The middle-aged woman at the bike-rental concession smiled as Cara stepped up to the counter. "Day rate or overnight?"
"Day," Cara said firmly. She paid for the bike from her petty-cash stash, then held out the now-creased map of the island. "Could you please tell me where I can find Loblolly?"
"Loblolly? You mean, like the pine trees?"
Cara shrugged. "Loblolly, like the house. It"s supposed to be near Plum Orchard, I think."
"Sorry, never heard of it. Just be sure you have the bike back here thirty minutes before the four-forty-five ferry this afternoon. Okay?" The woman looked over Cara"s shoulder. "Next?"
She"d been relieved to find that her bike was a fat-tired beach cruiser. Cara wheeled it away from the concession area, and looked around. Campers were loading gear into large beach carts and headed down the crushed-sh.e.l.l pathway, bikers were wheeling away, and the hikers were setting off down the road on foot. But which way should she be going?
Spying a young woman in a khaki Park Service uniform addressing the group of Girl Scouts, Cara hurried over to her. She waited while the ranger explained the rules-no touching or approaching the wild horses, stay on the trails, leave no trash anywhere on the island.
When there was a pause in the drill, Cara touched the ranger"s arm. "Excuse me, could you help me with some directions?"
"I"ll try."
Cara showed her the map. "I"m trying to find a private home called Loblolly. I think it"s near Plum Orchard, but I"m not really certain."
The woman shook her head. "This is a national park. There aren"t any private homes here anymore."
"Right. Well, I mean, I know it"s a park, but I read on the internet that there were still a handful of private homes on the island, right? Aren"t there still some Carnegies and Candlers who still own homes here? And also, Loblolly is one of them. Owned by the Updegraffs?"
"Sorry. Yes, there are still a very few private homes whose owners have retained rights, but I don"t know about one called Loblolly, and I don"t know any Updegraffs. I can tell you that those homeowners are pretty vigilant about their homes being private property. And most of them are reached through privately maintained roads, which are not open to the public."
"Oh." Cara adjusted her backpack straps, which were already cutting into her shoulders. "Well, now I"m more confused than ever. I know this place is called Loblolly, and that my friend is staying there."
"Let me just go check with one of the other rangers," the young woman said. Five minutes later she was back.
"You were right," she said, handing Cara"s map back to her. "There actually was a house called Loblolly. But it wasn"t at Plum Orchard. It was actually on the south end near the Dungeness ruins."
"Was?" Cara felt her stomach lurch.
"Loblolly was torn down last year, because the former owner"s life lease expired, and the Park Service didn"t consider it historically significant," the ranger said. "That explains why I"d never heard of it. I"ve only been on c.u.mberland for about nine months."
Cara felt her jaw drop open. "Torn down?" she said stupidly. "But my friend"s family owned it. She told me she was staying there."
"I don"t know what to tell you," the ranger said. "Maybe she was mistaken?" She took the map and pointed at a red circle. "This is Dungeness, if you want to take a look at where your friend"s house was. And this," she said, stabbing another point just north of Dungeness, "is where you are right now. Sea Camp. Good luck!"
"Good luck," Cara muttered, pedaling south. "Good luck, my a.s.s."
Any other time, Cara would have been entranced by c.u.mberland"s natural beauty. Grand Avenue wound beneath a canopy of live oaks whose heavy, curving limbs reached out from both sides of the hard-packed road. Lush green ferns grew up the trunks of the oaks, and the branches were festooned with thick, silvery Spanish moss. Beyond the oaks, Cara saw stands of pines, magnolias, palmetto, and palm trees whose names she"d not yet learned.
Far ahead of her on the road she could see a few specks of humanity, the Girl Scouts, on foot, but if she looked behind, all she saw was the road and the trees.
Birds twittered from the treetops, and she saw an occasional winged flash, but the aloneness struck her. Maybe that was what Brooke had come here looking for. Solitude.
