It would only ease his burden and add to hers.

She looked at him squarely.

“Shelly’s pregnant,” she said. And then she began to cry, drawing her knees up to her chest and burying her head against them.

“Oh, no.” He wanted to pull her into his arms to comfort her, but remembered that was how things had gotten out of control the night before. Instead, he held her ham tighter.

“What is she going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“She wants to marry Andy and have the baby.

I just can’t see it. “

“How… pregnant is she?” He thought of Shelly’s slim figure.

“She must not be very far along.”

“Only a matter of weeks,” she said.

“So there’s time to ” “Yes.” She sighed, as though tired of the discussion.

“There’s time.”

He hesitated.

“Look,” he said.

“I’m on my way up to Corolla to see Cindy Trump. Why don’t you come with me?”

She shook her head. Tears still streamed down he cheeks, and he reached up to smooth them away with thi back of his fingers before standing up.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

“Take care.”

The beach road was littered with shingles and shutter;

and the branches of small trees. Water pooled in spots, and traffic was thick with people returning to their homes and vacations. The landscape of Corolla was washed clean, its huge houses sprawling from the road to the sea. These were true houses up here, not cottages.

Many of then. could be considered near-mansions.

He followed the directions Cindy had left on his machine and found her house on, of all things, a cul-de-sac He parked in the driveway, and had to skirt an uprootec tree as he walked to her front door.

Before he had a chance to knock, the door was opened, and there stood Cindy Trump in an orange bikini, looking very much as she hac twenty years ago.

“Rory!” She stepped back to let him in and gave hirr a hug. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You look even bet lei than you do on TV.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“And you haven’t changed a bit.” The trite words were the truth. Of all the people he’d met from the cul-de-sac that summer, Cindy had changed the least. She was tan, slender, blond and still did a bikini justice. She reminded him of some of the women he knew in Hollywood, and wondered if she’d paid a visit or two to a plastic surgeon or if she’d just been lucky with her genes.

She led him out to the stone patio behind her house and handed him a glass of iced tea.

“Sorry about the noise,” she said, pointing to the house in the lot behind her, where workers were repairing storm damage on the roof.

“It’s usually very quiet here.”

Rory looked at the house under repair and was reminded of the day he saw Daria working on the roof. All of these workers were men, but in his mind’s eye, he was seeing Daria up there, and he felt that same rush of desire that had gotten him into trouble the night before.

“Did you evacuate?” he asked as they sat down at a glass-topped table.

“No,” she said.

“We’re back so far from the beach, and nothing’s going to blow this house away.”

He was glad she didn’t ask him if he had left the Outer Banks. He didn’t feel like recounting last night’s events yet again.

Cindy was a chatterbox. She told him about her husband, who sold real estate, and her two boys, who were just entering their teens. They commiserated for a few minutes about teenage boys, while Rory explored her face for hints of Shelly. There were none. The blond hair, he had to admit, was about it.

He explained the reason for his visit: he was researching Shelly’s past, trying to uncover her parentage.

“So,” he said, “who do you think Shelly’s mother might have been?”

Cindy laughed, crossing one long brown leg over thi other.

“Why, me, of course,” she said.

“Isn’t that wha everyone thought?”

He smiled. “Well, you were the right age and your cottage was nearest to where she was found,” he said, as i those were the only reasons she’d been under suspicion.

“You’re being very kind, Rory,” she said.

“Cind^ Tramp. Wasn’t that what the kids called me?”

“Perhaps some of them,” he said diplomatically, but h< could tell from Cindy’s smile that her skin was quite thick “Well, I can assure you that I was not Shelly Cato’i mother. I have to admit, though, it was probably pure lucl that it wasn’t me. I look back now and shudder over the kind of girl I was. I’m glad my kids are boys instead o girls. I would lock the girls up.”

“I’m tempted to lock Zack up myself, sometimes,” h< said.

“It was probably just a tourist, Rory,” she said.

“That’:

why the police never came up with a suspect. Al though. ” She wrinkled her nose, looking out toward th ocean.” Although? ” he prompted her.

“I’ve always had a nagging suspicion,” she said. ” really hesitate to say this. I hate to speak ill of anothe woman. I know how it feels.”

