Summer's Child

6

GRACE SPOONED A DOLLOP OF WHIPPED CREAM ON THE mocha latte and handed the cup across the counter to Jean Best, one of the regular customers at Beachside Café and Sundries.

“How are you doing, Grace?” Jean asked. Her eyes bore concern, and the question was sincere, but Grace busied herself cleaning the espresso machine.

“Just fine, Jean,” she said. “Thanks for asking.” She knew she should ask Jean how things were going with her elderly mother and the house she was trying to sell, but she didn’t want to engage her—or anyone, actually—in conversation.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jean said, taking her cue from Grace’s reticence and backing away from the counter. “Thanks for the coffee.” She carried her coffee to one of the small tables near the window overlooking Pamlico Sound, and Grace was relieved to see her go.

Beachside Café and Sundries was small, cramped and popular among locals and tourists alike. She and Eddie had opened it eight years ago with money Eddie’s mother had left him. They carried a few staples, but they were most beloved for their coffee and sandwiches, which ran the gamut from avocado and cheese to Italian subs, something for everyone. The shop had been a labor of love, a reflection of love, and people used to comment on the warm, supportive relationship she and Eddie still enjoyed after twenty years of marriage. No one was commenting on it now, though.

Grace made a couple of sandwiches for a man and woman she didn’t recognize. She was more comfortable these days with the strangers, with people who didn’t know her and know all she’d endured these past few months. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want sympathy. And most of all, she didn’t want to talk about it. Because if she talked, she would disintegrate into little pieces. And that she couldn’t afford to do.

She knew her regular customers worried about her. They worried about how much weight she’d lost and how fragile she seemed to be, both physically and emotionally. They commented about her pallor and her inability to concentrate on what anyone was saying. A few weeks earlier, she’d overheard a conversation between two of her customers, one of whom said, “Grace just isn’t herself these days.” That had become her mantra. Whenever she found herself thinking or doing something out of character for her—which was often, lately—she heard that voice inside her head: Grace just isn’t herself these days.

She could hear Eddie in the small office behind the counter area, typing on the computer, and she wondered how many of the regulars knew that things had fallen apart between the two of them. It had to be obvious. The jovial atmosphere that had once existed in Beachside Café was gone, and now there was a palpable tension between Eddie and herself. Several customers even knew that Grace had moved into the above-garage apartment she and Eddie used to rent to tourists in the summer. How they’d found out, she didn’t know, but the year-round population in the Outer Banks community of Rodanthe was small, and it wasn’t hard for people to learn each other’s business. And, of course, everyone knew the reasons for the change in Grace, as well as for the change in her marriage.

“Grace?” Eddie poked his head out from the back office of the café. “Phone.”

Grace wiped her hands on the towel hanging below the counter and walked into the office. She took the phone from his hand.

“I’ll watch the front for you,” he said as he left the office.

She nodded, avoiding his eyes. Once he was out in the café, she lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hi, Grace, it’s Bonnie.”

“Bonnie!” There was only one person Grace could handle talking to at that moment, and it was Bonnie, her oldest, dearest friend. But Bonnie rarely called. She lived in San Diego and sent an occasional letter or e-mail once or twice a month. A phone call was rare, and it worried her. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything is fine here,” Bonnie said. “I’m more interested in how things are going there.”

“Oh, you know.” Grace sat down on the desk chair and ran a hand through her hair. “It’s been rough.”

“Well,” Bonnie said, “I wish I could do something to help you, and I’m worried that my reason for calling might just make things worse for you. But I wanted you to—”

“I don’t see how you could make things worse, Bon,” Grace interrupted her.

Bonnie hesitated. “Do you know who Rory Taylor is?” she asked finally.

“Of course. True Life Stories.”

“Right,” Bonnie said. “Well, I was reading one of the L.A. magazines and there was this tiny little blurb—I almost missed it. It said that he’s going to be in Kill Devil Hills for the summer.”

Grace frowned, trying to figure out why that would be of any significance to her. “So?” she asked.

