Summer's Child

  He looked surprised, as well he should, since he had said nothing to make her think that. “No, and I sure hope it doesn’t come to that. Though right now we may as well be. She’s staying in an apartment above our garage. I’m just hoping some time to herself is going to make a difference.”

  “I hope so,” she said absently. No wonder Grace never wanted Rory to come to Rodanthe to see her.

  Daria stood up. “I’d better let you get back to work,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “I’m glad you came,” Eddie said, standing himself. “It makes me feel like Pamela had the best chance possible, knowing somebody like you was there. Somebody who really cared.”

  Daria wrote her phone number on a pad lying on the desk. “Please call me if you need to talk again.” Or if your wife needs to talk, she should add. But of course, she could not.

  Outside the café, Daria sat in her car, turning on the ignition only long enough to lower all the windows, not yet ready to drive. What the hell was going on with Grace? Was that why she was so pathologically attentive to Shelly? Was she trying to replace the daughter she’d lost? With a horrified jolt, she wondered if Grace might somehow know about Shelly’s role in Pamela’s death. She tried to follow that thought to its logical conclusion: Grace had somehow found out what Shelly had done at the scene of the accident. Then she plotted to meet Shelly, and now, perhaps, was planning to harm her in some way as retribution. “That’s crazy,” she said out loud. Her imagination was running away with her. But what else was she to think? One thing she knew for certain was that Grace Martin—Grace Fuller—was a liar. Should she tell Rory? She had to. She couldn’t keep this from him. For all she knew, Grace was simply using Rory to get close to Shelly.

  Driving home in a daze, glad the route was a straight shot and required little of her attention, she tried to puzzle out, not only what Grace was up to, but what she could do about it.

  She pulled into the driveway of the Sea Shanty just as Shelly walked into the yard from the beach, and all of Daria’s protective instincts kicked into gear at the sight of her. Grace better not harm a hair on her head, she thought.

  “Hi, Shell,” she said as she got out of the car.

  Shelly mumbled a greeting and reached for the door, and Daria could see that her face was red.

  “Shelly?” Daria started walking toward the house. “What’s wrong?”

  Shelly froze, her hand on the knob of the screen door. “Nothing,” she said.

  Daria caught up to her. Shelly had definitely been crying. “Oh, sweetie.” She put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “What’s got you so upset?”

  Shelly hesitated, then sat down heavily on the front steps. Daria sat down with her, her arm still around her shoulders.

  “I’m afraid,” Shelly said.

  “Of what?” Daria asked.

  Shelly frowned. She looked down in her lap, where she was pressing her fingers together so firmly that the knuckles were white. “That Father Sean is going to kill himself.”

  Daria almost laughed. Where had Shelly come up with this one? “Why would you think that, honey?” she asked.

  Shelly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know it sounds silly. I just started thinking it while I was out walking.”

  “Well, sometimes our imaginations can run away with us, huh?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  It was unlike Shelly to be this distressed unless she was facing a trip away from the Outer Banks. “You know Father Macy would never do anything like that, don’t you?” Daria asked.

  Shelly shrugged, her gaze still glued to her fingers.

  “He’s a Catholic priest, for heaven’s sake, Shelly. He’s the last person you would expect to commit suicide.”

  Shelly pressed her lips together. She looked up at Daria and forced a weak smile. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  Daria studied her sister’s face. Her eyes were truly red, her nose a bit swollen. “You don’t usually have unpleasant fantasies like that,” she said.

  “I know,” Shelly said. “But I think I’m over it now.”

  Daria laughed. “That was quick,” she said. This was just another of Shelly’s peculiar, wayward thoughts. “Tomorrow, we’ll go watch the hang-gliding competition, and maybe Father Macy will win. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  The weak smile again. “Yeah,” Shelly agreed, and Daria was not at all certain her sister was “over it,” as she’d said.

  She looked across the street at Poll-Rory. “I need to go have a chat with Rory.”

