“I can already feel Shelly tensing up,” Daria said. “I don’t think she’s eaten anything all day.”
“Did you give her a hard time about letting Zack and Kara use her room?” Rory asked.
“Not too hard,” Daria said. “By the time she got home last night, she was already getting nervous about the storm. I didn’t have the heart to upset her more.”
“Where do we go if we have to evacuate?” Rory asked. “Where do you usually go?”
“We’ll go to a motel in Greenville,” Daria said. “As a matter of fact, I’d better make reservations now, just in case we need them. Would you like me to make reservations for you and Zack, too?” She hoped he said yes. She wanted him close by.
“That would be great,” he said. “I guess I should get some plywood, huh? I’ve never done this before. I remember my father nailing wood over the windows, though.”
“Yes, you should. And take down the Poll-Rory sign so it doesn’t blow away. Move the porch and deck furniture inside.” She looked across the cul-de-sac at his cottage. “Put your garbage can inside, too, and anything else that might turn into a missile in the wind.”
“You’re starting to make me nervous now,” Rory said.
“I know.” She laughed. “My stomach hurts just thinking about it.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. She could see Zack and some of the other kids playing volleyball on the beach. Rory finally broke the silence.
“I had a talk with the Wheelers today,” he said.
“Oh. About Kara?”
“Well, I skirted the issue of Kara and Zack,” he said. “They think my son is a great guy. I’d best leave it at that.”
“He is a great guy,” Daria said. Then she realized what he had spoken to the Wheelers about. “Shelly,” she said. “You talked to them about Shelly.”
“Uh-huh.” Rory slouched down on the bench, his hands locked behind his head. “You’ll be pleased to know that they weren’t much help. As a matter of fact, all they succeeded in doing was rattling me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Mr. Wheeler thinks Shelly’s mother was Polly,” Rory said. “And guess who Mrs. Wheeler thinks is Shelly’s mother?”
Daria felt momentarily unnerved. What did Mrs. Wheeler know? “Who?” she asked.
“My mother.”
Daria laughed. The thought was bizarre. “You’re kidding. Why would she think that?”
Rory shrugged. “Well, she made a good point. My mother, I’m sure, was afraid of having any more children after Polly and I were born, fearing that another child might have Down’s syndrome. Mom would have been in her late forties by then, so if she had been pregnant, that would have been a realistic concern. Mrs. Wheeler suggested that my mother might have gotten pregnant and decided that leaving the baby on the beach was the way to go.”
“I don’t remember your mother all that well, but I can’t imagine her doing something like that,” Daria said.
“I don’t know,” Rory said. He unlocked his hands from behind his head, and leaned his elbows on his knees, looking out to sea. “It’s been bothering me all day,” he said. “She did have some psychological problems later on in her life. I didn’t think she had them then, but maybe they were already brewing. I mean, someone did it. Someone was a little crazy that night. I guess it could have been my mother as well as anyone else.”
He sounded despondent, and Daria rested her hand lightly on his back. The gesture felt awkward and alien to her, but it was the sort of thing he would do, and she knew how good it felt to be comforted that way. It was the least she could do for him—or the least she was willing to do, at any rate. She had the ability to put his doubts to rest, completely and forever, but there was no way she could tell him what she knew.
“What would you do if you found out that it was Polly or your mother?” she asked. “Would you still do the story?”
“Are you kidding?” He turned his head to look at her. “No way.”
“Then I’m asking you,” she said gently, “to remember that the woman you’re trying to expose might also be someone else’s sister or someone else’s mother, and people can be hurt by the information you uncover.”
Rory studied his bare feet. She could not see his face.
“Most likely it was Cindy,” she continued, “and she probably has a family who would be devastated by learning about Shelly. You need to—”
“Oh,” Rory interrupted her, sitting up straight again. “I found out where Cindy is.”
“You did?” This was news Daria did not want to hear.
“Right. The Wheelers said she lives up in Corolla with her husband and kids.”
