Summer's Child (25 page)

T
HE LUMBERYARD SMELLED OF WOOD AND WORRY AS
R
ORY
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 woodwork. 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.

D
ARIA AND
C
HLOE 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.

“I’m sure she’s all right,” he said. “Chloe and I thought she might be at St. Esther’s.”

Daria suddenly drew away from him. St. Esther’s!

“I was just about to call over there,” Chloe said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Chloe went into the cottage to make the call, and Daria pictured Shelly hiding out in the church, where she would no doubt feel secure. Of course that’s where she was! She even had a key. The thought of her safe inside the church was an enormous comfort.

A car turned into the cul-de-sac, and Daria walked out to meet it, hoping that Shelly might somehow be inside. She had to plant her feet wide apart to avoid being blown away as the car pulled in front of the Sea Shanty. She recognized the sheriff’s-office insignia on the side of the car, and Don Tibble, one of the deputies, struggled to open the car door against the wind. He was alone, and she knew he was most likely driving around to make sure Kill Devil Hills was evacuated.

“Daria?” he asked. “Is that you?”

The hood of her windbreaker nearly masked her face. “It’s me,” she said. “Have you seen Shelly anywhere?”

Don leaned against the car, the wind tearing at his uniform. “Don’t tell me she’s gone missing again,” he said.

“Yes, and this time we can’t find her.”

“Golly, that girl,” Don said. “Well, you know you’ve got to get out of here now, Daria. The wind is just about too high to get over the bridge as it is. You’ve got maybe a half hour left.”

“I can’t leave without her, Don,” she said.

Don put his hands on his hips and looked past her into the Sea Shanty. “Is Sister Chloe with you?” he asked.

“Yes. And Rory Taylor.”

“Well, you at least have to move to a higher spot,” he said.

“I want to be here in case Shelly comes back,” Daria said. “I know the risks.”

“I know you do,” Don said. “Look, I’ll keep my eye out for her, okay? And I’ll alert the other deputies to do the same.”

“Thanks, Don.”

He glanced at the two cars in the driveway. “At least get your cars to higher ground.”

She hadn’t even thought of that, a sure sign her brain was not functioning as it should. “Okay,” she said.

Chloe stepped onto the porch. “Hi, Don,” she said.

“Hey, Sister,” the deputy replied. “I was telling Daria here you folks really need to leave.”

“Was anyone at the church?” Daria asked her sister.

“No answer.”

Daria turned to Don. “Is there a chance you could check St. Esther’s Church?” she asked. “We thought Shelly might be there. She’d probably be hiding from anyone trying to find her, though.”

“Bruce is patrolling that area,” Don said. “I’ll radio him to check it out.”

After Don drove away, Daria, Chloe and Rory moved their cars west of the deserted beach road. They plowed headfirst into the wind and rain as they walked back to the Sea Shanty, and it took both Rory and Daria to get the porch door open. Daria knew that once they were inside, they wouldn’t be going anywhere—and that the likelihood of Shelly being returned to them that night was slim. She could only hope that her younger sister was safe, sleeping peacefully on a pew in St. Esther’s.

They cracked the Sea Shanty windows open an inch or so, then gathered candles and a hurricane lantern in case the lights went out. Sitting together in the living room, they watched the progress of the storm on television. The weather reporter was drenched and windblown, even though he was now stationed on the mainland, having evacuated himself and his camera crew from the Outer Banks. The eye of the storm was headed for Hatteras, the reporter said. At least Kill Devil Hills would not get the full brunt of it. Still, the swirling vortex of clouds on the weather map was spinning directly over them.

It was only the clock that told them when it was time for dinner. None of them was very hungry, and there was little food in the cottage, but Daria found some cheese and a couple of cans of soup in one of the cupboards.

“I have some bread over at Poll-Rory,” Rory offered.

“You can’t go out there.” Daria looked toward the window, where the storm shutter prevented her from seeing outside. Even so, she knew the night was black as pitch, and the sounds of the wind and the sea were ferocious. “You’ll blow away.”

“I think there are some rolls in the freezer,” Chloe said.

They put together a dinner of cheese sandwiches and lentil soup and ate it at the kitchen table.

