Diane Chamberlain - Summer's Child

“Me, too.” Andy got out of the car and shut the door, but bent over to look in the window.

“Thanks for the lift,” he said.

“And have a good soak in your tub tonight.”

“I plan to.” She pulled out of his driveway, already thinking about spending a leisurely half hour in the whirlpool tub later that night.

The tub was the one extravagance in the Sea Shanty, but it was tmly a necessity after a day like this one. She and Andy had spent the day building wall-to-ceiling bookshelves in a huge house in Corolla, and her shoulders and arms ached. Before she could take a bath, though, there was something she needed to do.

She drove the mile and a half across Kill Devil Hills to the cul-de-sac, where she parked in the Sea Shanty driveway. But instead of going inside the cottage, she walked across the street to Poll-Rory.

Rory answered the door in shorts, sky-blue T-shirt and a handsome grin that threatened her resolve. She had to keep the purpose of this visit firmly in her mind.

“Come in, neighbor,” he said, pushing open the screen door for her.

Daria stepped into the living room and took off her sunglasses. She had been in Poll-Rory many times over the years, so the changes in its interior were no surprise to her. She imagined they had been to Rory, though. The furniture, the new paneling on the walls, the artwork and knickknacks had all been selected by the real estate agent handling the property.

Daria spotted a computer on the table in the dining area. Papers and books were strewn across the table’s surface.

“Looks like you’re working,” Daria said.

“Working and playing,” Rory said.

“That’s my plan for this summer.”

His hands were on his hips, and she felt him appraising her. She probably had more sawdust in her hair. She knew she had paint on her white T-shirt and a smudge of varnish on her cheek.

She looked at him squarely.

“I need to talk with you about Shelly,” she said and felt the apology forming on her face. Rory had come all the way across the country to get to the bottom of Shelly’s story, and she planned to make him stop that search before he’d even begun.

He must have seen the concern in her eyes, because his orin 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 drive way 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.