There had been a picture in the brochure of Dungeness Castle as it had looked when it was built by the Carnegies, before it had been torched, in the fifties, by a poacher. Now, looking at the brick and tabby remains of the once grand home, Cara could see the outlines of the great house, and the way nature had already begun to encroach and overrun the ruins. Vines crept up walls and chimneys, palm trees sprouted where rooms had been. Cara held her breath when she spotted a group of three horses, two adults, and a colt, grazing on gra.s.s just inside the stone entryway, oblivious of her presence.
She circled the outskirts of the mansion, looking for some sign of Loblolly. She found collapsed and charred outbuildings, wound with what looked like decades" worth of honeysuckle and kudzu vines, and even what looked like an old car graveyard, with the rusting hulks of the Carnegie"s once-splendid touring cars.
Finally, on the west side of the ruins, on a rise overlooking the river, she spotted what looked like a recently cleared spot of land. Neat piles of old bricks and worn timbers had been stacked to one side, but the outlines of mature boxwood hedges, bushy camellia shrubs, and a pair of twin palms were the only remnants of what must have been the foundation plantings for a fairly large house.
Cara laid the bike on the ground and walked around the property. The Park Service had done an admirable job of dismantling whatever had been here. From the siting of the palm trees, she guessed where the home"s porch would have been. She stood there now, wondering what her next move would be, kicking frustratedly at the pale sand with the toe of her sneaker.
"Ow." Her toe hit something solid. She kicked it again, then knelt down to get a better look. She dug at the damp sand, brushing it sideways, until she spied a glimpse of dark gray granite. Her backpack swung awkwardly to one side, so she took it off and resumed digging. Five minutes later, she"d dug away enough sand to reveal a block of tile mosaic lettering. L-O ... She dug on, until she"d exhumed a three-foot patch of granite threshold with the word Loblolly spelled in tile.
Cara sat back on her heels. So. The ranger had been right. Loblolly was gone. But where was Brooke Trapnell?
She glanced down at her watch. It was nearly noon, and she was hungry and thirsty, and the back of her sweaty T-shirt clung to her skin. She looked around for a shady place to take a lunch break. Just a few yards away was another of c.u.mberland"s enormous live oaks. And this one had a picnic bench beneath it. Perfect!
She sat in the shade, uncapped her water bottle, and devoured one of her protein bars while reading the dozens of names and dates that had been carved into the wooden bench, leaving barely an inch of ungraffitied s.p.a.ce. The earliest one she found was from 1972, inside a crude heart with the names "John + Marsha." The most recent entry was from 2013.
Cara leaned back on her elbows and sighed. The first year they"d moved into their house in Savannah, Leo had carved a heart with their initials into the trunk of a tall, spindly pine tree in their front yard. Less than a month later, the tree came crashing to the ground during a violent lightning storm, leaving a huge dent on the hood of Cara"s car, and an ugly uneven stump, which, as far as Cara knew, was still there. Had that been an omen of things to come?
She was contemplating omens and their meanings and staring at the Loblolly home site when the sun caught a gleam of metal nearly hidden in the canopy of another live oak close to the house site. She took another swallow of water and walked closer to take another look.
A tree house! It had been built on and around the tree"s thick main trunk, and the glint of metal she"d seen was a bit of its tin roof. As a child, Cara had always longed for a tree house, but of course, they"d lived in base housing in those days, and the Air Force didn"t consider playhouses for little girls as standard issue.
She was almost directly under the plank floor of the house when she noticed the foot ladder nailed to the oak"s trunk. And at the base of the trunk, she spied a pair of expensive-looking Jack Rogers sandals. Cara had seen a pair of sandals like those not so many days ago. She tilted her head as far back as it could go.
"Brooke?"
There followed an almost imperceptible rustling of branches, but the tree"s foliage was so dense, she could see little besides brown branches and green leaves. Cara pulled herself onto the first rung of the foot ladder, holding on to the step above it. She climbed another step, and then the next. Finally, when she was nearly six feet off the ground, she saw the hatch that had been cut into the floor. Two more steps and she poked her head through that hatch.