“We’re nuts to be here,” Daria said. She was thinking ahead. How would they know if the sea came up too high? Should they stay upstairs, just in case? She had faith in the Sea Shanty’s construction and foundation, yet she could still remember how the Trumps’ cottage had looked as it floated out to sea. That had been a winter storm, she kidded herself. This summer hurricane could simply not be that bad.

They had just finished washing and drying the dishes, when the lights flickered twice, then went off, plunging them into darkness.

Daria felt around on the counter until her hands landed on the flashlight, and she turned it on.

“Wherever Shelly is, she’s going to be terrified,” she said.

“Well, then maybe the next time she won’t be this foolish.” Chloe’s words sounded harsher than the tone of her voice. Daria knew she was as worried about Shelly as she was.

“Where did you put the lantern?” Rory asked.

“In the living room,” Daria said. “Let’s all go in there. That’s where the radio is.”

In the living room, they lit the lantern and a couple of candles. Chloe sat on the couch, and Rory took a seat in the chair next to the radio, but Daria stood by one of the windows, trying to see outside through the cracks in the storm shutters. She wished they had heard something from Don about finding Shelly at St. Esther’s. No news was bad news.

“Sit down, Daria,” Chloe said. “There’s nothing we can do to help Shelly at this point.”

Daria sat down in a chair. Chloe was right. Worrying was not going to help.

Thunder began rumbling above the cottage, and flashes of lightning pierced the cracks in the shutters. They listened to the radio for a while through the static, but it soon seemed pointless. They were closer to the hurricane than any of the newscasters, and they turned off the radio and simply sat, listening to the storm.

The atmosphere inside the Sea Shanty grew strange. Despite the angry sounds outside the cottage, the breathless warmth inside was rare and, somehow, wonderful. Flames from the candles pierced the darkness, and despite her concern for Shelly, Daria felt her body begin to uncoil and relax.

“I’m thinking about leaving my order,” Chloe said suddenly.

Her voice sounded alien and disembodied in the peculiar air of the living room, and Daria didn’t understand.

“You mean…you’d join another order?” she asked.

“No, I wouldn’t go anywhere else,” Chloe said slowly. “I’m saying, I would no longer be a nun. I’d ask to be dispensed from my vows.”

“Chloe.”
Daria was stunned. “I thought you loved what you do. I thought you loved being a nun.”

“Oh, I have. I truly have. But…I don’t think I can continue this way.”

“
What
way?” Daria asked.

Chloe studied the glow of the lantern, as if mesmerized. “Sean…” She hesitated, then started again. “Sean took his life in a misguided attempt to try to save me from temptation.”

“I don’t understand.” Daria wasn’t certain she
wanted
to understand.

“I’ve always had difficulty with my vow of chastity,” Chloe said bluntly. “Poverty was no problem. Obedience was no problem.” She shook her head. “But I’ve always had a hard time denying that part of myself. That sensual, sexual part. When I was in the convent, in my early days as a sister, I’d sometimes wake up in the morning and realize that I’d had an orgasm in my sleep, during a dream, perhaps, and I’d berate myself over it. What was wrong with me, I thought, that even though my days were filled with pure thoughts, that wretched…
carnal
part of me still came out at night, when I couldn’t control it. I’d beat myself up over it. But then—” Chloe looked at Daria “—then I began to think that my distress over feeling that way was ridiculous. I had done nothing wrong. What I was feeling stemmed from a normal, natural God-given part of myself, a part I was trying to deny existed. But it
did
exist. And I couldn’t make myself believe any longer that there was something wrong with that.”

Daria couldn’t speak. She had never heard Chloe talk so openly about sexual feelings. About
anyone’s
sexual feelings,
much less her own. She’d thought that Chloe simply did not have those longings, that she was above them somehow. She’d been wrong. Chloe was nearly forty, and had denied that part of herself all these years. The realization brought tears to Daria’s eyes, and she could feel her sister’s pain from across the room.

“What did you mean when you said that Sean was trying to save you from temptation?” Rory had the courage to ask.

Chloe stared at the lantern. The thunder had receded into the distance, and only her voice filled the darkness.