“There’s something else you need to know,” Andy said. He glanced at Shelly. “Shelly is pregnant, and we’re going to get married.”

Chloe groaned, and Daria felt her patience snap.

“I thought you weren’t going to let anything bad happen to her,” she said, unable to mask the sarcasm in her voice.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Shelly said.

“I’m happy about it. I want to have a baby. And I want to marry Andy.”

“You can’t have a baby,” Daria said.

“Shelly, sweetheart, I’m sorry.

You’re just not able to take care of a baby. You’ll have to . consider options. ” She would have suggested an abortion, but found she couldn’t with Chloe sitting right there. Chloe might be a rebel where the Church was concerned, but Daria knew she was still passionately opposed to the idea of abortion.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here,” Chloe said.

“How far along are you. Shelly?”

“Not very,” Shelly said.

“She’s only missed one period,” Andy said.

“But she’s not having an abortion.”

“Well, we have time, then,” Chloe said.

“Time to look at your options and figure out what’s best for both of you and the baby.”

Chloe continued talking, impressing Daria with her calm, supportive approach. Daria knew enough to stay out of the conversation, because right now she was not thinking clearly. Her mind was torn between what was going on here on this porch, and the sound of Rory working on the windows across the street. How did Rory feel this morning? What was he thinking?

Soon Zack would return with the Wheelers, and soon Grace would swoop down again on Poll-Rory. Her one sister was grieving an illicit affair and facing the end of her life as a nun. Her other sister was pregnant with a child she couldn’t possibly raise herself. And neither sister had seen fit to confide in her.

And she felt, suddenly, very much alone.

1 he muscles in his arms ached when Rory went inside the cottage after taking the plywood off the windows. He could have waited to do it until Zack came home and could help him, but he’d been anxious to get some sunlight back into Poll-Rory. The cottage had sustained very little damage in the storm, and he knew he’d been lucky. There were some bare patches on the roof where he would need to reshingle, and a piece of driftwood blown up from the beach had torn a chunk from the siding, but other than that, Poll-Rory was relatively unscathed.

The answering machine blinked from its perch on the kitchen counter.

The phones must be working again; the electricity had come on sometime before he’d gotten out of bed that morning. There were two messages, the first from Zack, telling him he would be returning to Kill Devil ^ Hills that afternoon. The second message was from Cindy Trump.

“Are we still on for today, Rory?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you’re back yet—I assume you evacuated. But I’m around, if you still want to get together. You don’t need to call. Just show up when you can. I’ll be here all day, mopping up.”

He’d forgotten his appointment with Cindy, but he was pleased by the reminder and the fact that she was able to meet.

Just as he clicked off the answering machine, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Rory?”

“Grace,” he said.

“I’m sorry if you went to the motel and I wasn’t there. We ended up not evacuating.” “I wondered what happened,” Grace said. “I was just hoping all of you were all right.”

“We’re fine,” he said.

“It seemed like a horrendous storm when it was over our heads, but at least here on the cul-de-sac, it didn’t do too much damage. Are you in Rodanthe? How is it down there?”

“Some of the cottages close to the water really took a beating,” Grace said.

“But our… my house is fine. So, why didn’t you leave?”

“It’s a long story.” It seemed as though all that had occurred the night before had taken days to transpire, not mere hours.

“Shelly was afraid to leave the Outer Banks,” he said.

“So when it came time to evacuate, we couldn’t find her.”

“Oh my God,” Grace said.

“Where was she? Is she okay?”

“We searched everywhere, looking in abandoned cottages and all over the beach. We finally had to give up. Daria was really upset.”

“I can imagine.”

“The power went out and the phones weren’t working.” He remembered listening to Chloe’s confessions in the darkness. He would skip over that part.

“Then Daria’s coworker, Andy, suddenly showed up to tell us that his neighbor’s boat had flipped up on the pier, and a woman and little boy were trapped beneath it. So, Daria and I went over there to help.” The image of Daria throwing herself beneath the boat to save the child was still fresh in his mind.

