“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 only 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 ar n gued.

“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 human and 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.

Tvory 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.

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?