“What did she want?” Zack actually sounded interested.
“She said she knows I try to solve old mysteries on True Life Stories and that I’d lived near where she was found. She said she always wanted to know who her mother was and asked if I could try to figure it out.” He glanced at Zack again. “The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it,” he continued. “I’d always wondered about that incident, especially lately. You know how we’ve been hearing about all these teenage girls having their babies and trying to flush them down toilets or leave them in Dumpsters as if they were nothing more than a Popsicle wrapper? Doesn’t it make you angry when you hear things like that?” He didn’t wait for a response from Zack; he didn’t expect one. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that sort of cruelty. When I hear those stories on the news, it makes me remember that baby. Shelly, her name is.”
“So, where does this…Shelly live?” Zack asked.
“She was adopted by the family of the girl who found her, and apparently she still lives in the house on the cul-de-sac.” He tried to remember the name of that cottage, but failed. “At least, that was the return address on the envelope.” Shelly had given him very little information. It had been a short letter—more of a plea, actually. “She was only about three years old the last time I saw her.” Rory remembered a slender little girl with long platinum hair and large, brown eyes. Even as a teenager, he’d thought it was odd to see that leggy little waif living in the midst of the dark, exotic-looking Cato family. He’d forgotten her name until receiving the letter, remembering only that it was Sandy or Shelly, something to do with the beach. “I never wrote back to her,” Rory said. “I thought I’d surprise her, instead.”
The long bridge across Currituck Sound was directly ahead of them, and Rory felt a rush of excitement. “Kitty Hawk is on the other side of this bridge,” he said to Zack. “And right next to Kitty Hawk is Kill Devil Hills.”
After crossing the bridge, Rory spotted one of the milepost markers along the road and smiled. “People here locate things by the milepost markers,” he said. “Watch the side of the road, there. The next marker should be 3. Our cottage is between milepost 7 and 8.” He was secretly glad of the markers. He wasn’t sure he could remember where to turn, especially since the landmarks had changed drastically since he’d last been here.
“There’s 3,” Zack said.
“Uh-huh.” Rory could not help but feel some disappointment at what he was seeing. This portion of the Outer Banks was overgrown. The landscape was dotted with the trademark cottages on stilts, the main road was littered with shops and restaurants, and there were far too many people and cars.
“What’s that?” Zack pointed ahead of them in the distance and Rory saw the obelisk jutting up from one of the hills after which Kill Devil Hills was named.
“It’s the Wright Brothers’ Memorial,” Rory said. “This is where they took their first flight, over a hundred years ago.”
“That’s cool,” Zack acknowledged, as if finally admitting there might be some small reason to like this place.
After passing milepost 7, Rory turned the Cruiser toward the ocean and drove a short distance to the beach road. He turned right, hoping that was the correct choice, and in a moment he saw the cul-de-sac on his left.
“Here we are,” he said, turning into the short, broad cul-de-sac. After the jarring sights on Route 158, he felt enormous relief. The cul-de-sac looked the same as it had when he was a child, and nostalgia washed over him. The same handful of cottages was there—less one. The cottage at the end of the cul-de-sac, the one built right on the beach, was gone. Cindy Trump’s cottage. He could picture her even more readily than he could her cottage. She’d been a couple of years older than him, with sun-bleached hair, a killer tan and the skimpiest bikini in Kill Devil Hills.
His eyes were drawn to his old summer home, the last of the three cottages on the right. He laughed. “Well,” he said to his son, “looks like we now own beachfront property. There used to be one cottage between ours and the beach, but that’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Zack asked.
“Into the sea, I’d imagine,” Rory said. “Probably went in during a storm.”
Rory pulled into the driveway of his old home. The cottage looked the same, except cleaner, freshly painted. The rental agency was doing a good job taking care of it.
“Poll-Rory.” Zack read the sign above the front door. “Was that you and Aunt Polly?”