“And that’s where Shelly was.

It turns out she and Andy have been involved for a while. “

Grace was silent for a minute, probably trying to absorb all he had just said.

“Involved?” she asked.

“You mean, dating?”

“I don’t know if dating is the right word,” Rory said.

“But they’ve obviously been more than friends. We didn’t get to talk about it much because things were too crazy over there, trying to extract the people from under the boat and getting them to the trauma center.”

“Are they all right?” she asked.

“They were, last I heard,” Rory said.

“Rory… could we get together tomorrow? Up there?”

For the first time, he didn’t feel enthusiastic about seeing her. His mind was still on Daria. He winced when he remembered her telling him she was in love with him. Those words had taken him by surprise, and he’d felt guilty, as though he’d used her by making love to her. He’d thought Daria was the type of woman who could not be used, who would never do something she did not have completely under her control. She seemed invulnerable—so independent and strong and self-sufficient—that he hadn’t seen the need in her for anyone, much less for him. His body had responded with instant arousal when she’d kissed him, and he had not considered stopping himself. He’d treated it almost like one more activity with his old friend, like crabbing or fishing. He hadn’t realized that, for her, it meant much more than that. He shouldn’t have let it happen. Yet, it had been so damned good. And he knew he would rather spend tomorrow afternoon pulling crabs out of the bay with Daria than spending time with Grace.

“Why don’t we talk again tomorrow,” he said.

“See how our schedules pan out.”

She hesitated once more.

“All right,” she said.

“But I [eally would like to come up there.”

“We’ll talk then,” he said.

“And I’m sorry again about landing you up at the motel.”

He hung up the phone, and stared at the receiver for a minute before getting up and walking to the front door. There was one more woman he needed to apologize to this afternoon.

Chloe was on the front steps of the Sea Shanty, sweeping away the eelgrass that the storm had brought to their door.

“Looks like you lost some screens,” he said.

Chloe barely glanced at him.

“Yes,” she said.

“But that’s about the worst damage that was done, fortunately. To the cottage, anyway.” She darted her eyes in his direction again, and he had the feeling she knew what had happened between him and Daria the night before. Maybe, though, it was just his imagination—or his guilt—at work. Maybe she was simply alluding to the trauma suffered by Andy’s neighbors. Or more probably, to the embarrassment she herself had suffered when she’d admitted to him and Daria about her affair with Sean Macy.

“Is Daria in?” he asked.

“She’s up in her room,” Chloe said.

“Would it be all right if I went up?”

“Why not?” Chloe said.

“I guess there’s not much mystery left between the two of you, huh?”

Ouch.

“Chloe…” he began, not sure what more he could say.

Chloe sighed and leaned on the broom.

“Don’t listen to me, Rory,” she said.

“It’s just that my sisters are getting jerked around right now, and it’s upsetting me.”

“I’m not jerking Daria around,” he said. “What would you call it?” she asked. “In spite of the fact that you’re involved with someone else, you have sex with a woman who loves you dearly, who would do anything for you. I’m not excusing Daria’s behavior, but at least her motivation was noble. She did it because she’s crazy about you.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, just walked past her into the cottage and up the stairs.

The door to Daria’s room was open. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, architect’s drawings spread out in front of her. He knocked on the open door, and she looked up.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“I thought I’d come see how you’re doing,” he said.

She bit her lip and lowered her eyes to the drawings, pushing them around with the tips of her fingers. He walked across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, rescuing her hand from its futile wandering across the drawings and holding it on his knee.

“I’m sorry, Daria,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“I started it. I shouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t prepared to accept the consequences.”

“You know I care about you, don’t you?” he asked.

She uttered a small laugh, and he knew his words sounded pale, meaningless and, he feared, patronizing.

“I didn’t know how you felt,” he said.

“And … it caught me off guard when you told me.” There was more he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her he needed time to sort out his feelings for her, to figure out why, if she were to kiss him at that moment, he would do it all over again. But he knew it wouldn’t be fair to say that to her right now.