Brooke Trapnell sat in the corner of the wooden house, her legs folded beneath her Indian style.
"Olly-olly-oxen-free," Cara said.
59.
Brooke smiled wanly. "I saw you come riding up on your bike. I was hoping you wouldn"t see me. What were you digging for over there? Buried treasure?"
Cara hoisted herself up and onto the floor of the tree house. The floor platform was a little larger than a king-size bed. The side walls were actually three foot railings, and the roof was held up by four-by-four posts. This must be what a rich kid"s tree house looked like.
"When I was kicking the sand I felt something solid under my shoe. I guess it was the old threshold for your family"s house."
That perked her up. "The one that said Loblolly?"
"Yes."
"I can"t believe you found that. It must be the one thing the f.u.c.king Park Service didn"t destroy."
"You didn"t know they"d torn the house down?"
"No! I had no idea. When I got down to St. Marys on Sat.u.r.day, I"d already missed the ferry. I should have just gotten a motel room and come the next morning, but in the frame of mind I was in, all I could think of was getting over here to Loblolly. I went to the marina and took a charter boat to the Sea Camp dock. By the time I"d hiked down here, it was almost sunset. For a minute there, I thought maybe I"d somehow gotten turned around and gone the wrong way. Which made no sense. I mean, Dungeness is right over there."
Her finger stabbed the still, humid air, in the direction of the brick-and-stucco ruins. "So where was our house? I mean, how could it have just disappeared? Then, I saw the pile of bricks, and of course, you can still sort of see the outline of where the house was. I kind of went a little crazy. Okay, I was already halfway there, but the house being gone, that pushed me over the edge."
"What did you do?" Cara asked.
"You mean after I cried and carried on and stood over there on the bluff and screamed so loud I scared the feral horses and nearly gave a hiker a heart attack because he thought I"d been bit by a rattlesnake?"
"Yes. What did you do after that?"
"I turned around and started to walk back to Sea Camp. But then I realized there wouldn"t be a ferry back to the mainland until the next morning. I had my overnight bag, but no tent or sleeping bag-and it was getting dark. I didn"t know what else to do, so I called Pete."
"Your ranger friend?"
She nodded. "That day after we ran into him at lunch and I gave him my business card? He texted me after I got back to the office. I texted back, just to say how glad I was to have seen him, and that was it. He asked me to meet him for a drink, even suggested I should bring Harris, but I said no. I never intended to see Pete again."
"Then why come over here to c.u.mberland?" Cara asked. "You knew he"d be here, right?"
"I knew Loblolly would be here." She laughed ruefully. "Anyway, that"s what I told myself. But with Loblolly gone, what else was I going to do? I had Pete"s number in my phone, so I called him and told him where I was, and he came and got me, no questions asked."
Cara looked around again at the tree house. "I"m guessing you didn"t stay up here."
"G.o.d, no. Pete has one of the little ranger cabins, so I stayed with him. The mosquitoes would have carried me away up here. Anyway, I"d forgotten all about the tree house until I came back over here yesterday, to see if there was anything left of the house that I could salvage. You know, a doork.n.o.b, anything at all. The Park Service was very efficient about obliterating every trace of Loblolly."
"And you really didn"t know the house was going to be torn down? When was the last time you were here?"
"Mmm, maybe my senior year of high school, so that"s like, ten years ago."
"n.o.body in your family mentioned that the house was gone?"
"No, but that"s understandable. My mom was never really crazy about staying at Loblolly. It was too much like camping for her, but I adored being here. We used to come over a couple times a year for a week or two at a time with my uncle Les and his family, but Les has been dealing with his own family stuff for the past couple years. His wife has breast cancer, and my cousin was nearly killed in a car wreck last Christmas and is still in rehab. I don"t even know if Mom knows Loblolly has been torn down."