“I didn’t know that.” Daria had no idea Cindy still lived in the Outer Banks. “Are you going to talk with her?”
“Absolutely,” Rory said. “I’d get on it right now, if it weren’t for the storm coming up. But I figure I’d better spend tomorrow battening down the hatches.”
“Good idea,” Daria said, still shaken by the news about Cindy. It had been easy to pin the blame on Cindy when she was little more than a hazy figure from the past. Knowing that she was a living, breathing woman just up the coast a few miles was something else again.
37
THE LUMBERYARD SMELLED OF WOOD AND WORRY AS RORY and Zack fought their way through the crowd. Everyone was buying sheets of plywood to cover the windows of their vulnerable homes, and Rory overheard many of them grumbling about ruined vacations, lost revenue from their rental properties and how long it was going to take to drive over the bridge to escape the Barrier Islands.
He and Zack tied the plywood to the top of the Cruiser, then headed back to the cul-de-sac. The sky was still clear, the sea still calm, when they reached Poll-Rory. Across the street, Daria and Chloe were closing the storm shutters on the Sea Shanty, and Rory waved to them as he and Zack unloaded the plywood. They rested it against the side of the cottage facing the ocean, near the windows most in need of protection, then Rory went into the cottage to get a couple of hammers and some nails.
The phone rang as he was pulling the toolbox from the storage closet. He’d left a phone message for Cindy Trump about the possibility of getting together in a couple of days, and he figured she was returning his call. He picked up the receiver.
“Rory?” It was Grace. He had not spoken to her since the other night, when he’d confronted her with her lies. He was glad to hear her voice.
“Hi, Grace,” he said. “Are you getting ready to evacuate down there?”
She hesitated. “That’s why I was calling,” she said. “Eddie—my husband—and I usually go to a hotel on the mainland, but I can’t go with him. I just can’t.” Her voice quivered.
“Maybe it would be good,” Rory said, although he would rather she were with him. “Maybe the two of you need some enforced time together.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere near him,” she said. She hesitated a moment. “I wanted to find out where you were going to be,” she added.
“Zack and I are getting a room in a motel in Greenville,” he said. “We’re leaving early tomorrow morning.”
“Is that…is that where Daria will be, too?”
“Yes. And Chloe and Shelly.”
“Do you think it’s too late for me to get a room there? Would you mind if I’m there?”
Maybe she was ready to talk with Daria about her daughter’s death, he thought. Maybe that’s why she’d asked if Daria was going to be there. He didn’t want to deprive her of that opportunity.
“Of course not,” he said. “But it’s so far for you to—”
“I want to, Rory.”
“All right.” He heard hammering on the side of the cottage and was surprised that Zack would start covering the windows without him. He gave her the name and phone number of the motel. “I’ll see you there,” he said.
Daria handed her hammer to Zack, and while she and Chloe held the sheet of plywood in place, Zack pounded nails into the wo
odwork. Rory walked out of the cottage, and she saw the surprise in his face at finding her and Chloe there.
“Hey, thanks,” he said, helping her lift another sheet of wood in place. He looked toward the ocean, and she followed his gaze. The sea was glassy and calm, and the blue sky was reflected in the water. It was still hard to imagine that something foreboding lurked beyond the horizon.
Rory shook his head. “Are you sure we’re not wasting our time with this?” he asked her.
“Unfortunately, I’m sure,” she said.
“The storm is picking up speed as it heads this way,” Chloe said. Chloe was merely being neighborly, coming over to help Rory with the windows. Daria knew the gesture changed nothing about her ill feelings toward him.
“I just can’t believe the ocean could get up as far as our cottage,” Zack said.
The sheet of plywood in place, Daria lowered her arms to her sides and faced Zack. “When your dad and I were little, there was a cottage right there.” She pointed to the sea-oat-covered sand where Cindy Trump’s cottage had once stood. “A storm swept it away. It could make our cottages disappear just as easily.”
“Scary,” Zack said.
