Summer's Child (26 page)

“He killed himself to save me,” she said. “No one knows this, but it’s time I said it out loud.” She let out a long sigh. Her hands were folded in her lap. “Sean and I were lovers,” she said.

“Oh, Chloe,” Daria said.

“It started years ago,” Chloe said. “I would see him when I came here in the summer, and in those early years, I talked to him about what it was like for me, being a nun. We talked about our vows of celibacy and chastity and how hard it was to honor them. He had as much trouble with them as I did, and that reassured me. But the more we talked about it, the more we were drawn to each other.”

Chloe’s voice suddenly broke, and Daria moved to the sofa and put her hand over her sister’s.

“I’d reached the point where I felt it was not so terrible to break that vow,” Chloe continued. “I felt angry with the Church for imposing it so rigidly. It was a law made by man, not by God. I was able to rationalize that someone could be devoted to religious life and still be able to give and receive love with a partner at the same time. I
still
believe that. Completely. And so I felt comfortable about what we were doing. But for Sean, it wasn’t that simple, and so a few years ago, we stopped the physical part of our relationship. He had been in
turmoil over it, and I didn’t want him to suffer any longer.” Chloe’s voice broke again, and this time she withdrew her hands from beneath Daria’s to bury her head in them. Daria stroked her back. She looked across the room at Rory, whose face was somber in the light from the lantern.

Chloe raised her head again. “I was careful not to push him,” she said. “I tried to be…sexless, around him. And it worked, at least until this summer. I don’t think it was anything I did, in particular, but we were drawn to each other, very strongly, and then the intimacy started up again.” Chloe wept openly now. “Sean was torturing himself,” she said. “He called himself a sinner—I hate that word!—and he thought he was tempting me into joining him in that sin. He thought he was responsible for my downfall. That’s what he called it, although I don’t agree. I tried to dissuade him from thinking that way, but obviously I wasn’t successful.” Chloe’s shoulders trembled with her tears, and Daria tightened her arm around her.

“I miss him so much,” Chloe said.

“I’m so sorry, Chloe,” Daria said. “And I’m sorry you’ve had to keep this all to yourself.” She was worried about Chloe, not just because of what she’d revealed, but because she feared that her sister would come to regret having spoken so openly. She knew Chloe’s confession would never have been given without the protection of darkness and the peculiar atmosphere of the night.

Chloe drew a deep breath, then seemed to pull herself together. “I have a lot of soul-searching to do in the next few weeks,” she said. “A lot of praying to do. I can’t bear the thought of no longer being a nun, but at the same time, I can’t live with the restrictions…and I can’t live with what those restrictions did to Sean.”

“How can I help?” Daria asked.

Chloe nearly smiled. “Just be patient with my…preoccupa
tion,” she said. Then she suddenly pressed her hands to her temples. “I can’t believe I told you all of this,” she said. She looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry I dumped so much on the two of you.”

“I’m glad you could, Chloe,” Rory said, and Daria was touched by the tenderness in his voice.

Chloe looked at Rory. “I apologize for blowing up at you the other day when you suggested Sean’s death might have something to do with your conversation with him,” she said. “I was in a lot of pain then. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“And I shouldn’t have talked to you about it right after he died,” Rory said. “I knew you were grieving. I just didn’t realize to what extent.”

“I want to go upstairs,” Chloe said, suddenly hugging her arms across her chest. “I just want to sleep through the rest of the storm. I want to wake up in the morning and find Shelly…” Her voice broke yet again. “I want to find her home and safe.”

“I know,” Daria said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll find her in the morning, once the storm has passed.”

Chloe got to her feet, and Daria handed her one of the flashlights. “Take this with you,” she said.

She and Rory were quiet as Chloe climbed the stairs. It was a few minutes more before Daria found her voice. “I’m in shock,” she said in a near whisper.

“It’s very sad,” Rory said.

They were quiet for another minute, still trying to absorb all they had heard, when a sudden loud crack of thunder made them both jump.