Rory looked at the sign himself. It was not the same old wooden sign from his youth; this one had white lettering on a blue background. But it surprised him to see any sign at all after so many years.
“That’s right,” he said. “My parents named the cottage after us.” He felt a pinprick of pain in his heart. Staying here was going to bring back many memories of his sister.
Looking across the cul-de-sac at the Catos’ cottage, he saw that a sign still hung above their porch door as well. The Sea Shanty. Yes. That had been the name of their cottage. It was no shanty, though. It was the largest cottage on the cul-de-sac, rising three stories above its stilts, and stained a light taupe color. Above the third story was the widow’s walk, where he and Daria used to play when they were small.
“God, we’re right on the beach,” Zack said, opening the car door. “I’m going to go check it out.” He took off toward the water, and Rory let him go.
Getting out of the Cruiser, Rory noticed the two cars in the Sea Shanty driveway and wondered who they belonged to. Were Mr. and Mrs. Cato still living? How did they feel about Shelly’s desire to track down her roots? Would Chloe be around? Growing up, Chloe had been clearly out of his league. She’d had a bunch of boyfriends, all of whom Rory, in his adolescent yearning, had envied. Three years older than him and in college by the time she was sixteen, Chloe had been knockout gorgeous, with dark eyes and long, wavy black hair. All the Cato girls had that same thick, dark hair. Ellen—she was the cousin, if he was remembering correctly—had been pretty as well, but her cute facade had hidden a mean-spiritedness that had scared him at times. He suddenly remembered an incident he hadn’t thought about in years. He’d been about thirteen, sitting with Ellen and a group of kids on the beach. He was watching an attractive girl walking along the water’s edge, when Ellen saw fit to point out to the rest of the group that he had an erection. He’d rolled rapidly onto his stomach, hating Ellen and her big mouth. Even now, he cringed remembering that moment.
Then there had been Daria, his little buddy, the girl who could run faster, swim better and catch bigger fish than he could. She’d been three years younger than him, but she’d been his competitor, nevertheless. He’d always pretended that he was letting her win at whatever they attempted. Inside, though, he’d been filled with admiration for her. He wondered what had become of the three Cato girls.
He opened the back of the Cruiser and pulled out two of the suitcases. He carried them up to the porch, then took a moment to look toward the ocean himself, breathing in the still-familiar scent of the beach he loved. It would be a good summer. He was in one of the finest places on earth, about to delve into an intriguing story, and he had Zack with him. Zack would come away from this summer with a healthy tan, sun-kissed hair and his good values restored. And with, Rory hoped, renewed love for his father. He could hope for the moon, couldn’t he?
3
THE LAUNDRY BASKET WAS FULL OF DARIA’S CLEAN WORK clothes—several pairs of shorts and a dozen T-shirts—and she dumped them onto her bed and began folding. She had the windows wide-open, and a warm ocean breeze lifted the blue and white curtains and sent them floating into the room like the wings of a tired gull. It was the sort of early-summer day that used to make her feel light and carefree, but she no longer seemed capable of experiencing those feelings.
She carried the stack of folded shirts across the room and set them on top of the dresser. Pulling open the dresser drawer, she took out the photograph she kept tucked beneath her T-shirts. She step
ped closer to the window to study it, as she did nearly every time she opened that drawer. The picture was of Pete. He was leaning against a split-rail fence at a friend’s house in Manteo, a beer in his hand, a five-o’clock shadow on his face, and he was grinning at her, the photographer. His dark hair, as smooth and straight as hers was full and wavy, fell over his forehead. It was torture to look at the picture, and yet she did it anyway, over and over again. He’d been a part of her life and her future for six years. Now he was only a part of her past, and it was taking her longer than she liked to get used to that fact.
She replaced the picture, then lowered the stack of T-shirts on top of it and returned to the bed and the laundry basket, but her mind was still back with the photograph. Pete and his callous feelings about Shelly were linked together in her mind with the night of the plane crash, the night the young female pilot died. For two months now, Daria had been visited by that pilot’s last moments in her nightmares. She could not seem to free herself from the young woman’s pleading gaze.