“He’s there—” Bonnie let out a long sigh “—to look into that baby that was found on the Kill Devil Hills beach twenty-two years ago. He wants to do a story about it for his television show.”

Grace was silent, a chill racing up and down her spine. “For what purpose?” she asked. Her voice sounded tremulous, she thought, even though she was struggling for control.

“I don’t know, specifically,” Bonnie said. “But he’s usually trying to solve some sort of mystery. Like, who the baby’s mother was.”

Grace shut her eyes. “You know,” she said softly, “that baby has been on my mind a lot lately.”

“Of course she has,” Bonnie said. “Of course she would be.”

“Why now?” Grace asked, a bubble of anger forming in her chest. “Why, after all this time, does somebody have to delve into that—”

“I know,” Bonnie said. “It’s the wrong time. Not that there ever was a good time for it. Gracie, how are you doing otherwise? What does the doctor say?”

Grace ignored her question. “You know who I hate?” she asked. “Who I despise? Even after all these years?”

Bonnie hesitated a moment before asking, “Who?”

“The nurse,” Grace said. “Nurse Nancy. I would love to get my hands on that woman.”

“I know,” Bonnie said, her voice soothing. “So would I. Look, Grace, I’m worried about you. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t want you to find out some other way. Do you want me to come to North Carolina to be with you? Maybe I could help out somehow?”

“No, no,” Grace said. “I’m all right.”

“I know Eddie would be there for you if you’d let him,” Bonnie continued. “But he said you’re freezing him out.”

“He froze himself out,” Grace said, although that was not the truth and Bonnie probably knew it. Eddie would be there for her, but right now she couldn’t even stand the sight of him. She could hear his voice, a deep voice she had once found mesmerizing, coming from the café. He was laughing with one of the customers. Laughing. She pressed the phone more tightly to her ear to block out the sound.

Bonnie uttered more words of concern, more words of comfort, but Grace barely heard her. She was too absorbed by the thought of Rory Taylor hunting for clues to how that baby came to be on the beach. And by the time she hung up the phone with her old friend, Grace had a plan.

7

THE SUN WAS SLIPPING INTO THE SOUND AS DARIA DROVE into Andy Kramer’s driveway.

“You have an incredible view, Andy,” she said to her co-worker, thinking of how he must enjoy this spectacle every evening.

“I know,” Andy said, opening the car door. “I’m a lucky guy. Now if I just had a decent van.” His van was in the shop again, the third time in the past few months.

Daria spotted the boat tied to the pier behind Andy’s cottage. “I didn’t know you were into boats,” she said. “Is that new?”

Andy laughed, his earring glowing a vibrant rose color in the muted sunlight. “Brand-new,” he said, “but it’s not mine. I share the pier with my next-door neighbors, and it’s theirs. Raises my property value, though, having it behind my cottage.”

She could see his neighbors, a man and woman and a little boy, on the side deck of their cottage, grilling their dinner. She could even smell the steak. “Well, I hope they at least take you out in it sometime,” she said.

“Me, too.” Andy got out of the car and shut the door, but bent over to look in the window. “Thanks for the lift,” he said. “And have a good soak in your tub tonight.”

“I plan to.” She pulled out of his driveway, already thinking about spending a leisurely half hour in the whirlpool tub later that night. The tub was the one extravagance in the Sea Shanty, but it was truly a necessity after a day like this one. She and Andy had spent the day building wall-to-ceiling bookshelves in a huge house in Corolla, and her shoulders and arms ached. Before she could take a bath, though, there was something she needed to do.

She drove the mile and a half across Kill Devil Hills to the cul-de-sac, where she parked in the Sea Shanty driveway. But instead of going inside the cottage, she walked across the street to Poll-Rory.

Rory answered the door in shorts, sky-blue T-shirt and a handsome grin that threatened her resolve. She had to keep the purpose of this visit firmly in her mind.

“Come in, neighbor,” he said, pushing open the screen door for her.

