“Can she leave the Outer Banks at all?”

“Her doctor is in Elizabeth City,” Daria said.

“But she freaks out when we go to see him. He always thinks she needs tranquilizers, because she’s such a mess when she’s at his office. He doesn’t realize that she’s completely calm and peaceful when she’s back here.”

“What happens when there’s a hurricane and you have to evacuate?

Shelly said she hates that, but it’s mandatory sometimes, isn’t it?

“

Daria laughed.

“She hides,” she said matter-of factly “I found her in the storage closet once, and just a couple of years ago, she hid out in one of the neighbor’s cottages that had already been evacuated.”

“Poor Shelly,” Rory said.

“She’s still a little girl in so many ways,” Daria said.

“She’s not even interested in men, and I’m really glad about that.

Otherwise, I’d have birth control to worry about, too. “

Rory frowned.

“Even Polly was interested in men and sex,” he said.

“Are you sure about Shelly?”

“Oh, a few years ago she went through a couple of boyfriends, but they were not the nicest fellas. I was afraid they were using her.” She remembered one of them talking Shelly into buying him a television set. “I broke them up. Shelly was angry with me at the time, but I think that now she’s frankly relieved that she doesn’t have to worry about dealing with a boyfriend.”

“So,” Rory said, “in your heart of hearts, who do you think abandoned Shelly on the beach twenty-two years ago?”

She stared at him, incredulous.

“You’re incorrigible,” she said.

“Seriously,” he persisted.

“Do you think it was someone on the cul-de-sac, or” — “I’m certain it was Cindy Trump,” she interrupted him.

“If you must know, that’s who I think it was. I found Shelly on the beach right in front of her cottage. Cindy could have just walked out her back door, dropped the baby close to the ocean, expecting the waves to wash it out to sea, and walked back into her cottage. Job done.”

“So, where is Cindy?” Rory asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Shelly is a Cato, Rory,” she said.

“Cindy, or whoever Shelly’s mother was, didn’t want her then.

She doesn’t deserve to have any part of her now. “

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a woman walking toward the bay, a short distance from the pier, and it wasn’t until Daria spotted the three golden retrievers with her that she recognized the woman as Linda. The dogs splashed in the water. Linda threw a stick far into the bay for them to swim after.

“That’s Linda,” she said to Rory.

Rory turned to look at the woman.

“I met her already,” he said.

“And one of her dogs has a thing for me. She sure has changed.”

Daria could barely remember the timid girl from the old days on the cul-de-sac. This Linda was a tall, impressive-looking woman with short frosty-blond hair.

They watched Linda and her dogs play together for a while. Daria was glad to be off the topic of Shelly and Cindy Trump. But then Rory brought up an even less pleasant topic: Grace. Daria knew that Grace had been at Poll-Rory at least twice in the past few days.

“I introduced Grace to Shelly,” he said.

She knew. Shelly had said that Grace asked her many questions.

“She told me,” she said.

“She has or had, I guess some sort of illness. Do you think it would be crude of me to ask her what it was?”

Daria looked at the crabs in the bucket. One of them raised his claw at her in an angry fashion, but she barely noticed. Rory didn’t even know what Grace’s serious illness was? Exactly how intimate could they be?

“If you ask her in a supportive way, I don’t see why not,” she counseled, hating herself as she slipped willingly into the role.

“You can sympathize with what she’s going through, with her divorce,” he said, “since you and Pete were together so long. All three of us have been there. Except you’re much stronger than Grace.”

His marriage counselor had been right when he’d called Rory a caretaker. He was.

The sun was still high above the horizon, but had grown huge and orange when they packed up their equipment, stuck the bucket of crabs in the basket of Rory’s bicycle and headed back across the island. They rode directly to the Sea Shanty.

Shelly and Chloe were discussing what they should have for dinner when the crabs arrived, and they immediately got into the spirit, digging the crab steamer out from the dark recesses of the cupboards, filling it with water and putting it on to boil. They got out two sticks of butter, hammers, crackers and picks. Laughter filled the kitchen, along with easy chatter, and Daria had to admit to herself that she and Rory were no more than a couple of good friends, cleaning crabs together on a Saturday night

Dob Myerson handed Rory a bottle of beer and took a seat in the wicker chair. The trees outside Bob’s livingroom window dripped with pale, purply Spanish moss, and Rory’s gaze was drawn to them as he told the retired detective the reason for his visit.

