LITMIR.BIZ

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carefree, but she no longer seemed capable of experiencing those feelings.

      She carried the stack of folded shirts across the room and set them on top of the dresser. Pulling open the dresser drawer, she took out the photograph she kept tucked beneath her T-shirts. She stepped closer to the window to study it, as she did nearly every time she opened that drawer. The picture was of Pete. He was leaning against a split-rail fence at a friend’s house in Manteo, a beer in his hand, a five-o’clock shadow on his face, and he was grinning at her, the photographer. His dark hair, as smooth and straight as hers was full and wavy, fell over his forehead. It was torture to look at the picture, and yet she did it anyway, over and over again. He’d been a part of her life and her future for six years. Now he was only a part of her past, and it was taking her longer than she liked to get used to that fact.

      She replaced the picture, then lowered the stack of T-shirts on top of it and returned to the bed and the laundry basket, but her mind was still back with the photograph. Pete and his callous feelings about Shelly were linked together in her mind with the night of the plane crash, the night the young female pilot died. For two months now, Daria had been visited by that pilot’s last moments in her nightmares. She could not seem to free herself from the young woman’s pleading gaze.

      That morning, she’d received a call from her old Emergency Medical Services supervisor, a call she’d half expected but had hoped would never come. They were pulling her off CISD duty, he said, and she’d winced as though he’d slapped her in the face. She’d worked as a critical incident stress debriefer for five years. After traumatic incidents anywhere in the county, she’d be called in to help distraught emergency technicians cope with what they’d endured. Now she was the distraught technician. Her supervisor summed it up for her when she begged him to reconsider. “If you can’t manage your own stress,” he said, “how do you expect to be able to help someone else with theirs?”

      She was finishing folding the shorts when her gaze was drawn through the window to the cottage across the cul-de-sac, where this week’s vacationers were moving into Poll-Rory. Something made her move closer to the window, brushing aside the billowing curtain, to stare hard at the newcomers. A man and a teenage boy were unpacking a blue SUV in the driveway. Even from that distance, and even though she hadn’t seen him in nearly twenty years, she knew the man was Rory Taylor. She’d watched every game the Rams had played on television when he’d been with them, and she’d watched him on True Life Stories for years. She had given up on his ever returning to Poll-Rory, though, especially now that both his parents were dead. He probably had more glamorous vacation spots in which to spend his free time. Yet here he was. Most likely, that was his son with him. She had read he’d gotten a divorce.

      For some reason, the first memory that came to mind was of a hayride they’d gone on with some of the neighborhood kids. Her father was the group chaperon, and Rory, who must have been about twelve and full of early-adolescent bathroom humor, told joke after joke that Daria had felt unable to laugh at because her devoutly religious father was along. Rory, of course, understood her predicament and tortured her with ever more raucous stories. The memory made her smile. Rory had been her best friend during the summers of her childhood. When she was ten or eleven, that friendship began turning into a genuine crush, on her part at least. But that’s when he began to snub her in favor of the older kids. She knew that she had never truly lost that attraction to him. When she watched True Life Stories, she was not simply excited by the fact that someone she had known had become a celebrity; she was excited by Rory himself.

      Rory carried a suitcase across Poll-Rory’s sandy yard and up the front steps to the porch, and Daria noticed the slight limp in his gait. She remembered that he’d been injured playing football. That’s what had ended his career.

      She watched until Rory and the boy disappeared inside the cottage for the last time, then she walked downstairs to the screened porch. Chloe was sitting in one of the three blue rockers, reading a book titled Summer Fun for Kids 5–15, and Shelly sat at the blue-painted picnic table, stringing shells for a necklace, her long, blond hair falling over her shoulders.

      “Did you see who just moved into Poll-Rory?” Daria asked, more to Chloe than to Shelly. Shelly knew that the host and producer of True Life Stories was someone who used to live on the cul-de-sac, but she had been very small the last time she’d seen Rory, and it was unlikely she remembered him.

      Chloe glanced across the street. “I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said. “Was it a man and a boy?”

      For a moment, Daria wondered if she’d only seen what she wanted to see. But she remembered the man’s limp, the breadth of his shoulders, the sandy color of his hair.

      “It was Rory Taylor,” she said.

      “Really?” Shelly asked. “True Life Stories Rory Taylor?”

      Chloe said nothing. She stared across the street.

      “I’m sure it was him,” Daria said.

      “Why would he come here?” Chloe asked.

      “Well, he still owns the cottage,” Daria said.

      Chloe stared at Poll-Rory a moment longer before lowering her gaze to her book. Rory’s return was probably of little interest to her, Daria thought. Chloe had been older than Rory; she had not known him well. She had not looked forward to spending time with him every day during the summers of her childhood.

      “Let’s go say hi to him.” Shelly started to stand up.

      Daria felt instantly intimidated. He probably would have little memory of her. How full his life had been since the last time she’d seen him, while here she was, still firmly rooted in Kill Devil Hills.

      “Let’s give them a chance to settle in first,” she said, glancing across the street once more before walking into the cottage to finish folding her laundry.

      4

      DAYLIGHT WAS FADING, AND RORY FELT THE PINCH OF A mosquito bite. If he and Zack stayed on the deck much longer, they would need to light the citronella candle. They’d eaten dinner on the rear deck, which jutted from the second story of the cottage and gave them a view of the ocean to the east as well as the sun falling over the sound to the west. Between Poll-Rory and the sound, though, were many, many cottages. Far more than Rory remembered. Still, little could ruin his pleasure at being in Kill Devil Hills.

      They’d eaten carryout North Carolina barbecue for dinner—one of those culinary delicacies he’d been craving ever since deciding to make this trip.

      “Let’s have takeout every night,” Zack said, closing the disposable box and lifting a can of soda to his lips.

      “Well, a few times a week, anyhow,” Rory said. The truth was, he loved to cook, and two years of cooking primarily for himself had grown old. He was looking forward to spending time in Poll-Rory’s rudimentary kitchen this summer.

      “This is crazy,” Zack said, looking above him at the darkening sky. “I’m never going to get used to East Coast time.”

      “You will,” Rory said, although they had eaten dinner very late because their stomachs still thought they were back in L.A. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll have breakfast at nine, and then we’ll be on track.”

      “Nine? Forget it. It’s summer. I’m sleeping in.”

      “Okay,” Rory said. This was not worth arguing about. “You can sleep as much as you like.” He slapped a mosquito on his thigh. “I’m going across the cul-de-sac to see the neighbors,” he said. “Want to join me?”

      “I saw some kids over on the beach before you got back with dinner,” Zack said. “Think I’ll go see if they’re still there.”

      Well, at least Zack wasn’t shy. Or maybe he simply wanted to get away from his father for a while after this long day of togetherness.

      “Okay,” Rory said. “I’ll see you later.”

      Rory walked down the steps from the deck, through the cottage,

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