  “He’s not home,” Shelly said, and Daria realized the blue SUV was not in the driveway.

  “Do you know where he is?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Shelly said. “I talked to Jill earlier today, and she said that she and Rory were taking Zack and Jason out to dinner and a movie.”

  Dinner and a movie. What time would he be home? She was anxious to tell him what she’d learned in Rodanthe.

  30

  DARIA SHADED HER EYES AND LOOKED UP TOWARD THE crest of the tallest dune on Jockey’s Ridge. The dune was covered by a sea of spectators, and above their heads, a hang glider dipped and turned in the air.

  “How are we ever going to find them?” Andy said as they stopped climbing to survey the scene.

  “I told them I’d meet them as close to the crest as I could get, so they should be watching for me,” she said.

  The hang-gliding competition was about an hour into its run, and Daria had planned to meet Shelly, Chloe, Ellen and Ted when she got off work. Even though it was Saturday, she and Andy had put in a couple of hours this morning. When she was ready to leave the job, Andy asked if he could go with her to the dunes. She’d readily agreed. Andy always seemed a bit lonely to her. He had friends on the crew, but he didn’t seem to socialize much with them outside of work.

  “Daria!”

  Daria looked up to see Rory standing near the crest of the dune, waving at her. She spotted Shelly and Chloe with him, and as she and Andy made their way through the crowd, she saw that Ellen and Ted were there as well. Zack and Kara sat a short distance away, so close to one another, that at first, Daria thought they were one person. It was a minute before she noticed Grace sitting next to Rory. Damn. She would have no chance to tell Rory what she’d learned in Rodanthe the day before. She wondered if Grace’s husband had spoken to her about Daria’s visit. Did Grace now realize that Daria had been at the plane crash? Or, she thought with a shiver, had she known it all along?

  They’d saved just enough room on the sand for Daria, but Andy managed to squeeze in between her and Shelly. Daria introduced him to Grace, the only person in their party he didn’t know, and Grace smiled warmly at him. Her husband hadn’t told her, Daria thought. If he had, surely she could not sit here looking so innocent. Grace was wearing long white pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, white visor and blue sunglasses. She wasn’t taking any chances on getting too much sun.

  “I was afraid you were going to miss Father Sean.” Shelly leaned across Andy to speak to Daria.

  “When does he go up?” Daria asked.

  “I think there’s a couple more before him,” Shelly said.

  The day was beautiful. There was a gentle breeze off the ocean, just enough to give the gliders the lift they needed as they performed their intricate maneuvers to the delight of the crowd. But Daria had trouble concentrating. She was aware of Grace speaking to Shelly, although she couldn’t hear what was being said.

  Leave my sister alone, Daria thought. There was something creepy about Grace’s attentiveness to Shelly now that Daria knew the truth about her. And she knew Grace annoyed Shelly with her incessant questions. She wished she were sitting next her sister, so she could save her.

  “There’s Sean.” Chloe pointed to the highest ridge on the dune, where a man was attaching his harness to a glider. They were quite a distance from him, and Daria marveled at the fact that Chloe was able to identify him. S
ean adjusted his helmet, tugged at his harness, and most of the crowd turned in his direction to watch him prepare for his takeoff. Grace turned away from the priest to say something to Shelly. The breeze lifted her bangs from her forehead for a few seconds, and Daria saw the unmistakable widow’s peak—the same widow’s peak that had marked her daughter, Pamela.

  Father Macy took a few awkward steps backward with his glider. Then he ran toward the edge of the dune, the glider above his shoulders, and took off, lifting gently into the sky to the “oohs” and “aahs” of the crowd. “Go for the gold, Father M!” someone shouted. The priest was the undisputed favorite of the locals in the crowd.

  Daria felt the sun on her face as she watched the priest and his glider slip effortlessly into the sky, flying higher than any of the other gliders had flown since her arrival on the dunes. A burst of applause swept over the dunes, and people waited in anticipation for his first maneuver. But then, suddenly, his glider appeared to stall. It hung motionless in the air, as still as the sun in the sky above them. Was this part of his performance?