Daria drew her feet into the couch and wrapped her arms tightly around her legs. “God, Rory,” she said. “Where is Shelly?”

R
AIN POUNDED AGAINST THE ROOF AND BATTERED THE
plywood covering the windows. It was scary to be in a stilt house right on the bay with this storm raging outside, but Shelly was safe in Andy’s arms. He’d promised her his house could endure anything the weather threw at them, and she believed him. She always believed him.

They had made love in the pitch-black darkness, the thunder cracking through the sky outside, and now they were nestled together beneath the coverlet on Andy’s bed. They were nearly alone on the bay. Andy’s foolhardy next-door neighbors had refused to evacuate as well, but she guessed that these two houses were probably the only ones occupied on this stretch of water.

Andy kissed her temple. “You know we’ll have to tell Daria soon,” he said.

Shelly stiffened against him. She had taken the pregnancy test just that morning, and the results were positive. It was no surprise to her, but now she had to face reality. “I’m afraid to tell her,” she said.

“I know, but we have to,” Andy said. “We really should have told her long ago.”

“She’ll try to break us up,” Shelly said. “That’s what she’s always done before.”

“Well, this time is different. First of all, she likes me and she didn’t like those other guys you were seeing. Second of all, this time there’s a baby involved.”

“She’ll probably make me have an abortion.”

“She can’t make you do anything.”

Shelly snuggled closer to Andy. It felt so good to know he would stick by her. She would not be battling Daria alone.

“Daria is the best, most wonderful sister in the world, but she’s never let me live my own life.”

“She’s never let herself live her own life, either,” Andy said.

Shelly raised her head to look at him, but it was too dark to see his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s always had to look out for your welfare. She’s always put you first.”

Shelly shut her eyes and let her head fall to Andy’s shoulder again. She knew that was the truth, but it hurt to think about it, to think about the sacrifices Daria had made for her. Even right this minute, she was causing problems for Daria. She knew that Daria had not evacuated the Outer Banks when she should have. She’d made Andy drive by the cul-de-sac to see if Daria and Chloe had left, and she was upset to learn they had not. It was because of her. They’d been all set to leave, but they’d stayed behind for her, even though she’d left that note telling them to go.

“I’m always messing up Daria’s life,” she said. “But I just couldn’t leave.”

“I know,” Andy said. He’d been more than willing to ride out the storm with her. Andy was like that. He would do anything for her.

“Did you hear that?” Andy asked. He raised his head to listen. All Shelly could hear was the sound of the hurricane
battering the house. Then suddenly she heard someone yelling. Pounding on Andy’s back door, calling Andy’s name.

Andy got out of bed and pulled on his shorts. He ran into the kitchen as Shelly dressed. By the time she got into the kitchen, Andy was pulling open the back door, and his neighbor, Jim, nearly fell into the room.

“We need help!” Jim said. He wore a yellow slicker, and water poured from it onto Andy’s kitchen floor. “They’re stuck! They’re trapped.”

“Slow down,” Andy said. “What do you mean? Who’s—”

“The boat turned over,” Jim said. He tried to look through Andy’s kitchen window, but plywood blocked his view. “I’d tied it to the pier,” he said, “but when the water rose and the wind picked up, it looked like it was coming loose. So me and Julie went out there to tie it tighter, and we didn’t realize Jack was right behind us. The boat flipped onto the pier, and Jack and Julie are underneath it.”

“Oh, God.” Shelly covered her mouth with her hand, picturing Jim and Julie’s adorable five-year-old son trapped beneath the boat. She started toward the door, but Andy grabbed her arm.

“Get the slicker out of the front closet first,” he said. “I’ll meet you out there.”

Shelly did as she was told, then ran outside to the pier, the wind nearly blowing her off her feet. The boat was barely visible, a great, beached whale on the pier, but she could hear the screams of the little boy beneath it. There was no sound, though, from Julie, at least none that could be heard above the howling of the wind.

