Summer of Lost and Found

by Rebecca Behrens

  “White arrived on his granddaughter’s third birthday. I bet he brought her presents from England.” I pictured a man on the shore, clutching a sea-damp doll. For some reason, it made me a little wistful to think of a grandfather—or a father—doing something thoughtful like that after being away for so long.

  “The fort was totally deserted. The buildings they had put up were taken down. A few things were left, like cannons and some stuff that belonged to White. But everything else was gone. The colonists had disappeared without a trace. Then White found three letters, carved into a tree: C-R-O.”

  “What did that mean?”

  Lila shrugged. “White thought it meant that the colonists went to Croatoan Island, which we call Hatteras today. Manteo’s village was there. But White never found the colonists, and neither has anyone ever since. They simply vanished.” She made a poof  hand motion.

  “But the crosses you mentioned—did they put one on a tree? To show there had been danger?” I shifted in my rocking chair. How could so many people disappear, without anyone finding them—ever? People don’t vanish into thin air, even if they die. Watching police procedural TV shows with my dad has taught me that.

  Lila shook her head. “Nope. At least, not that anyone has ever found. Some people think the colonists moved onto the mainland, up by the Chesapeake. Others think they joined up with tribes in the area, like the Croatoans. They might’ve died of illness or been killed in a conflict—maybe the Spanish found them. And a few people actually think it was something stranger, like alien abductions.” She paused for dramatic effect. “We may never know the truth.”

  “Crazy” was all I could bring myself to say. I felt in my pocket for my phone and refreshed the screen to see if I had any messages. None. I felt a little sick to my stomach again. But maybe it was because I hadn’t really eaten lunch. I sent a quick text to my dad, telling him that I may have stumbled upon a mystery here in Roanoke. I also asked if he knew anything about our Dare family background.

  Lila started rocking again. “I like to think that they’re still here, haunting the island. Because there are lots of ghostly things on Roanoke, like a spooky white doe that people see in the woods. You see, nobody knows exactly where the colonists lived on the island. But I have a theory about how to find them.” She gave me a self-satisfied smile. “Wherever they settled is probably where their ghosts are now. Find the ghosts, find the lost colonists.”

  “But what if their ghosts are gone?” Like I was even sure ghosts existed.

  Lila made a duh face. “If you had been missing for hundreds of years, don’t you think you’d stick around to see if anyone ever finds out what happened to you? Anyway, people have been trying to use archaeology to find them for decades and that hasn’t worked. So maybe paranormal investigation will. Even if my dad thinks that ghosts have nothing to do with science . . .” She trailed off, then cleared her throat. “Hey.” She grabbed my arm. Her hand was cold and clammy, even though it was so hot out. “I know what. You’ll be my assistant. I’ll teach you everything.” She grinned at me. “You are so lucky you stumbled on me here. This is a rare opportunity, to learn about both Roanoke and ghost hunting from the master.”

  The master? Please. Even though she had good stories, Lila was bugging me. I’d also be doing enough assisting for my mom, thankyouverymuch. I sent another quick text to Jade: Nevermind. The girl’s kind of full of herself.

  “Actually, my mother is here to do very important scientific research, so I’m pretty busy helping her. She’s a botanist at the Natural History Museum in New York. It’s where—”

  “I know all about that museum!” Lila interrupted. Ugh. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves. I stood up from my chair. Sir Walter made a sad woof as he moved out of my way. I gave him an apology pat.

  “I should head home. My mom’s probably wondering where I am.” I offered a halfhearted wave good-bye. “Nice talking.” Jade had replied with a frowny face. Pretty much, I thought.

  “Where are you staying?” Lila called after me. “I’ll take you out on a ghost tour some day. Gratis.”

  Gratis. Really? I pretended not to hear her. I hurried down the steps and in the direction of the cottage. Even if I didn’t like Lila, she told a good story. Hers had stuck in my head and gave me goose bumps despite the muggy heat smothering me and everything else here. All those people, left stranded on this island. How long did they wait for White to come back? And how did they feel, not knowing where he was or if he’d return? I pictured the man standing on the shore again, clutching that doll for his three-year-old granddaughter. Virginia Dare. It made me so sad to think about how he never knew what had happened to her.