“Yes, indeed,” Daria said. Her stomach still had that unsettled, agitated feeling that always dogged her when a storm was heading to Kill Devil Hills, but she knew her anxiety was nothing compared to Shelly’s. Backing away from the windows for a moment, she stood at the edge of Poll-Rory’s porch, looking north and south along the beach. Shelly was out there somewhere, walking. She’d grown very quiet and pensive over the last twenty-four hours, and Daria knew it was not the storm itself that terrified her; it was the prospect of leaving her beloved Outer Banks.
“Does everybody have to leave?” Zack asked as he helped Chloe lift another sheet of plywood against the cottage. “Is that what they mean by ‘mandatory’?”
“They always say ‘mandatory,’” Chloe said. “But what it really means is, if you stay behind, you’re on your own. There might be no services available to help you in an emergency.”
“Does anyone stay?” Zack asked.
“There are always people who think they’re being brave to stay behind,” Chloe said, “but they’re really being foolish. Some of the emergency workers will still be here, but even they—the sheriff’s department and the ambulances—aren’t allowed on the streets once the wind hits sixty miles per hour. It’s too dangerous.”
Daria and Rory hammered the plywood into place, and when they stood back from their work, Rory looked at her.
“Grace is planning to meet us at the motel,” he said.
She wondered if her disappointment showed on her face. “Why would she come all the way to Greenville?” she asked.
“Well—” Rory stepped back from the window to admire their work “—two reasons, I think. One, she doesn’t want to be with her husband. And two, I think she wants to talk with you. She asked me specifically if you would be there.”
Great, Daria thought. Once on the mainland, she would have to worry not only about the fate of the Sea Shanty and the well-being of her anxious, phobic sister, but she would have to answer Grace’s questions about an accident she could not honestly discuss.
Rory must have picked up her dismay. “Maybe I should have told her not to come,” he said.
“It’ll be all right,” Daria said, and she helped Zack lift the next sheet of plywood into place.
That night they packed their suitcases, carried Daria’s tools into the cottage from the first-story workroom and brought the porch furniture inside. Shelly threw up half the night, and Daria felt nearly as sick.
Early the following morning, she sat up in bed and looked out the window toward the ocean. The waves were distinctly swollen and frothy, the sea oats blew nearly parallel to the sand, and the sky was low and thick with bloated gray clouds. Even in her room, Daria felt that shift in the atmosphere that was so hard to describe but so clearly an indicator that the storm was well on its way. The air seemed to lack oxygen; it was hard to breathe.
She dressed quickly and went downstairs, where Chloe was making a fruit salad for breakfast.
“Where’s Shelly?” Daria asked. Shelly was usually first up in the morning and her absence sent an instant chill up Daria’s spine.
“I haven’t seen her,” Chloe said. “I told her last night that she should be ready to leave by eight this morning.”
It was already seven-thirty.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Daria said.
Chloe looked up from the peach she was slicing. “Maybe she’s on the beach,” she suggested. “One last chance to gather shells before the storm.”
“I’m going upstairs to see if she’s at least packed.” With a mounting sense of dread, Daria climbed the stairs. Her knock on Shelly’s door was not answered, and she went into the room. Shelly’s bed was neatly made, but there was no sign of a suitcase. Maybe she hadn’t packed yet. Then Daria spotted the note taped to the mirror above Shelly’s dresser. She moved closer to read it.
Go on without me, it read. I’ll be all right.
38
DARIA AND CHLOE SET OFF IN ONE DIRECTION ON THE BEACH, while Rory and Zack headed in the other. “If Shelly’s out here, we’ll find her,” Rory had reassured her. Daria had alerted them to Shelly’s disappearance after combing the Sea Shanty from top to bottom. She’d looked in the workroom, the closets and under the beds, but Shelly was nowhere to be found. Pete had been right, she thought. Shelly’s judgment was atrocious. She needed more supervision than Daria was able to give her. There were still a few hearty souls on the beach, dressed in windbreakers, their hair whipping around their heads as they stared out to sea to watch the sky darken and the water churn. Daria and Chloe didn’t speak as they walked. It was too difficult; the wind threw their words back in their faces. Even walking itself was a chore, and it distressed Daria to think that Shelly might be out here somewhere, expecting to weather the storm alone on the beach. But by the time she and Chloe had thoroughly scoured the beach to the south, and Rory and Zack to the north, Daria was convinced her sister was not on the beach, after all. Those few people who had been out to watch the storm’s approach had disappeared as well by then, wisely heeding the warnings to leave the Outer Banks.