“Help us, Shelly,” Andy said.

She could barely see the shapes of Andy and Jim standing at either end of the boat, trying to lift it off its victims. She ran to the side of the boat and tried to slip her hands beneath
the rim. She could not budge it, not an inch, and her hands slipped off the wet fiberglass again and again. From beneath the boat, she heard Jack’s screams turn to whimpers, and she started to cry herself.

Andy ran toward her, grabbing her arm again. “Go into the house and call 911,” he shouted. “My cell’s on the counter. I’m going to get Daria.”

Then Daria will know
, she thought, but they had no choice. They needed help, and they needed it right away. She fought against the wind and rain into the house as Andy ran up the road toward his van, where he’d parked it away from the threat of the sound.

In the kitchen, Shelly found Andy’s phone and began to dial. Her fingers shook so violently that she could barely press the numbers, and it wasn’t until she’d tried dialing them for the third time that she realized why her call wasn’t going through: the cell towers were down.

“W
HAT’S THAT
?” D
ARIA STARTED AT THE THUMPING SOUND
. She and Rory were still talking in the Sea Shanty living room, but the sudden pounding from the front porch had interrupted them. Standing up, she walked toward the door.

“Maybe one of the shutters came loose,” Rory suggested, following her.

Daria saw someone open the screen door and step onto the porch. She thought it might be Don Tibble with news about Shelly, and her heart picked up its pace. Only when the man burst through the living-room door did she realize it was Andy. He was shirtless; his long hair was loose and soaking wet, and water streamed over his face.

“Andy!” she said, alarmed by the sight of him. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you evacuate?”

“I need you and Rory.” Andy was winded, gasping for air. “There was an accident next door to my house. My neighbor’s boat flipped over on the pier and his little boy and wife are trapped beneath it.”

Daria froze.
I’m not an EMT anymore
, she wanted to say, but knew there was no time for her to surrender to her fears. She
ran back into the living room to get her sneakers, crouching to tie them on her feet. “Did you call 911?” she asked.

Andy nodded. “It’s taken care of,” he said.

“Then let’s go.” She grabbed two flashlights, handing one to Rory, then clipped her cell phone to her waistband.

Stepping off the porch was like walking into a wind tunnel. “What’s the wind speed, do you know?” she asked Andy as they battled their way to his van. He didn’t hear her; the question was swept away by the wind. If the wind was over sixty miles per hour, they would be on their own. Emergency Medical Services wouldn’t send an ambulance into wind that high.

They piled into Andy’s old van, and the wind buffeted the vehicle as he drove out of the cul-de-sac.

“I think the wind is too high for them to send out a rig,” Daria said. “Do you know what the wind speed—”

“Listen, Daria,” Andy interrupted her. “You need to know that Shelly is at my house.”

What?
For a moment, Daria couldn’t speak. Shelly was safe. But how had she ended up at Andy’s? “She’s at
your
house?” she asked. “Why would she go there?”

“Is she all right?” Rory asked.

“She’s fine,” Andy said. “I left her there to call 911 while I came over here.”

“I don’t understand why Shelly would go to your house,” Daria said. “I’m sorry she put you in the position of having to…hide her, Andy.”

Andy glanced at her, then returned his gaze quickly to the road. “It’s not like that,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Daria asked.

She felt Rory’s hand on her shoulder. “We can talk about that later,” he said. “The important thing right now is that Shelly is safe.” Daria had the feeling that Rory understood something she was not ready—or willing—to understand herself.

They pulled into Andy’s driveway, and Daria looked toward the pier. Something was going on out there, she could see the light from a flashlight, but other than that she couldn’t tell where the pier ended and the sound began.

“Can you pull your car closer to the pier?” Rory asked Andy. “Shine your lights on it?”

Andy drove over the packed sand that formed his yard, until his headlights illuminated the pier and they could see the drama playing out on its surface. The boat was upside down and fully on the pier. Two people stood next to the boat, waving frantically at them, and although she could not see them clearly, Daria guessed one of them was Shelly.