  Even if I didn’t want to hang out with Lila and her pretentiously named (but cute) dog again, I wanted to know more about the lost colony. I couldn’t believe that nobody ever figured out the truth about the colonists. There must be answers somewhere, because people just don’t let those they love vanish from their lives.

  Because if people did do that—could my dad vanish from mine?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I felt better when Mom got home that night and grilled us steaks and corn on the cob, dripping with honey butter and dusted with salt. She chided me for not calling her when I left the house or when I got back, but because my trip to the bookstore went totally fine she didn’t push it. It was like both of us knew that despite the great food and cozy cottage and charming town, something was amiss; Dad wasn’t there and we weren’t really talking about why he wasn’t there. One step in the argument direction and the whole façade of fun summer research trip would come crashing down on us. No, thanks.

  Mom declared that for the weekend, we were going to be tourists in the Outer Banks. She pulled out the official guidebook and a highlighter. “We’ll do anything you want, sprout.”

  “I don’t even need to look at this to know what we’re doing on Saturday,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Beach day!”

  Mom rolled her eyes but smiled. My dad and I love the beach; my mom always says that it’s not her thing. First, there’s her fear of open water. She’ll swim in a pool but I’ve never seen her jump in an ocean or a lake. I don’t think she even likes going out in boats, in case they’d spontaneously capsize and she’d get tossed overboard. Second, Mom’s one true love is plants, and they grow on land. Seaweed, she says, is not enough to make her like the ocean. Especially when it washes up on shore and starts stinking as it breaks down in the sun.

  “I said ‘anything,’ so I suppose I have to agree to this plan. Figure out which beach you want to hit. But pick something else for Sunday, okay?”

  While Mom cleaned the grill, I curled up on top of the green comforter, struggling to find a position that felt right on the lumpy mattress. I opened the guidebook and flipped through the ads. I stuck in the highlighter to mark my place and pulled my phone off the nightstand. I sent Dad another text: We are going to the beach tomorrow. You are missing out! What I really wanted to write was, What is the deal with you and Mom? Why is she acting like everything’s okay when it so clearly isn’t? And where in the world are you? But the thought of writing out those words—making my feelings real—was too scary.

  I almost picked a Hatteras beach because that’s where Lila said that the lost colonists might’ve gone, and I wanted to see what it was like there. If it was the sort of place that people would want to disappear to, and if it was the sort of place where it would be hard to be found. But then I read an article about wild horses on the beach at Corolla, which changed my mind.

  As I was carefully highlighting a square around a minigolf listing, my phone rattled on the nightstand. I dropped the highlighter, getting a streak of yellow onto the one white part of the comforter, and grabbed my phone.

  A mystery and a beach! I am most jealous. Reminds me of this, from The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a t
housand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices.” Delight in the sweet airs on the beach this weekend, and be not afeard exploring such a special island. I can’t wait to hear all about it. I’ll look into the Dare family stuff. Miss you.

  I texted back as fast as my fingers could type: Then come join us! Where are you? I knew he was by his phone; his message had just come in. But he didn’t reply, even though I stayed up for an hour, waiting to see if he would.

  • • •

  The next day Mom coated us both in a lifetime supply of SPF 85 and dutifully drove over the bridge and up to Corolla. The barrier island looked so long and skinny on the map that I expected to be able to see the beach from everywhere, but it was full of grass and tall trees—live oaks and crape myrtles, according to Mom—and marshy areas like on Roanoke and the mainland. Driving through the town called Duck, I saw a sign for a doughnut shop.

  “Mom?” I started.

  “Say no more.” She flipped the blinker on and turned into the parking lot. Minutes later, we found ourselves at a wooden picnic table, eating the freshest doughnuts I’d ever tasted in my life. They put the chain doughnut shop on our corner in New York to shame.