  “What’s he doing?” Andy asked, but before anyone could answer, the colorful triangle of fabric pitched forward, soaring toward the ground in a nosedive. Daria jumped to her feet, horrified, as the glider and priest crashed headfirst into the sand at the bottom of the dunes.

  Screams and gasps erupted from the crowd, and Daria hesitated only a moment before pushing her way through the throng, running down the dune toward the priest. She was vaguely aware of Chloe on one side of her, Andy on the other. Were there other EMTs in the crowd? There had to be. Please, let there be someone here to help me.

  People were huddled in a circle around the priest. “Don’t move him!” she called out as she slid the rest of the way down the dune on the seat of her shorts. The sand burned the backs of her thighs.

  “It’s Daria Cato,” someone said. “Get out of her way.”

  Daria broke through the circle of people to reach the injured priest. She dropped to her knees next him, but knew in an instant that moving him would not make a difference, either to help or to harm. His head was twisted at a sharp angle to his shoulders. She pressed her fingers against his throat, in what she knew was a futile effort to locate a pulse. Behind her, a child began to cry.

  Chloe fell to her knees on the other side of the priest, then looked at her sister. “Is there anything you can do?” she asked.

  Daria shook her head. “His neck is broken.” Her mouth was dry; the words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  Chloe lifted the priest’s hand and held it between her own. Although she made no sound of weeping, tears flowed freely over her cheeks, and she prayed quietly over the fallen priest, as the wail of sirens filled the air.

  31

  SHELLY SAT NEXT TO DARIA IN THE HUSHED STILLNESS OF St. Esther’s Church as people took turns standing in front of the pulpit to speak in soft voices, paying tribute to Father Sean. The speakers’ faces were colored blue or green or pink by the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows. Chloe was one of the speakers, and her face had looked beautiful in the rose-colored light. She sat in the front pew of the church with the other speakers, while Shelly and Daria sat a few pews back. Chloe had already spoken, dry-eyed, about the important role Father Sean had played in the lives of the Cato family since coming to St. Esther’s twenty-four years ago. The fact that Chloe was able to say all she did without crying was pretty amazing, but it didn’t surprise Shelly. Ever since the accident on the dunes, when Chloe had wept her heart out, she had been walking around in a daze, no emotion at all on her face. Daria said she was in shock.

  Old Father Wayne was standing at the front of the church now, green light on his face, telling some anecdote about Father Sean that was obviously supposed to be funny. Some people chuckled, but Shelly had trouble concentrating on what the priest was saying. She was remembering Father Sean in her own way She remembered that during the cooler months of the year, Father Sean was full of life and laughter. He would tell her jokes—clean ones, of course. There was always a smile on his face. And then, summer would come, and he would lose his smile. It happened every year. Shelly had come to expect it, to feel the arrival of summer with a certain dread. As joyful as it made her, she did not like the torment that the hot, sunny weather brought to the priest. She knew some people suffered from a kind of depression that came over them in the winter months. That was common. Father Sean had the opposite problem. And she was one of the few people who understood why.

  Daria pulled a tissue from her purse and blew her nose, and Shelly rested her cheek against her sister’s shoulder and patted her hand. “It’s all right, Dar,” she said, wanting to comfort her sister. For some reason, Daria’s suffering felt worst to her than her own. That’s the way it is when you love someone, Father Sean had said to her once. The worst time was after Pete broke up with Daria. Shelly had never particularly liked Pete. He was too wrapped up in himself, too selfish to deserve someone as good as Daria, and he had those stupid tattoos that made Shelly embarrassed to be seen with him in public. But Daria had loved him, so Shelly could not help but feel anger at him when he ended that relationship. How dare he hurt Daria? Daria had been so devastated that she’d even quit being an EMT. It was as though she’d quit living altogether, at least until Rory showed up.