That morning, she’d received a call from her old Emergency Medical Services supervisor, a call she’d half expected but had hoped would never come. They were pulling her off CISD duty, he said, and she’d winced as though he’d slapped her in the face. She’d worked as a critical incident stress debriefer for five years. After traumatic incidents anywhere in the county, she’d be called in to help distraught emergency technicians cope with what they’d endured. Now she was the distraught technician. Her supervisor summed it up for her when she begged him to reconsider. “If you can’t manage your own stress,” he said, “how do you expect to be able to help someone else with theirs?”
She was finishing folding the shorts when her gaze was drawn through the window to the cottage across the cul-de-sac, where this week’s vacationers were moving into Poll-Rory. Something made her move closer to the window, brushing aside the billowing curtain, to stare hard at the newcomers. A man and a teenage boy were unpacking a blue SUV in the driveway. Even from that distance, and even though she hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years, she knew the man was Rory Taylor. She’d watched every game the Rams had played on television when he’d been with them, and she’d watched him on True Life Stories for years. She had given up on his ever returning to Poll-Rory, though, especially now that both his parents were dead. He probably had more glamorous vacation spots in which to spend his free time. Yet here he was. Most likely, that was his son with him. She had read he’d gotten a divorce.
For some reason, the first memory that came to mind was of a hayride they’d gone on with some of the neighborhood kids. Her father was the group chaperon, and Rory, who must have been about twelve and full of early-adolescent bathroom humor, told joke after joke that Daria had felt unable to laugh at because her devoutly religious father was along. Rory, of course, understood her predicament and tortured her with ever more raucous stories. The memory made her smile. Rory had been her best friend during the summers of her childhood. When she was ten or eleven, that friendship began turning into a genuine crush, on her part at least. But that’s when he began to snub her in favor of the older kids. She knew that she had never truly lost that attraction to him. When she watched True Life Stories, she was not simply excited by the fact that someone she had known had become a celebrity; she was excited by Rory himself.
Rory carried a suitcase across Poll-Rory’s sandy yard and up the front steps to the porch, and Daria noticed the slight limp in his gait. She remembered that he’d been injured playing football. That’s what had ended his career.
She watched until Rory and the boy disappeared inside the cottage for the last time, then she walked downstairs to the screened porch. Chloe was sitting in one of the three blue rockers, reading a book titled Summer Fun for Kids 5–15, and Shelly sat at the blue-painted picnic table, stringing shells for a necklace, her long, blond hair falling over her shoulders.
“Did you see who just moved into Poll-Rory?” Daria asked, more to Chloe than to Shelly. Shelly knew that the host and producer of True Life Stories was someone who used to live on the cul-de-sac, but she had been very small the last time she’d seen Rory, and it was unlikely she remembered him.
Chloe glanced across the street. “I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said. “Was it a man and a boy?”
For a moment, Daria wondered if she’d only seen what she wanted to see. But she remembered the man’s limp, the breadth of his shoulders, the sandy color of his hair.
“It was Rory Taylor,” she said.
“Really?” Shelly asked. “True Life Stories Rory Taylor?”
Chloe said nothing. She stared across the street.
“I’m sure it was him,” Daria said.
“Why would he come here?” Chloe asked.
“Well, he still owns the cottage,” Daria said.
Chloe stared at Poll-Rory a moment longer before lowering her gaze to her book. Rory’s return was probably of little interest to her, Daria thought. Chloe had been older than Rory; she had not known him well. She had not looked forward to spending time with him every day during the summers of her childhood.
“Let’s go say hi to him.” Shelly started to stand up.
Daria felt instantly intimidated. He probably would have little memory of her. How full his life had been since the last time she’d seen him, while here she was, still firmly rooted in Kill Devil Hills.