“I think you’re going to be disappointed,” Bob said.

“Maybe,” Rory said.

“But I have to try. You were closer to that case than anyone else. I’ve read the police reports, but I’d like to hear it firsthand from you. What do you really think happened?”

The detective’s house was located deep in the woods of Colington Island. Although the island was only a few miles from Kill Devil Hills, Rory had gotten lost and was running late. He was supposed to meet Grace at Poll-Rory at six, and they were planning to go out to dinner with the Cato family. Even Zack was going, although that had taken some arm-twisting. Rory thought he’d be able to squeeze in this meeting with the detective first, but between getting lost and the man’s enthusiasm for discussing football, time was getting short.

The detective sighed.

“We didn’t uncover much, I’m afraid,” he said.

“There were a bunch of teenage girls in the area at that time, and every one of them, it seemed, pointed her finger at someone else. But we couldn’t subject anyone to a physical examination without more evidence to go on. So, if it was one of those girls, well, she got away with it.” He shrugged his thick shoulders, and Rory imagined the detective had been formidable in his college-football days, of which he’d already heard too much.

“But, to be honest,” Bob continued, “I don’t think it was any of them.” “Who do you think it was, then?”

Bob took a swallow of his beer and rested the bottle on his bare knee. “There were a couple of women who’d been reported missing around that time,” he said.

“One of them was from North Carolina, inland a ways, and the other from Virginia. Neither of them was ever found. My best guess is that one of them was Shelly Cato’s mother. The family of the North Carolina girl thought she might be pregnant, although they didn’t think she was that far along. What I think is that the girl was more pregnant than they figured, and she was despondent and scared. I think she delivered the baby right there on the beach sometime that night or early morning, then walked straight out in the ocean and drowned herself.”

“But wouldn’t her body have washed up, then?” Rory asked.

“Oh, you can’t really predict what the ocean’s going to do with a body.” Bob took another swallow of his beer.

“Where can I get information on the girls who were missing?” Rory asked.

“Their names should be in the police report.”

Rory vaguely remembered something about a missing girl or two. He would have to reread those reports.

Bob raised his now-empty bottle of beer in the air.

“Ready for another one?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” Rory stood up.

“I’d better be going. I’m meeting some people for dinner.”

Bob walked him to the door.

“You’re neighbors of the baby’s family, aren’t you?” he asked.

“The Catos?”

“That’s right. That’s who I’m having dinner with.”

“Well, tell that Supergirl Cato… what’s her name?”

“Daria.”

“Right. Tell her to get back to work. I’ve heard they miss her over at Emergency Services.”

“I’ll tell her,” Rory said, although he doubted he would. There was something Daria was not telling him about why she’d quit her EMT position. He’d sensed that each time she talked about it, and he figured she would not take kindly to anyone pressuring her to return to work.

Rory spotted the Catos on the crowded deck behind the sound side restaurant.

“There they are,” he said to Grace and Zack as they walked onto the deck.

Daria and Shelly sat at a large round table with a man and woman. The woman was Ellen, Rory figured, and the man was probably her husband.

Chloe was missing.

He waved, and Daria saw him and stood to wave back. The sound was behind her, still and slate-blue below the setting sun.

“You found us,” she said. She looked scrubbed clean and pretty, no makeup on her tanned face. She wore a sleeveless white dress, and her thick hair was pulled back in a ponytail. No sawdust in it tonight.

“Hi, everyone,” Rory said.

“This is Grace. I guess only Shelly has officially met her. And this is my son, Zack.” He put his arm around Zack and tried to draw him forward, but Zack remained stiff.

“I’ve already met them,” Zack said.

“Well, you’ve met Daria and Shelly, but not Ellen and her husband, right?” Rory tried to keep good cheer in his voice.

“Ellen, hi,” he said, then lied politely.

“You look great.”

“Hello, Rory,” Ellen said.

“Long time no see.” Ellen had put on quite a bit of weight. Of the three Cato girls he’d known from his youth, she had changed the most. The flesh on her face was looser. Her hair had grayed markedly and had lost its healthy sheen. Chloe and Daria were aging far more gracefully, he thought.