  “This,” Mom said, licking lemon glaze off her fingers, “is heaven.”

  Stuffed, we headed to the beach, and even Mom had to admit that it was pretty gorgeous. Miles of powdery white sand, fringed with beach grass and something my mom identified as sea oats. The mugginess disappeared once you crossed over the dunes, where the sea breeze and sun combined to create the perfect temperature. The water was clear and foamy, with waves great for swimming: Big enough that it was fun to dive under them, but not so big that it was scary. Of course we were at a spot with a lifeguard, just in case.

  I ran back to Mom, shaking the water off me like a dog. She didn’t flinch as the droplets hit her sunglasses and mottled her sun hat. “You should swim! Dip in your toes, at least.”

  “Sometimes I forget that sitting on a beach and reading can be an excellent way to spend time,” she said, ignoring my suggestion.

  “You should tell Dad that.” I stretched out next to her on my towel.

  Mom was quiet for a minute, smoothing the cover of her book. Finally, she said, “I know you miss him, and he misses you, too. I’m sure when we get back . . .” But as she trailed off, she didn’t sound sure at all.

  “What exactly is his project? Is there a reason why it takes him ages to respond to texts now? Have you talked to him on the phone since we left?” I’m not stupid. Jade’s family might be perfect, but plenty of my other friends have divorced parents. I know what leads up to that. Sometimes it’s a parent who totally flakes out and disappears.

  “I don’t want you to think he’s ignoring you, sprout.” Mom rubbed her temples. “He’s actually . . . well, he went to London.”

  I almost dropped my soda. “I knew it! His passport was gone.” I remembered another hushed phone call, one I’d overheard our first night in the cottage, when I’d walked past Mom’s room on my way to use the creepy clawfoot tub. “England! How exactly does that fit in the budget?”  I’d thought she was talking to my aunt again, who’s always going on crazy trips. But maybe Mom had been talking to Dad. If so, how in the world wouldn’t she have known beforehand that he was jetting off to another country? “For how long?”

  Mom sighed and gazed at the waves, which reminded me of those colonists. Staring out into the sea, waiting for somebody to reappear. I wonder if the moms in the lost colony had to explain to their kids why they were left alone on a mosquito-rich island to fend for themselves while the head guy sailed back to Europe. They probably made a lot of exasperated sighs too.

  “It’s kind of up in the air, for now.” Mom looked like she was about to say something more—her mouth was opening and closing slightly, like a fish’s. But then she pressed her lips shut again.

  Frustrated but not wanting to fight, I pushed myself up and walked to the water. Turning around, I watched my mom pick her book up again and start reading. But I noticed, as I doodled in the wet sand with the straw from my soda, that she didn’t turn a page for a really long time.

  We left at sunset, tanned and tired from the salt and the heat. On the drive, I announced where we were going the next day. “It was a tough call between the Elizabethan Gardens and the Festival Park, but the park won.” To be honest, it wasn’t that close of a call, but I thought she’d like hearing that I was interested in a place with plants.

  We got a late start on Sunday morning, and it wasn’t until early afternoon that we’d cleaned up breakfast dishes and gotten out of PJs. The Festival Park was right across the sound from the Manteo waterfront, so Mom suggested we try out the two rusty old bikes in the carport. We pedaled down Budleigh Street, headed left at the stop sign, then took a right at the inn to cross the cute bridge to the park. Mom didn’t have to do her breathing exercises to bike over it because it was so tiny. A bunch of boys, a little older than me, were hooting and hollering as they jumped over the railing to the water below—and my mom didn’t even tell them to be careful.

  Somehow I hadn’t gotten the right idea from the guidebook, and I’d been expecting an amusement park: roller coasters, cotton candy, et cetera. This “Festival Park” was more of a historic site, kind of like Colonial Williamsburg. Dad dragged us to that when I was in third grade, when he was writing a Revolutionary War story. We kept joking that he should get a job as one of the reenactors in order to “write what you know,” but he didn’t find the idea of becoming a blacksmith very funny. He did buy a fancy quill in the gift shop and attempt to write longhand with it for a while, though, to “get inside his characters’ heads.” I wore a tricorn hat around the apartment for encouragement.