“Let’s give them a chance to settle in first,” she said, glancing across the street once more before walking into the cottage to finish folding her laundry.
4
DAYLIGHT WAS FADING, AND RORY FELT THE PINCH OF A mosquito bite. If he and Zack stayed on the deck much longer, they would need to light the citronella candle. They’d eaten dinner on the rear deck, which jutted from the second story of the cottage and gave them a view of the ocean to the east as well as the sun falling over the sound to the west. Between Poll-Rory and the sound, though, were many, many cottages. Far more than Rory remembered. Still, little could ruin his pleasure at being in Kill Devil Hills.
They’d eaten carryout North Carolina barbecue for dinner—one of those culinary delicacies he’d been craving ever since deciding to make this trip.
“Let’s have takeout every night,” Zack said, closing the disposable box and lifting a can of soda to his lips.
“Well, a few times a week, anyhow,” Rory said. The truth was, he loved to cook, and two years of cooking primarily for himself had grown old. He was looking forward to spending time in Poll-Rory’s rudimentary kitchen this summer.
“This is crazy,” Zack said, looking above him at the darkening sky. “I’m never going to get used to East Coast time.”
“You will,” Rory said, although they had eaten dinner very late because their stomachs still thought they were back in L.A. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll have breakfast at nine, and then we’ll be on track.”
“Nine? Forget it. It’s summer. I’m sleeping in.”
“Okay,” Rory said. This was not worth arguing about. “You can sleep as much as you like.” He slapped a mosquito on his thigh. “I’m going across the cul-de-sac to see the neighbors,” he said. “Want to join me?”
“I saw some kids over on the beach before you got back with dinner,” Zack said. “Think I’ll go see if they’re still there.”
Well, at least Zack wasn’t shy. Or maybe he simply wanted to get away from his father for a while after this long day of togetherness.
“Okay,” Rory said. “I’ll see you later.”
Rory walked down the steps from the deck, through the cottage, and out to his sandy front yard. The warm, humid air smelled strongly of the sea, and he couldn’t shake a sudden bittersweet wave of nostalgia as he walked across the cul-de-sac. The screened porch light was on at the Sea Shanty, and as he neared the cottage, he saw a blond-haired woman inside, sitting in one of the rocking chairs, engrossed in something on her lap. She stood up when she spotted him and walked to the porch door.
“Hi,” Ro
ry said. “Are you Shelly?”
“Sure am.” The woman pushed open the screen door. “And you’re Rory,” she said.
“Right.” Still standing in the sand, he put his hands on his hips and cocked his head to study her. Her smile was wide, her teeth straight and white, and she was very pretty. Her long hair was a silky, pale blond. “You were about three years old the last time I saw you.”
“Well, you were about thirty-five the last time I saw you.” She grinned. “I saw you just the other night on True Life Stories.”
He laughed. “Thirty-six,” he said.
“I don’t remember you from when I was little,” Shelly said. “Daria and Chloe remember you, though.”
“Who are you talking to, Shelly?” A female voice came from the living room, beyond the porch.
“Are they here?” Rory asked. “Daria and Chloe?”
“Yes, they’re inside. Come in.” She stood back to let him walk past her onto the porch, and he noticed she was tall—nearly as tall as he was. “Did you get my letter?” she asked in a near whisper.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Oh, thank you!” She gave him a quick, sideways hug, then led him into the living room.
“Rory Taylor’s here,” Shelly announced to the woman who was sitting on the couch, a book on her lap.
It took him a minute to recognize the woman as Chloe. She rested the book on the couch and stood up. “Hello, Rory,” she said.
She was still beautiful, although she looked quite different from the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was very short, capping her head in dark curls. She looked like a Greek goddess.
“Hi, Chloe,” he said. He wanted to move forward to give her a hug, but her stance, stiff and uninviting, kept him rooted near the door. The sound of an electric saw came from somewhere in the cottage, and he wondered if Mr. Cato was still building furniture in the Sea Shanty’s workshop.