Summer's Child. Diane Chamberlain
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“She’s the Fletcher girl.” Daria’s mother’s sounded resigned. Every girl on the cul-de-sac was going to be on that list, whether she wanted them to be or not.
Daria saw Chloe descending the stairs from the second story and put her finger to her lips. Chloe frowned as she reached the living room. She walked over to her sister on bare feet.
“What’s going on?” she whispered, trying to peer out the window onto the porch.
“Don’t let them see you!” Daria grabbed a fistful of her sister’s wild black hair to pull her head down.
“Ouch.” Chloe extricated herself from Daria’s grasp. “Why are the cops here?”
“I found a baby on the beach,” Daria said.
“You found what?”
“Shh,” Daria said. But before she could explain further, their father stepped into the room.
“Chloe, good, you’re here,” he said. His hair was mussed now. He could never keep it looking neat for long. “I was just coming in to get you. You and Ellen need to answer a few questions for the police.”
“Why?” Chloe looked surprised. Her usual olive complexion had a waxy cast to it in the pale morning light, and Daria guessed she was nervous about having to talk to policemen.
“It’s all right,” Daria said. “I talked to them for a long time. They’re pretty nice.” Of course, though, I’m Supergirl.
“Get Ellen,” her father said to Chloe, who rolled her eyes and offered him a look of disdain before stomping up the stairs. That defiant attitude was brand-new. Chloe had been away at college all this year, only joining the family at the Sea Shanty a few days ago, and Daria had not yet adjusted to the change in her sister. Chloe had always been her parents’ pride and joy, with her straight-A report card and adherence to their rules. Suddenly, she was acting as though she didn’t need parents at all.
“And you.” Daria’s father looked straight at her, and she knew she’d been caught eavesdropping at the window. “You go on upstairs now. You must be tired. It’s already been a long morning for you.”
Daria did not want to go upstairs; she wanted to hear what the police would say to Chloe and Ellen, and she should be able to. She was eleven now, not that anyone seemed to have remembered. And if it hadn’t been for her, this whole commotion wouldn’t be happening at all. But her dad had that stern look on his face that told her she’d better not argue.
She passed Ellen and Chloe on her way up the stairs. Ellen wore the same pale-faced look as Chloe, and they said nothing to her as she passed them. But when she was nearly to the second story, she heard Chloe call out to her.
“Hey, Daria,” she said. “Happy birthday, sis.”
When she reached the upstairs hallway, Daria sat down on the top step, trying to remain within hearing range of the voices downstairs. She could tell who was talking, but little of what was said, and her mind began to wander. She thought about what she’d told the police, playing the interview over and over in her mind. If you lied to the police, could you be arrested? Would they arrest an eleven-year-old girl? She had not actually lied, she reassured herself. She had simply left out one fact—one small, probably insignificant piece of the story: the baby was not all she had found on the beach that morning.
1
Twenty-two years later
DARIA’S THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY WAS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT from any other early June day. Life was slowly returning to the Outer Banks as vacationers trickled into the coastal communities, and it seemed the air and sea grew warmer by the hour. Daria spent the day with her co-worker and fellow carpenter, Andy Kramer, remodeling the kitchen of a house in Nag’s Head. She installed cabinets and countertops, all the while battling the melancholia that had been her companion for the past month and a half.
Andy had insisted on buying her lunch—a chicken sandwich and fries at Wendy’s—as his birthday gift to her. She sat across the table from him, nibbling her sandwich while he devoured his three hamburgers and two orders of fries, as they planned their work agenda for the afternoon. Despite Andy’s appetite, he was reed slender. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that reached the middle of his back, and a gold hoop pierced his left earlobe. He was only in his mid-twenties, and Daria figured that was the reason he could still eat as he did and never gain an ounce.
“So,” he said to her as he polished off the last of his burgers, “are you going to party tonight?”
“No,” Daria said. “I’m just going to have some cake with Chloe and Shelly.”
“Oh, right,” Andy said. “It’s Shelly’s birthday, too, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. She’s twenty-two.” Hard to believe. Shelly still seemed like a child to her.
Andy drank the last swallow of his soda and set the empty cup on the tray. “Well, I think you and Shelly should go out on the town tonight and do it right.”
“I have to teach a class at the fire station,” Daria said, as if that was the only thing keeping her from “going out on the town.”
“You do?” Andy looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t—”
“I’m not working as an EMT,” Daria finished his sentence for him. “I still want to be an instructor, though. This will be the first class I’ve taught since…in a while.”
He had to know she meant it was her first class since April, when the seaplane went down in the ocean and changed everything in her life, but he wisely said nothing. Daria was anxious about teaching again. Tonight would be the first time she’d faced the other emergency medical technicians since turning in her resignation from the volunteer force, and she knew she had left them confused—and short-handed—by her sudden departure. She feared she had lost credibility with them, as well.
She left the restaurant with Andy, wondering how he felt about her quitting. Andy longed to be an EMT. He’d failed the exam twice, and Daria knew it was unlikely he would ever pass it, although he seemed determined to keep trying. He had been at the plane crash back in April, though, and he surely understood how horrendous that situation had been for her. But even Andy didn’t know the entire story.
The class at the fire station that evening proved that Daria had been right to be nervous about teaching again. No one seemed to know what to say to her. Were they angry with her for leaving so abruptly, or just disappointed in her? Most of them probably thought she had left because her fiancé, Pete, had resigned, and she allowed them that misperception. It was easier than telling them the truth. A few of them, those who had known her for many years, were aware that her leaving had something to do with the crash of the seaplane, but even those people did not understand. After ten years as a volunteer EMT, with a reputation as the “local hero” who possessed exceptional skills and steely nerves, it was unthinkable that one failed rescue attempt could flatten Daria to that extent. As she stood in front of the class that evening, she couldn’t blame any of them for their confusion or sudden distrust of her. After all, she was teaching them to perform tasks she was no longer willing to perform herself. She wondered if she truly had the right to be teaching at all. Walking out to her car after the class, she was painfully aware that no one was following her to ask questions or even to chat. They all hung back in the classroom, probably waiting until she’d left the building to begin talking about her.
It was a bit after eight o’clock as she drove home from the station. Although it was only Thursday night and still early in the season, the traffic on the main road was already growing thick with tourists. She knew what that meant: accidents, heart attacks, near drownings. Shuddering, she was glad she was no longer an EMT.
She pulled into the driveway of the Sea Shanty, parking behind Chloe’s car. As of this week, all the driveways in the cul-de-sac were full. Seeing the cars, Daria suddenly missed the isolation of the winter months, when