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 o
nly 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.
That surprised her. “Why?” she asked.
“Well, after my parents died, I took Polly in. I moved her from Richmond to California to live with us. I wanted Zack to get to know her,” he said. “I wanted him to understand that people with Down’s syndrome were still lovable and valuable. And I think that really did work. Zack got along well with Polly.” Rory looked up at the darkening sky, as if searching for the words. He returned his gaze to Daria. “But having Polly there put a terrific strain on Glorianne and me,” he said. “We were already shaky enough to begin with, and Glorianne always felt as though Polly was an intruder in her family. And Polly never really adapted to living on the West Coast or to losing our mother. Plus, she had cardiac problems and needed a lot of medical care, and making sure she took her medications and running her to doctors’ appointments just wasn’t Glorianne’s thing.”
“That must have been hard on you,” Daria sympathized, moved by the way Rory talked about his sister. She was struck by the similarities between Rory’s situation with his wife, and her situation with Pete. At least Glorianne had allowed Polly to move in with them. “I know by the way you talk about Polly that you understand how I feel about Shelly,” she said. “You must understand why I want to protect her.”
He nodded. “Of course I do, Daria,” he said. “But Shelly is very different from Polly. Shelly is still able to analyze a situation and make up her own mind as to what she wants.”
He was right, though only to a degree. She sighed. “I haven’t succeeded in getting you to change your mind, have I?” she asked, standing up.
“I’ll think about what you said,” he promised, “although I think the decision is ultimately up to Shelly.” He stood up as well and followed her to the stairs. They were quiet as they walked through the cottage.
“Is there a gym around here?” he asked when they neared the front door.
“There’s a health club,” she said. “A nice one. I go there a few times a week.” She told him where it was located and suggested he check into the summer fees.
They walked onto the porch. “Do you still beach-comb every morning like you did when you were a kid?” Rory asked.
Daria laughed. “I have to be on the job early in the morning these days,” she said. “And those mornings I’m not working, I’d rather sleep in.”
She looked through the screen door at the Sea Shanty. It was Shelly who loved the beach at dawn now. Shelly who sifted through the shells and basked in the sunrise, taking her energy from the sea. Daria could not, would not, let Rory or anyone else harm her sister’s world.
8
RORY SAT ON THE PORCH OF HIS COTTAGE, LISTENING TO THE breakers swell and collapse in a sleep-inducing rhythm as he watched for Shelly to leave the Sea Shanty. He planned to begin his research by talking with her. He felt almost as if he needed Daria’s permission to do so, especially after his conversation with her the day before, but Shelly was twenty-two years old, for heaven’s sake.
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A golden retriever sat next to him on the porch, her massive head resting comfortably on Rory’s knee. Rory buried his fingers in the dog’s thick coat, scratching her neck and behind her ears. He didn’t know where the dog had come from—she had simply appeared after Rory sat down on the porch—but he was glad for her company.
From the porch, he could see the ocean, but not the beach. He knew the beach would be crowded, though, and he knew Zack was part of the crowd. Zack was out there with his new friends. He’d had little to say when Rory questioned him about who he had met and who he was hanging out with. Zack was not about to admit that spending the summer in Kill Devil Hills might not be such a bad idea after all.
Rory thought he saw some movement on the Sea Shanty’s front porch, but no one emerged from the cottage. Since Daria’s visit, he’d considered her concerns, wondering if he should indeed go forward with his exploration of the past. He knew his motivation was mixed. Shelly had felt strongly enough to write to him about the situation, and given his link to her and his memory of the event, he had a personal desire to pursue the story. There was no doubt that the tale of a beautiful foundling would make a great episode on True Life Stories. Plus, the person who left the baby on the beach might finally have to face what she had done. He often wondered about that young woman. Had she just blindly, guiltlessly, gone on with her life? He knew he had a hostile attitude toward her, perhaps too much so. He was not ordinarily a punitive sort of guy, so that feeling surprised him, but the cruelty of her actions seemed unforgivable to him. Especially now that he had met Shelly and knew how close she had come to losing her chance at life. But what if the woman was remorseful and had been able to make a normal, healthy life for herself? What right did he have to disturb that?
Despite Daria’s protestations and his own misgivings, he felt that Shelly had the right to make the final decision. He needed to make sure she understood what she was getting into, though; that’s why he wanted to talk with her today. If Shelly still wanted him to pursue the story, he hoped Daria would eventually come around. He respected Daria and treasured the remnants of the childhood bond they’d shared. He would hate to spend the summer as her enemy.