  We locked up the bikes and walked into the visitor center. While Mom paid our admission, I wandered around, looking at the brochures and letting the air-conditioning dry the sweat I’d worked up biking over.

  Mom stuck an admission sticker on the strap of my tank top. “These will get us into the museum, the American Indian village, the settlement site, and on the sailing ship Elizabeth II. Today and tomorrow—so if you’re bored while I’m working, you can come back.”

  “Sweet,” I said. “Let’s head over to the ship.” It would be cooler by the water. The ship was one of those old, wooden, brightly painted vessels, and some costumed guys were busy unfurling the sails as we boarded.

  I stopped short. “Oh wait, you hate boats.”

  “Not landlocked ones like this,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “Ahoy, there!” A teenage boy in a billowy shirt squinted at us from across the deck. “Welcome aboard the Elizabeth II !”

  “Ahoy!” Mom enthusiastically waved back, and I cringed.

  Another guy came up from behind us. “Aye, two lassies, and in time to help swab the decks!” He winked at me, and I blushed. Luckily, a bunch of hyperactive little kids ran out from belowdecks and started chasing one another in circles around him.

  “I’m too old for swabbing, methinks.” Mom grinned at the guy. Her dorky enthusiasm made me want to walk the plank. “But I’d love to check out the astrolabe.”

  “I’ll see you above deck,” I said, hurrying toward the stern. I leaned over the edge of the boat, staring at the murky water below. I turned around to face the rest of the park. Trees hid most of the structures in the settlement site, although I could see the tip of a roof and a red-and-white flag. A pier stretched over the grasses and into the water. One boy, older than me, stood at the end of it. He stared at the ship—was he watching me? I blushed and looked away. It was silly to think that. But when I sneaked another glance, he was still looking in my direction. He raised a hand for a tentative wave. I squinted for a closer look—he was wearing some of the colonial clothes. Maybe he was one of the reenactors? I waved back at him. A huge smile overtook his face.

  “Nell? Whom are you waving at?”

  I dropped my hand to my side. “Wasn’t waving, just
swatting a mosquito.”

  Mom came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Did you know they actually take this ship out on the ocean?” The boy moved back into the dense trees, probably onto the footpath.

  “Seriously? That’s pretty neat.”

  A big group of tourists was waiting to climb on board. “Are you ready to disembark? I’d love to see the museum,” Mom said. I looked at my mother, with her cargo shorts and frizzy hair and slightly too-large T-shirt. I wanted to go see the settlement, and maybe say hello to that boy. With a pang of guilt, I realized that I’d rather not try to talk to him with my mom there. Also because the settlement featured a set of armor for visitors to try, and I just knew my mom would force me to put it all on.

  “Did you say I could get in with this sticker tomorrow, too?”

  “Yup, and that’s a good thing because we won’t have time to see everything today. Are you having fun?” Mom asked, with a hopeful smile.

  “Mm-hmm. Let’s go to the museum now.” We clambered off the ship and onto the dock.

  “Wonderful. I could use an hour of air-conditioning, before I melt. ‘Oh, what a world, what a world.’ ” Mom grinned at me. I knew I’d made the right call in terms of not venturing near that boy with my Wizard of Oz–quoting mom in tow.

  But as we walked toward the museum, I kept sneaking glances in the direction of the settlement area, to see if maybe he was still over there. Jade always talks about eye contact—most of her “relationships” so far have consisted of her staring at the boys she likes. She insists that she has amazing eye contact with them and it means that they like her back. I think it means that they probably think she has a major staring problem. But I started to understand what she was saying. There was something about the way in which that boy and I looked at each other; it wasn’t how you accidentally catch someone’s eye on the subway and then quickly glance away. It sounds super cheesy, but I felt like we made a connection. It made me want to talk to him, to see if we actually had. Or if the heat had simply melted my brain.