Brooke propped her elbows on her knees and looked out toward the riverbank. Cara took the time to study her. Her short, uncharacteristically messy hair was held back from her face with a rolled-up red bandanna, and she wore a pair of too-big wrinkled khaki shorts and a lime-green tie-dye T-shirt. It looked like she"d gone shopping at the St. Marys Goodwill.
"Did my mom send you to get me?"
"No. I promised not to tell where you"d gone. The only other person who knows where we are is Bert, my a.s.sistant. It was his idea for me to text you."
"Then why are you here?"
Cara didn"t answer at first.
"Shhh. Look." Cara nodded in the direction of Loblolly. A herd of horses had drifted up and they were nosing about the vegetation around the foundation. There were six of them, four mares and two colts. They were so close, she could hear them whinnying.
"They"re so beautiful," Cara whispered. "Where did they come from?"
"n.o.body really knows. When we were kids we used to pretend they were pirate horses. Some people think they came over with Spanish explorers in the 1500s, but there would have been horses on the early plantations too, plus the Carnegies had their own stables. The Park Service has tried to figure out ways to manage the size of the herd, because they say the horses eat the sea oats and beach gra.s.ses that are needed to control beach erosion, but a lot of people love those horses, so it"s just another hot topic on the island."
"Did you ever try to ride one of those horses?" Cara asked.
"You still haven"t answered my question."
"I came here to c.u.mberland to find you and make you understand what a big mistake you"re making. Now you. What are you doing here, Brooke?"
Brooke hugged her knees to her chest. "I guess I"m looking for me too."
"Oh G.o.d," Cara groaned. "Spare me the existentialism."
"I just wanted things to slow down a little, okay? I"ve been working all these hours for this trial coming up, and then Friday, my boss came in and said the other side had decided to settle out of court! It was like this huge load had been lifted. But I still had all the wedding stuff to contend with, and my dad and Patricia, and yes, even my mom, although she means well, it was all too, too much."
Brooke studied Cara. "Haven"t you ever wanted to run away?"
"Sure," Cara said. "All the time. Everybody wants to run away at some time or another."
"But not everybody does."
"True that." Cara paused, trying to remember the speech she"d rehea.r.s.ed on the ferryboat. "Harris and your mom are worried sick about you, Brooke. Your mom knows the pressure you"ve been under, and she told me she"s afraid you"ll hurt yourself."
"Me?" Brooke looked shocked. "Mom thinks I"m suicidal?"
"She doesn"t know what to think. And Harris-he really loves you, Brooke. He broke down in tears when I talked to him. He blames himself for your leaving."
"He did?" Brooke looked away.
"Why didn"t you just let them know you were going to take a few days off?" Cara asked. "They would have understood."
Brooke was looking down at something on the floor. She lowered a fingertip to a plank, then lifted it up so Cara could see a tiny ladybug perched there.
"I didn"t plan to leave. I"d been dreading the bachelorette party. I"ve never understood why a girl feels the need to get dressed up in some stupid "I"m the Bride" tiara and beauty-pageant sash and go riding around town with her girlfriends in a limo, getting s.h.i.t-faced on candy-colored c.o.c.ktails."
"Then why have one?"
"Holly-she"s my best friend. And Harris"s sister. I couldn"t hurt her feelings and tell her I didn"t feel like going clubbing. It"s not normal to not want a bachelorette party. Finally, I made myself put on my game face. I was almost ready when I got a text from a number I didn"t recognize. There was no message, just a link."
"To Harris"s Facebook page," Cara said. "And the stripper photos."
Brooke"s head bent over the ladybug, who was beetling her way up her wrist.
"We had another fight about the bachelor party Friday morning, before I left for work. Harris offered not to go-said he"d stay home if it was going to make me that upset. Which made me even angrier. I knew all the guys would blame me if Harris didn"t go, and they"d say he was p.u.s.s.y-whipped."
"d.a.m.ned if you do, d.a.m.ned if you don"t," Cara said.