Daria stepped into the living room and took off her sunglasses. She had been in Poll-Rory many times over the years, so the changes in its interior were no surprise to her. She imagined they had been to Rory, though. The furniture, the new paneling on the walls, the artwork and knickknacks had all been selected by the real estate agent handling the property.

Daria spotted a computer on the table in the dining area. Papers and books were strewn across the table’s surface.

“Looks like you’re working,” Daria said.

“Working and playing,” Rory said. “That’s my plan for this summer.” His hands were on his hips, and she felt him appraising her. She probably had more sawdust in her hair. She knew she had paint on her white T-shirt and a smudge of varnish on her cheek.

She looked at him squarely. “I need to talk with you about Shelly,” she said and felt the apology forming on her face. Rory had come all the way across the country to get to the bottom of Shelly’s story, and she planned to make him stop that search before he’d even begun.

He must have seen the concern in her eyes, because his grin faded. “Well,” he said, “this looks like a serious, sitting-down kind of conversation. Let’s go up on the deck.”

She followed him out the back door and up the stairs to the small deck, with its view of both ocean and sound. Nearly as good a view as from the Sea Shanty’s widow’s walk.

“I’d offer you something to drink,” Rory said, “but all I have right now is water and milk. Zack already drank the soda I bought. I’d forgotten how much food he can go through.”

Daria sat in an Adirondack chair and slipped her sunglasses on again, even though the sun had fallen well below the horizon. Rory’s green eyes were uncovered, and she wished that were not the case. There was something about his eyes that had always made her weak-kneed, even when they’d been kids.

After a few moments of chatter about Zack and the view and the changes that had taken place in Kill Devil Hills during Rory’s absence, she got to the point of her visit.

“I know Shelly asked you to find out about her past,” she began, “but it’s really not a good idea. You don’t understand Shelly. She’s not—” Daria hunted for the right choice of words “—like everyone else,” she said. “I know she seems perfectly fine. I know she’s beautiful, and a wonderful person, but—”

“I think I do understand,” he said. “I picked up on what you’re saying when I met her. Did she suffer some brain damage when she was born?”

Daria was surprised that he’d grasped that fact; she hadn’t thought Shelly’s problems were that obvious. She nodded. “Yes, that’s what they figure. Her IQ is in the very low-average range, but on top of that, she has some learning disabilities that kept her back in school. Plus, she has a seizure disorder and, although she’s on medication for it, it’s not under very good control. She’s not allowed to get her driver’s license because she’s never been seizure free for a year, and that’s the requirement.” She glanced toward the Sea Shanty, but the only part of the cottage she could see from back here was the widow’s walk. “She’s a bit phobic,” she continued, “and very dependent on me. After Mom died, she became my responsibility. She was only eight, and I was just nineteen. Now she gets scared when I’m not around.”

“Why was she your responsibility?” Rory looked puzzled. “What about your dad? He was still living then, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, but Shelly was too much for him to handle. She really needed a woman. A mother.”

“What about Chloe? She was the oldest. Why didn’t she help?”

Everyone asked that question, and Daria was ready with her answer. “Chloe was already a nun,” she explained. “She was living in Georgia, and there really wasn’t much she could do.”

“What did you mean about Shelly being phobic?” he asked.

“She’s afraid of a lot of things—earthquakes and snakes, for example, even though she’s never encountered either. But mostly, she’s afraid of being away from the Outer Banks. Pathologically afraid.” Daria wasn’t sure how to explain this. She’d tried over the years to describe Shelly’s fears to doctors and teachers, but no one really seemed to understand. “Shelly is only happy on the beach,” she said. “When she was little, we came to the Sea Shanty for the summers and spent the rest of the year in Norfolk, and we began to notice that she had a sort of…split personality. She’d be anxious and down in the winter, and relaxed and up in the summer.”

“Well, aren’t most kids that way?” Rory smiled. “I sure was.”

