Summer's Child. Diane Chamberlain

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      She turned and smiled at him. “Hey, Rory,” she said. “I see you’ve got one of Linda’s dogs with you.”

      Rory looked down at the retriever, now leaning against his leg. “She seems to have adopted me,” he said. He’d met Linda briefly on the beach the day before. She’d introduced herself to him; he would never have recognized her otherwise. She was now an attractive, big-boned woman with short blond hair and round glasses, and he could not get it through his mind that she was the cul-de-sac’s bashful bookworm from twenty-two years ago.

      “Can I join you for a walk on the beach, Shelly?” he asked.

      “Sure,” she said. “But Melissa’s not allowed. Go home, Melissa!”

      The dog performed an obedient pivot and trotted off down the street.

      “Which way do you want to go?” Shelly asked as Rory joined her on the beach.

      He pointed south. “You must know that dog well,” he said as they started walking.

      “And you must like dogs a lot, because Melissa is Linda’s unfriendliest dog.”

      “I didn’t know there were any unfriendly golden retrievers,” Rory said.

      “That one is. Though not to me. And not to you, either, I guess.”

      They cut through a sea of blankets, beach chairs and umbrellas and began walking along the water’s edge. “I wanted to make sure of something,” he said. “I know that Daria and Chloe worry about me looking into how you came to be on the beach that morning when you were a baby. I need to know that you really want me to do this.”

      “Yes, I absolutely do,” Shelly said.

      “What if I uncover…if I find out something that would be very painful to you? I might find out, for example, that your real—your biological mother—doesn’t want anything to do with you. She might even wish that you had died that day. How would you feel if I learned something like that?”

      Shelly looked down at the ground, where the water rose and fell over her feet with the rhythm of the waves. For a moment, he wondered if she had heard him—or understood him. Then she turned toward him, a small smile on her lips. “Well,” she said, “that would be the truth, and what I really want to know is the truth.”

      “Okay,” Rory said, relieved. “But if you change your mind at any point, you just say the word, and I’ll back off, okay?” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

      “Okay.”

      “Well, then,” Rory said, “tell me what your life has been like.”

      “Oh, I’ve had a wonderful life,” Shelly said. “I’ve—” A beach ball suddenly flew across the sand in front of them, and a little boy of about three ran after it, wailing. With a couple of long strides, Shelly grabbed the ball and returned it to the child, patting the top of his head as she sent him back up the beach to his parents. She fell into step once more with Rory.

      “Isn’t he adorable?” she asked, turning back to look at the boy. “Isn’t the beach the best place?” She raised her arms out from her sides and tipped her head back to breathe in the salt air. Then she looked at Rory. “I always want to live on the beach,” she said. “It’s where I was born and it’s where I want to die.”

      “Isn’t it kind of nasty here in the winter?” Rory asked.

      “Oh, I don’t mind the winter at all,” she said. “The only time I ever mind the weather here is when one of those bad storms is coming and they say we have to evacuate. I hate evacuating.” She shuddered at the thought. “I hate going to the mainland.”

      “Why is that?” Rory asked.

      “I don’t know why,” Shelly said. “All I know is, I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m away from here. I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep, I get real jumpy. Nothing’s right until I get back to Kill Devil Hills.”

      He wanted to put a fatherly arm around her shoulders and give her a hug. She was indeed fragile, as Daria had said.

      “It’s really windy here, though,” Shelly continued. “Especially in the winter, but really all the time. Daria doesn’t like that, because she says she has bad wind hair. I have good wind hair, though. That’s what I mean. It’s like I was designed to live here.”

      He wasn’t sure what good and bad wind hair were, but he got her point.

      “There’s Jill!” Shelly said.

      He followed her gaze to a heavyset woman sitting on a beach chair, reading a book.

      “Jill, from the cul-de-sac?” Rory asked, although the woman looked nothing like the Jill Fletcher he’d known as his next-door neighbor.

      “Yes. Let’s go say hi to her.” Shelly was walking toward the woman in the beach chair before he had a chance to say a word.

      “Hi, Jill,” Shelly said when they were right in front of her.

      The woman looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. She smiled. “Hi, girlfriend,” she said, then looked past Shelly at Rory. Her smile broadened. “Rory Taylor,” she said. “I heard you were here for the summer.”

      He wouldn’t have recognized her any more than he had Linda. She’d been a couple of years older than him and had hung around with a different crowd, but he’d seen her nearly every day during the summers of his youth. He remembered her as a little on the skinny side, with very straight, dark hair. Her hair was almost entirely silver now, and it was short and thick and very becoming on her. She was no longer skinny, however. She had to be at least forty pounds overweight, and her breasts formed a deep cleavage above the neckline of her one-piece, black bathing suit.

      He leaned over to shake her hand. “Hi, Jill,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

      Jill laughed. “Just don’t go telling me I haven’t changed a bit,” she said.

      “You look great,” he said, and he meant it. Despite the weight, she was an attractive woman. She still had those enormous blue eyes rimmed with dark lashes.

      “I’ve already met your son,” she said.

      “You have?” He glanced around him at the surrounding bodies, slick with tanning lotion, wondering if Zack was nearby.

      “Uh-huh. He’s about fifteen, right? Same age as my son, Jason. They met on the beach a couple of nights ago and have been hanging around together. Although I hear your son already has his eye on one of the Wheelers’ granddaughters.”

      He did? Rory was definitely out of touch with Zack.

      “Probably Kara,” Shelly said. “She is so cute.”

      “Daria said you’re in charge of the bonfire this year,” he said.

      “This year and every year,” Jill said. “Those bonfires have always been my fondest memory of the summer.”

      “They were great,” he agreed.

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