She searched the Sea Shanty once again, checking the nooks and crannies, peering inside her car and Chloe’s car and Rory’s Cruiser. It was close to noon, and Jill and her family, Linda, Jackie and the dogs had long since left the cul-de-sac. Only the Wheelers remained, and they were packing up their minivan and station wagon, filling them with suitcases and kids.
Daria stood on the bare porch with Rory, a well of frustration in her chest. Her hair was thick and woolly as it blew around her face, and she tightened her windbreaker across her chest. “You and Zack need to get out of here,” she said to Rory.
“What are you going to do?” Rory asked.
“I’m not leaving until I find her,” Daria said. She felt the quivering of her chin, betraying her worry, and Rory reached out to squeeze her arm.
“I’m not going, either, then.” He glanced down the cul-de-sac toward the Wheelers’ cottage. “Let me see if Zack can go with them. It would thrill him, I’m sure. Then I can stay behind.”
“You really should go,” she said, although she desperately wanted him to stay. “We might not be able to get out of here, and it could get dangerous. And won’t Grace be expecting you to show up at the motel?”
“Yes, but at least she’ll be safe. I can’t leave without knowing that Shelly is, too.” He looked toward the Wheelers’ cottage again. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
She watched him walk down the cul-de-sac to the Wheelers’ cottage, where he spoke with Ruth Wheeler. Tears burned Daria’s eyes; she wanted him to stay so badly. After a minute, he walked back to Poll-Rory, and she guessed he was asking Zack if he would mind going with the Wheelers. She was still standing on the porch when Zack emerged from the cottage, carrying a duffel
bag. He waved to Daria as he started walking toward the Wheelers’, and Rory rejoined her on the porch. “Okay,” he said. “I’m yours as long as you need me.”
Chloe stepped out of the cottage onto the porch. “I bet she’s holed up in one of the abandoned cottages,” she said. “She could be right across the street, for all we know. I think we should go door-to-door.”
Chloe could be right. Shelly had done exactly that during a storm a few years earlier. She knew enough to get inside somewhere. Would she know enough to select a cottage as far from the beach as possible? It was anyone’s guess. She could be anywhere. “If she is in a cottage somewhere, and we knock on the door, she won’t answer it,” she said.
“We won’t knock, then,” Chloe said. “We’ll just snoop around the cottages and see if we can spot her.”
“I’ll start with Jill’s,” Rory said. “Then let’s split up to cover the streets on the other side of the beach road.”
“Look for a light on,” Daria said as she walked into the cul-de-sac with them. She pulled up the hood of her windbreaker, holding it closed with a hand beneath her chin. It had grown so dark outside that she could barely see the expressions on the faces of Rory and her sister. Shelly was not crazy about the dark. She would turn on a light if she had sequestered herself in someone’s cottage.
Only, there were no lights on. They searched Jill’s and Linda’s cottages, then separately covered six streets west of the beach road. Every single cottage was dark. It might as well be the dead of winter, Daria thought. There was no one around. Not even any cars. The wind literally blew her off her feet from time to time and made her eyes tear. A few shingles flew past her as she walked, along with a child’s plastic pail and the lid of a garbage can, projectiles being flung through the darkening air.
The rain had started, and it felt like darts against her face as she fought her way back to the Sea Shanty. Rory and Chloe were already on the porch, and any hope she’d had that one of them had found Shelly vanished when she saw the look of defeat on their faces. She started to cry, and was surprised when Rory put his arms around her.
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