“Yes, but for a different reason,” she said. The light on the deck was fading, and she took off her sunglasses. “At first, we thought it was because she was in school in the winter and free in the summer, the way it is with most kids. But gradually we realized it was the beach itself that made her calm and happy. One time, when she was only about seven years old, we came down at the beginning of the summer. Dad had just pulled the car into the driveway—he hadn’t even come to a stop—when she jumped out and ran to the beach, right to the exact spot where I’d found her, although there was no way she could have known that. She sat down there and watched the ocean, all by herself, all afternoon. It was as if she could finally relax.”

Rory actually shivered. “That’s a little spooky,” he said.

“It was,” Daria agreed. “But after all these years, I’ve just come to accept that about her. She needs the beach. Period. After Mom died and I realized how happy Shelly was here, I started bringing her down on weekends. Just Shelly and me. Dad was…” She remembered her father’s years as a widower as one long fall into a life barely lived. “Dad withdrew after Mom died. He never dated or did things with friends, even though he was only in his fifties. He spent more and more time at church. Chloe and I used to say that he and God were dating.” She laughed at the memory. “He loved Shelly and me, but essentially, we were on our own. So, anyhow, Shelly had to settle for weekends at the beach. But then, when she was twelve and went on a field trip with her class to a museum in Norfolk, she disappeared. We didn’t know if she’d been kidnapped or what.” Shelly had been kidnapped once before, but she didn’t want to get into that.

“The police looked for her,” Daria continued. “The next day, when she was still missing, I called Chloe in Georgia to tell her about it. Chloe wondered if Shelly might have gotten here to Kill Devil Hills somehow. It seemed impossible, but it turned out that’s where she was. We never did find out exactly how she’d managed to get here—some combination of buses and hitchhiking, I guess. She’d broken one of the Sea Shanty’s windows to get in and had pretty much set up house for herself. I decided that was it—we’d move here.” She glanced at the widow’s walk again. “I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do for her. Maybe she should have been forced to tough it out somewhere else, because—to be honest—I think she’s even worse than she was. Whenever we have to go to the mainland now, to visit someone or to see a doctor, she gets panicky. But I love her.” She looked directly into Rory’s eyes and saw sympathy there. “To see her miserable tears me apart,” she said. “To see the total joy in her face when she’s safe on her beach makes it all worthwhile to me.”

“Maybe it was the right move for her,” Rory said. “She’s able to hold a job here, it sounds like. Would she be able to do that if you lived back in Norfolk?”

“I don’t think she would have been able to get out of bed in the morning if we’d stayed in Norfolk,” Daria said. “And she’s very responsible about her work. But frankly, there really isn’t much she can do to earn a living or to allow her to live independently. Sean Macy—the priest at St. Esther’s—and the others who supervise her give her a lot of direction in the housekeeping she does. Sometimes I think they keep her there out of pity. She probably wouldn’t be able to hold a job anywhere else.” Daria suddenly felt as though she had painted a one-sided picture of her sister. “She does have skills, though. She’s very kindhearted and likable. She’s creative. Her jewelry is actually in demand. She’s a terrific swimmer. Physically, she’s very graceful.”

“Yes,” Rory said, “I noticed that.”

“She can’t work, but she sure can play volleyball.” Daria smiled. “She excels at just about everything that’s fun. She just can’t do the serious things in life very well.”

Rory laughed. “Maybe we should all take a lesson from her,” he said. Then he leaned forward, his face now sober and not far from hers, and she saw the fine lines around his eyes. “I understand what you’re saying about Shelly and why you’d be concerned about her,” he said. “But she certainly knew what she was doing when she wrote to me about True Life Stories. She understood what the show is about and how it might be able to help her.”

Daria felt tears of frustration form in her eyes. He still didn’t get it. “Shelly is so vulnerable,” she said. “She’s fragile. She needs protection. People take advantage of her very easily. She’ll do anything if she thinks it’s helping someone else.”

“Are you saying she’s only enthusiastic about me telling her story because she wants to help me out? To give me an episode for the show?”

Daria shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. She really does seem to want you to do it, I can’t deny that. But I think it would be a mistake to unearth that sordid mess, or to make her face the reality of the woman who…who essentially tried to kill her.”

