared into the fire, then looked up again, her eyes glassy and apologetic as she turned to Daria.

“Shelly’s mine,” she said. “Chloe.” Mrs. Wheeler breathed the word in disbelief.

Rory’s mind raced. Sean Macy. The priest had been involved with Chloe for many years, had even managed to help her parents adopt Shelly. No wonder he had killed himself when Rory was trying to uncover Shelly’s parentage. He rested his hand lightly on Chloe’s arm.

“Yours and Sean’s,” he said softly, not wanting anyone else to hear.

“No,” she said in a whisper. The piercing look in her eyes was meant just for him, and it sent a chill down his back.

“Not Sean’s,” she said.

Rory went numb as he realized what she was telling him.

“Chloe,” Daria said.

“I don’t understand.” And Rory knew she understood even less than she thought.

“Where’s Shelly?” The voice came from the beach, and Rory turned to see Andy approaching the bonfire.

For a moment, no one said a word; Chloe’s admission had stolen their voices.

“She’s down there with the youngsters.” Mr. Wheeler pointed toward the second bonfire.

“No, she’s not,” Andy said.

“I was just down there. She was with them, but Zack said she went in for a swim. He thought she might have come out of the water up here to be with you guys.”

“A swim in the dark?” Daria got to her feet.

“She knows better than that.”

Rory stood up.

“Zack!” he called, waving toward the huddled group down the beach.

“What?” Zack called back.

“Come here!” Rory said.

Zack must have heard the urgency in his voice, because he came over to the adults’ bonfire at a jog.

“When did Shelly go into the water?” Daria asked.

“I don’t know.” Zack shrugged.

“Maybe five or ten minutes ago? I thought she was just taking a dip and planned to come out up here by you. She was saying some strange things.”

“Like what?” Daria asked.

“She told me… she said she wanted you to be able to go to California with Dad. She said you wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore, or something like that. I wasn’t sure if that was something you were actually thinking about doing or if she was just, you know, like fantasizing or something. Because then she said she was sorry about the pilot. I don’t know what pilot she’s talking about. I wasn’t paying much attention to her. She” — “She overheard us.” Daria pressed her fist to her mouth and looked at Rory.

“Our conversation on the porch. I thought she was asleep.”

Rory thought back to that conversation, imagining how it had sounded to Shelly’s sensitive ears.

“I’m sure she planned to swim up here to you guys, because she said goodbye to us,” Zack said.

“I mean, like a real goodbye, like she was leaving us for the night.”

“Or forever.” Rory grabbed his son’s arm.

“Come on,”

he said, running toward the ocean.

“Show me where she went in.”

Running away from the bonfire, he was vaguely aware of the shouting behind him. He heard Daria yell for someone to call 911. Someone else said they would check the Sea Shanty to see if Shelly might have gone back there. And he knew that several people were running after him, as beams from their flashlights darted off the sand ahead of him.

“I think it was here. Dad,” Zack said, pointing into the black ocean. “I think she went straight out from our bonfire.”

Rory tore off his shirt and plunged into the water. “Give me light!”

he called over his shoulder, and the flashlights instantly illuminated the water around him. Swimming through the breaking waves, searching the water with his eyes, he realized how fruitless his quest was. He had no idea how far out Shelly had gone, or where she had been when she let herself go under—surely that had been her plan. Sean Macy had said it was all right to kill yourself if you were doing so to save someone else, and Shelly must have thought she was saving Daria. She had no idea that her death would have exactly the opposite effect on the sister who adored her.

Rory felt disoriented in the water. The sky and water and air all around him were black, and he thought about how easy it would be to die out here. To simply slip beneath the surface into more blackness.

He heard splashing as other people came into the water. One of the beams of light illuminated Daria as she fought her way through the waves.

“Daria!” he called.

“How did she usually swim out here? Would she swim straight out, or parallel to the beach, or”

“Depends on her purpose!” Daria shouted back to him.

“I’m afraid … I’m afraid straight out, this time.”

She knew as well as he did what Shelly’s purpose had been. He oriented himself to the teenagers’ bonfire, then turned and began swimming farther into the opaque sea. He had gone only a few strokes when he felt something soft brush against his leg. Seaweed, he thought. He almost didn’t bother to reach down to touch it, but he did, and his fingers slipped into the silky, undulating tangle of Shelly’s hair.

Diving beneath the surface of the water, he grasped her arms and lifted her up to the air. She was a heavy weight against him, heavy and silent, and he knew she was not breathing.

“I have her!” he called. The beams of light darted around him, finally focusing directly on him as he swam, Shelly’s body still beneath his arm.

“Is she alive?” someone called from the beach. It sounded like Grace’s voice. “Is she okay?” someone else shouted.

He was winded as he neared the shore, and Daria and Andy pulled Shelly from him, dragging her through the breaking water and laying her down on the beach. In the light from the flashlights. Shelly’s skin was already waxy and blue, and he felt a cry rising up his throat. He managed to swallow it back down as he fell to his knees next to her.

“I’ll do the compressions,” Daria said to him.

“You breathe.”

He had his mouth on Shelly’s, her nose pinched closed by his fingers, before Daria had even finished her sentence. The sound of sirens wailed far in the distance as he blew air into Shelly’s lungs, breathing for her in a fury, trying his best to save his daughter’s life.

ivory was cold. Someone he had no idea who had given him a sweatshirt to put on, but his shorts were still damp and the air-conditioning in the hospital was bone-chilling.

Daria put her arm around him, trying to warm him, but her effort was futile. She was equally as cold, and her body shivered next to his.

They were sitting on a vinyl-covered couch in a tiny waiting room at the trauma center, across the hall from the treatment room where doctors were working on Shelly. Chloe, Andy and Zack were with them.

He thought that Grace and Ellen and some of the neighbors were in the larger, general waiting room, but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of much. Not even how long they’d been sitting there, waiting for word on Shelly’s condition.

Not one of them had spoken since they’d been ushered into the room.