Rory leaned forward, thinking that Cindy had truly no changed: she was still a tease.

“You can’t tell me that much and not tell me what you’re talking about,” he said “I always thought it was Ellen,” she said.

“You’re member Ellen? The Catos’ niece?”

He nodded.

“Well, I don’t know how well you remember her, bu she was pretty loose with the boys.” Cindy shrugged “Not as loose as me, I admit, but still… She could of nasty. Do you remember that?”

He remembered it very well. He’d been exposed to it only a few weeks ago.

“There was something mean about her. One time, my aunt and uncle were visiting us. They had two little kids, my cousins, and my brother and I were going somewhere, so they hired Ellen to babysit for them.

Well, she smacked one of the kids around pretty viciously. The little girl had a couple of bruises on her arm. I know my aunt and uncle spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Cato about it, and probably to Ellen’s mother, as well. That was the end of it, as far as I know. But I think about that incident from time to time. There was no denying that Ellen had been abusive. I could see her leaving a baby on the beach and not giving it another thought. “

Now that she said it, so could he.

“Ellen doesn’t look anything like Shelly, though,” he said.

“Well, I haven’t seen Shelly since she was tiny,” Cindy said.

“But I remember she had brown eyes. Very light hair, but big brown eyes, like Ellen’s.” Cindy suddenly sat up straight in her chair and looked toward the sky.

“Don’t go by what I’m telling you, Rory,” she said.

“It’s a big stretch from hitting a child she was baby-sitting to leaving a newborn to die on the beach.” He sensed her trying to backpedal and knew that speaking her hunch out loud had made her uncomfortable.

“I was probably right with my first guess. It was most likely a tourist. Maybe if you do a show about it, that person or someone who knew her will come forward with the truth.”

“Maybe,” he admitted, but he was still thinking about Ellen, about how she was always trying to interfere in Daria’s parenting of Shelly.

“How is your sister?” Cindy changed the subject. “Polly? I remember her so well. She was the first mentally retarded person I ever really got to know. I liked her a lot.”

Her words touched him.

“She died a few years ago,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Rory. How unfair. You know, m;

strongest memory of you was of your devotion to her. “

“She was special to me.”

“It wasn’t just Polly,” Cindy said.

“You were al way so nice to everyone. Remember that boy who couldn’ catch any fish, and you” — “Yes, yes.” His claim to sainthood. “That was unusual for a boy, to be so sensitive to other people. If I’d had to predict what you would have become I would have guessed a social worker.”

“A social worker!”

“Yeah, think about it. That’s really what you do on Tm Life Stories, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I always get the feelin your heart breaks for the people whose stories you tell 01 your show. I bet some viewers think it’s an act, but any body who knew you when you were a kid would know that you’ve always been a sucker for people in need.”

He thought suddenly of Grace. He’d been a sucker, al right, seduced by her neediness. Was that why he’d beei drawn to her?

It had been the same with Glorianne. He remembered what his ex-wife had been like when he first met her, how unsure of herself she’d been, how desperate to find some one to lean on.

And then there was Daria, who didn’t seem to nee< anyone at all. He’d been so smitten by Grace’s beauty, s< seduced by her need for him, that he’d failed to see thi loving woman standing right in front of him.

“Cindy,” he said, abruptly standing up, anxious now t( get back to Kill Devil Hills. “I have a feeling you just di( me a big favor.”

Uaria came home from teaching her EMT class that night to find Rory waiting for her on the Sea Shanty steps.

“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” he asked as he got to his feet.

She hadn’t noticed. She’d gone through her class in a fog. Everyone had wanted to talk about the hurricane and the real-life drama that had played out on Andy’s pier, easily the most exciting rescue of the night. She’d tried to shift the discussion to the need for emergency readiness during the heart of a storm, but no one was interested.

Instead, they wanted to know how she’d gotten two people from beneath an overturned boat, with the sound rising and whirling around her feet. Supergirl, they thought, was back.

Now she looked up at the sky and saw that it was filled with stars.

“Come out to the beach with me,” Rory said. He was carrying a blanket.

“There’s a meteor shower tonight. We ican watch the sky.”