  Everyone in the church suddenly moved forward to kneel on the padded benches, and Shelly joined them. She wasn’t paying attention to where they were in the service, but now that she was on her knees, she began to pray.

  She prayed that Daria and Rory might somehow get together.

  She prayed that she was indeed pregnant—although the thought of breaking that news to Daria was truly frightening.

  When she’d finished with those prayers, she focused all her concentration on the most important prayer of all: Dear Lord, please forgive Father Sean. She repeated this over and over again, praying very hard, because she was carrying the burden of that prayer alone. Everyone else thought that Father Sean’s death was an accident.

  She, alone, knew better.

  32

  DARIA FOUND RORY AFTER THE FUNERAL. HE’D SAT NEAR the rear of the church and waited for her outside afterward. His feelings about the priest were mixed, and Daria was pleased he had come at all. He knew how much Sean Macy meant to their family.

  Silently, Rory put one arm around her, the other around Shelly, and led them away from the church toward the parking lot. For some reason, the light, warm weight of his arm across her shoulders threatened to make her cry all over again. She breathed through her mouth to keep the tears in check.

  The events of the past few days had squelched her enthusiasm for telling him about Grace, yet she knew she still needed to fill him in on what she’d learned. Shelly was with them, though; once again, the timing wasn’t right. But Shelly was intuitive.

  “I feel like walking home,” she said, somehow picking up on Daria’s need for time alone with Rory.

  “Are you sure?” Daria asked. She didn’t think Shelly had yet come to terms with Father Macy’s death, and she was concerned about her.

  “I’m sure,” Shelly said. “I’m fine. I’ll see you at the Sea Shanty.”

  Daria watched her walk away from them, then turned to Rory. “Do you have your car here?”

  “Uh-huh. Do you?”

  “Yes. But…” She looked into his green eyes. He appeared to be studying her. “I need to talk with you,” she said. “Can we take my car and go somewhere? I can bring you back here after.”

  “Is this about Shelly again? About me researching—”

  “No,” she interrupted him. “No. This is something else.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Where are you parked?”

  She drove across the island to the sound, and they walked onto the pier where they had crabbed together a few weeks earlier. There were children on the pier this afternoon, crabbing, fishing, and threatening to push one another into the water. Daria and Rory walked past them to t
he pier’s end, where they took off their shoes and sat down in their good funeral clothes to dangle their legs above the water.

  Daria was not sure how to begin. “I never got to tell you how my visit went with the parents of the pilot,” she said.

  “I wondered about that,” Rory said. “But with Father Macy and everything, we haven’t really had a chance to talk.”

  She looked into the green-brown water. A crab swam just below the surface, slipping sideways through the water.

  “So?” Rory prompted. “How did it go?”

  She glanced at him, then looked back at the water. “There’s no easy way to say this,” she said, trying to warn him about what was coming. “Only the pilot’s father was there. I met with him at a little café he and his wife own. And as I talked with him, I realized that his wife—that the mother of the pilot—is Grace.”

  For a moment, Rory’s face was impassive. Then he suddenly seemed to understand what she was saying and turned toward her. “Grace?” he asked. “Grace Martin?”

  “That was my reaction, too,” Daria said. “I still don’t understand. I still don’t quite know what’s going on. She may go by the name Martin, but her husband’s name is Fuller. Eddie Fuller.”

  “Her ex-husband, you mean,” Rory said.

  She shook her head. “He referred to his wife as Grace, and then I saw a picture of her on his desk. I didn’t let on that I knew her. I asked if he and his wife were separated, and he said no. They aren’t getting along, though. She blames him for—”

  “Wait a minute,” Rory said. “Slow down, will you, please? Grace is separated. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit that to you.”

  One of the roughhousing young boys on the pier ran into them, and Rory told him to knock it off. It was the first sign of impatience she’d seen in him, and she knew how disturbed he was by what she was telling him.

  “That’s possible,” she said. “But I think he was telling me the truth. He said she’s living in the apartment above their garage, because she’s angry with him about their daughter’s—”