She and Rory followed Andy out to the pier, trying to run, although it was like running through mud. It wasn’t just the wind that made Daria’s legs feel like lead; it was fear. She was afraid of what she would find on the pier. She used to meet emergencies with courage, confidence and a rush of adrenaline. The adrenaline was still there, but she’d left the courage and confidence at the scene of that April plane crash.

“The phone was dead,” Shelly screamed the words at Andy. “I couldn’t call 911.”

Daria pulled her cell phone from her waistband and pressed it into Shelly’s hand. “Go in the house and call,” she instructed her, trying to make her voice heard over the wind. “Tell them we need to extricate two people from beneath a twenty-two-footer.” She knew they would be lucky to get anyone to respond to this call, much less the equipment they might need to extricate the victims.

“No, don’t go!” Andy’s neighbor yelled at Shelly. “We need all of us to lift the boat.”

Daria gave her sister a little shove. “Go, Shelly,” she said. Then she turned to the neighbor, whose dark hair was plastered to his head, his face creased with fear and worry. “We
can’t lift the boat until I assess their injuries,” she said. “We could make things worse.” She shined her flashlight into the water. It was lower than normal. “Is the sound on its way down or up?” she asked Andy. She knew that during the first hours of hurricane, the sound could nearly empty itself, only to come back with a ferocious roar and serious flooding.

“Up,” Andy said.

“That’s what flipped the boat,” the man said.

The rising tide could be either good or bad, Daria thought. The higher water might lift the boat from the pier and free its captives, but it could also make their work far more difficult.

She dropped to her knees, shining her flashlight beneath the boat. The tiny boy, pinned beneath the center of the boat, let out a wail when the light hit his eyes, and he reached toward Daria with his one free hand. She slipped her fingers into his. “Where do you hurt?” she asked him.

The boy only cried in response to her question. It looked as though the frame of the short, angled front windows was across his chest, probably breaking some of his ribs, and she could see a gash on his thigh. A small amount of blood had pooled on the pier beneath his leg. She squeezed the boy’s hand. “I’ll be right back, honey,” she said. “I want to check on your mommy.”

She crawled on her stomach toward the stern of the boat where the woman was pinned. She could not quite reach her, but managed to get her arm under the boat far enough to touch her fingers to the woman’s throat, where she felt for a pulse. Beneath her fingertips, the pulse was faint and irregular, but at least the woman was still alive. How she was pinned, though, Daria couldn’t determine. If her legs were crushed and they raised the boat from her body, she could die within seconds. But they had little choice at this point. They had to lift this boat, or both the woman and her son would perish beneath it.

“They’re both alive,” she shouted as she slipped from beneath the boat and raised herself to her knees. Rain whipped against her face, and when she spoke, the three men leaned close to hear her. “You guys try to lift the boat enough for me to pull them out, okay?” She saw Shelly running from the house toward them. “What did they say?” Daria called to her.

“It’s too windy, they said. If it dies down, they’ll send an ambulance.”

“What do they mean, it’s too windy?” Andy’s neighbor said. “They’ve
got
to send one!”

“Right now,” Daria said to the man, “put your energy and your anger and your fear into lifting this boat. Come on, Shelly. You can help, too.”

She had seen it before, even in herself, that superhuman strength that coursed through otherwise normal men and women in the moment of crisis, so she wasn’t surprised when the three men and Shelly were able to lift the boat by a few inches. Daria dived beneath it, grabbing the little boy and pulling him clear of the boat. “Can you hold it up another minute?” she asked as she scrambled toward the stern for the woman.

“It’s coming down!” Andy yelled. “Get out, Daria. Get out!”

Daria quickly retreated from beneath the boat just as it rocked back onto the pier. It caught her right index finger, and she stifled a scream. Her finger would be badly swollen and bruised within minutes, but that injury was nothing compared to what this boy and his mother were enduring.