Rory leaned back in his chair again at that, and Daria continued.

“Shelly feels secure with us,” she said. “She knows she’s loved, she knows she’s been loved from the very first day. Why tamper with that? I don’t know what it would do to her to have the truth come out.”

“Maybe the truth would be positive, though,” Rory argued. “Maybe her birth mother regrets what she did and would love to know that Shelly is alive and doing well.”

“You’re fantasizing a happy ending, Rory,” Daria said. She felt a twinge of anger at his perseverance.

“You know, I understand better than you think,” Rory said. “The way you feel about Shelly was the way I felt about Polly.”

She had forgotten his devotion to his sister. “I can still picture Polly perfectly,” she said. Polly’d had a short, boxy build, white hair and the almond-shaped eyes of a Down’s syndrome child. She remembered how Rory had defended her against the teasing of other children and taken time out from his own activities to play with her. Seeing him with Polly was one of the reasons she’d been attracted to him.

“Remember the incident with the fish hook?” Rory asked with a laugh. “When you said you were an EMT, that’s what I thought of.”

She’d forgotten about that, but the memory came back to her instantly. Polly had managed to get a fish hook stuck through her toe. Neither Rory nor his mother seemed to know what to do to get it out, and Daria, then only twelve, had performed the feat.

“You knew exactly what to do,” Rory said. “It makes sense that you got involved in medicine.”

“Dad had told me how to extract a fish hook in case I ever got stuck by one,” she said simply. She didn’t want to discuss her EMT work and answer the inevitable questions about why she was no longer doing it, so she changed the subject. “I don’t remember Polly and your parents ever coming to Kill Devil Hills again after you went off to college,” she said.

“That’s right,” Rory said. He let out a long sigh and stretched. His T-shirt strained across his chest, and she looked away for the sake of her own sanity. “They stopped coming,” he said. “That’s when I realized they’d bought the cottage primarily for me, so I could get to spend time on the beach in the summer. But my parents never sold Poll-Rory. I’m sure they were hoping I might use it for my own family one day. Until this summer, that just wasn’t possible.”

“Why not?”

“Glorianne. My ex-wife.”

“She didn’t want to come here?”

“An understatement. She and I were very different. She was…” He looked toward the ocean for a moment, as though carefully selecting his words. “When I first met her, she was very young and shy and…unassuming. Her parents had been killed in an accident. They’d had little money and left lots of debts, so Glorianne had essentially nothing. She needed me, and I liked being needed. She changed over time, though. Once we had money, it was as though it all went to her head. I’d always wanted us to live in a middle-class neighborhood, with Zack attending public school and experiencing the sort of down-to-earth upbringing I’d had. Glorianne thought we should live in Beverly Hills and send Zack to a private school, since we could afford it. I didn’t want Zack to think that being famous and having money was more important than being honest and having good values.”

Rory paused before continuing. “So, the upshot was that we did live in a very nice upper-middle-class neighborhood and Zack did attend public schools, but I had to compromise. And that compromise took the form of where we vacationed. I would have loved to have spent all our summers here in Kill Devil Hills, but Glorianne hated the beach and she didn’t like the East Coast altogether. She always wanted to travel during the summer, and said that if I was going to limit Zack in what he could be exposed to during the year, then the least we could do was take him to Europe for the summer.” Rory looked perplexed, as though he was still amazed that his simple, unassuming wife could have changed so much. “So, that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said. “Till now, anyhow.”

“This summer with you should be good for Zack.”

Rory laughed. “He doesn’t seem to think so,” he said. “At least he’s doing a lot of complaining about it. But I do have hope. I think he’s already making some friends. He’s out on the beach right now.”

“Is that what ended your marriage?” she pried, curious. The article she’d read had claimed irreconcilable differences as the cause, and she’d always wondered. “Your disagreements over where to live and how to raise Zack?”

“And a million other things,” he said. “Actually, Polly turned out to be a big reason for the demise of my marriage,” Rory said.