She felt torn between attending to the boy and trying to extricate the mother, but the light of her flashlight on the boy’s pale face told her how desperately he needed her attention. The pressure of the boat must have been serving as a tourniquet of sorts, and now the blood gushed freely from his leg.

“Shelly!” She tore off her windbreaker. “Come here and press this against his leg.”

Shelly knelt next to the boy, her hands over the windbreaker.

“Press hard,” Daria said. “Really hard. It’s the only way to stop the bleeding.” She turned back to the boat and positioned herself near the stern.

Rory grabbed her shoulder. “You can’t go under there again,” he said. “It’s too hard for us to hold the boat up. You nearly got crushed last time.”

“You just have to hold it up longer.” She dropped to her knees and realized she was kneeling in several inches of water. Panic coursed through her. The sound was rising far too quickly for comfort.

“On the count of three!” Rory shouted. “One…two…three.” Daria saw the hull of the boat rise up in front of her. She dived beneath it, grasping the woman’s clothing with her hands and tugging backward, but suddenly the water poured over the woman’s face, trapping her.
Drowning
her. Daria found herself in the middle of one of her nightmares. She could not truly see the woman’s face, could not see brown eyes or a widow’s peak, but in her mind the woman became the young, dying pilot. Thrashing with her arms beneath the boat, she reached for the woman’s clothing once more. Water splashed into her own face just as she was taking a breath, and she had to let go, choking and coughing. Someone’s hands were on her, pulling her out from beneath the boat, and she gagged as she struggled to catch her breath. In an instant, a wall of water swept onto the pier, lifting the boat, and Daria saw Rory plow beneath the stern, pulling the unconscious woman to safety before she was dragged into the sound.

“Get them off the pier!” Andy said, and Daria saw that Shelly was already doing that, carrying the little boy in her
arms, through the rising water on the pier, to the driveway and away from the sound. Daria struggled to get to her feet, and could only do so with Andy’s help. Rory or the husband, she wasn’t sure who, carried the woman to the driveway. Daria ran after them, moving as quickly as she could through the water on tremulous legs. She knelt down next to the woman, feeling again for a pulse.

“There’s blood everywhere, Daria,” Shelly called to her from the side of the little boy. “I’m pressing hard, but it’s not stopping.”

The woman had no pulse, nor was she breathing. “I know CPR,” Rory said. He was suddenly kneeling on the other side of the woman. “You take care of the boy.”

Daria called to Andy. “Do the compressions, Andy,” she said. Andy had never been put to the test, but she knew he could do it; she’d taught his CPR class. “Rory can do the breathing.”

She ran over to the boy, who was unconscious, but breathing. Shelly’s hands were covered with his blood, and Daria said a quick prayer that the boy had no blood-borne diseases. “We need to get them to the ER,” she said. She was wondering exactly how they were going to do that when she heard the sweet call of a siren somewhere on the other side of the wind. “Thank God,” she said out loud.

“I hear a siren!” Andy’s neighbor said. He was sitting near the boy, looking dazed and helpless.

Within a minute, the ambulance pulled into the driveway. It was staffed by only one paramedic—Mike—and an EMT, who was driving. But it didn’t take long before they had the woman intubated and the boy bandaged, and both of them placed in the ambulance.

“Rory and I will go with them in the rig,” Daria said to Andy. “You take Shelly back to the Sea Shanty, please.”

“No,” Shelly said. “I’m staying with Andy.”

Daria turned to Andy. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“There’s no time to talk about it now,” Andy said. He was pushing her toward the ambulance, but Daria held her ground. “Tell me,” she said.

“Shelly and I have been together for a couple of years,” Andy said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She was afraid you’d try to break us up if you knew. Okay? Now get in the ambulance.”

Daria backed away from Andy, stunned.

“Daria?” Mike called from inside the rig. “Let’s go!”

With one more glance at her sister, she turned and ran toward the ambulance.