Summer of Lost and Found

by Rebecca Behrens

  My mom is so nerdy sometimes. Who knew plants could be so exciting? My dad jokes that she bleeds chlorophyll. Yes, I like to sit and ponder whether grape species are native to various US regions. But Mom gets so excited about her work that I can’t be snarky about it. I nodded.

  “Europeans didn’t introduce grapes to North America—four species were already in this area, and muscadine is one of them. It has a big, round, juicy green fruit. They’re beautiful. When explorers came to the coast way back in the fifteen hundreds, they wrote about how chock-full the place was with grapevines.” She paused, brushing her hair off her face.

  A message from Jade tempted me, but my mom has a rule about not texting when you’re in conversation with people in real life. Dad is always pretty bad about that, and spending so much time gabbing with other writers online.

  “Anyway, to make a long story longer, on Roanoke Island there’s a vine called the ‘Mother Vine.’ People think it’s the oldest cultivated grapevine in America. It’s so old that the very first English colonists could have eaten from it.”

  So that was why “Roanoke” had sounded familiar. When we were studying Jamestown in history, the textbook had one little sidebar devoted to the colony that preceded it—the one that failed, on Roanoke Island. The colonists had gotten lost or been lost, or something. Because it was only a sidebar, it was light on details. I hadn’t known that was the same Roanoke we were going to.

  My mom was still talking. “Anyway, an archaeologist recently found another scuppernong in the woods, and we think it might be even older than the Mother Vine. We’re calling it the ‘Grandmother Vine,’ for now.” She chuckled at that. “I’m trying to figure out its exact age.” She paused to take in a highway sign. “Time is of the essence.”

  “If it’s hundreds of years old, what’s the rush?”

  “Because someone might build a golf course over it.” My mom shook her head angrily and made the same exasperated noise she makes when people have thrown coffee cups in the flowers on our block.

  “That’s not cool.” The afternoon light was fading to dusk. I hoped we got wherever we were going before dark. Arriving at a hotel at night feels creepy, like a scene out of a horror movie. It’s better to check in to a room when it’s sunny and fresh and you don’t have to worry about anything scary lurking in the shadows. I punched on the radio and scrolled to find some good music. I settled on an oldies station, and Mom and I spent the rest of the drive singing along. I kept refreshing my phone, waiting to see if I’d hear back from Dad. I only got a text from Jade: Sofia & I r going 2 the movies & eatin at Ollie’s after. Miss u. Ollie’s has the best scallion pancakes in the city. I tried not to think about how long I’d have to go without them and cold sesame noodles. I tuned back in to Mom’s rambling. She was talking about those colonists again, telling me that some were my age.

  When the sun was almost set, we came to a low bridge. According to my phone, the Albemarle Sound glimmered in front of us. “This is the Wright Memorial Bridge,” Mom said as she slowed the car down for the traffic. “Can you guess who it was named after? And don’t cheat with that phone—I know you’ve peeked at the map.”

  I shook my head no.

  “The Wright brothers,” she explained. “First in powered flight. Kill Devil Hills is across the water, on that barrier island. See, this is a cool place. It’s steeped in history. You might learn a lot this summer.”

  “I could learn a lot at your museum. Or up at the Cloisters.” Every year we take a school field trip to the Cloisters, which is this medieval art museum way at the tippy top of Manhattan. It has armor and super-old books and stuff on display. But what’s great are the gardens, which have all kinds of cool medieval plants. Mandrakes, just like in Harry Potter! I asked the docent one year if we could yank it up to see if it would scream, but she declined.

  Mom took a deep breath and clutched the steering wheel a little tighter. I forgot that she hates driving across bridges. Like, really really hates it. It’s part of her open-water phobia. She had some kind of canoe incident when she was a kid, which she never got past. Whenever we leave the city, Dad has to drive over the George Washington Bridge while Mom shades her eyes and does deep-breathing exercises.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I tried to reassure her. “This looks like a very sturdy bridge. We’re not up high, and people are driving slowly.”

  She gave me a grateful smile. “One of these days, we’ll live in a place not surrounded by water.”

  “It would be okay if Dad were here.” I regretted saying that immediately, as the smile on Mom’s face crumpled.

  We made it across and drove down the Croatan Highway, past the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk. Mom got all excited when we went past a sign for Jockey’s Ridge State Park, which she said has the tallest sand dune on the east coast. Then we came to another bridge heading in the direction of the marshy mainland. I noticed some sign about “Dare County.”

  “Hey, Dare! Like our last name.” Although my mom kept hers. You can’t expect a botanist to give up the name “Wood.”

  “That’s a big name around here. The first English baby born in the New World was Virginia Dare. I wonder if she’s related, some distant branch on your family tree.”

  “Neat.” I turned my attention back to our driving. “Wait, why are we heading away from the ocean? I thought we were staying at the beach.”

  Mom shrugged. “Roanoke’s an island, but it’s on the sound. Bodie Island is between it and the Atlantic.”

  We crossed onto Roanoke. Soft grasses, which looked like fox fur, dotted the side of the road in small clumps. Boats bobbed in the water, and houses hugged the shoreline to the right. Mom studied the clock on the dashboard. “I was hoping we’d have time to drive to the Grandmother Vine first thing, but that’ll have to wait until morning. Better get our cottage set up first.”

  “We’re not staying in a hotel?” I had been picturing a sunny beach resort, featuring a pool with lots of lounge chairs and a vending machine on every floor. I seriously love hotel vending machines. When I was little, vacations and hotel stays were the only times my mom would let me buy candy bars.

  Mom laughed. “Not for a whole month, silly! Do you know how much that would cost? We’re going to be in a nice little cottage in downtown Manteo. You’ll love it.”

  I was doubtful. Cottages made me think of camp, and that made me think of daddy long legs and mosquitoes in the same environment as my bed. Not cool.

  We inched along the main drag, Highway 64, while Mom peered over the steering wheel to read street signs in the waning light. “Budleigh! That’s it. We’re almost there, sprout.” Her tone was chirpy and bright again. We turned right, and drove past a bunch of houses and the Ye Olde Pioneer Theatre—seriously, that’s what the sign above the marquee said. Mom stopped the car in front of a white cottage. It had a little front yard with the thickest green grass I’ve ever seen—thicker than the Great Lawn and the Sheep’s Meadow in the park, for sure. The windows had bright pink awnings over them and flower-stuffed window boxes below them. Mom jumped out of the car and started stretching her legs.

  “That drive was a killer!” She grinned at me. “But this place looks pretty sweet, right?”

  I didn’t want to like it. I felt like any ounce of enthusiasm for this place or this trip wasn’t fair to my apartment and my life back in New York. But . . . the cottage was adorable. It looked like a doll’s house. I’d never lived in anything but an apartment, and we’ve always had other people on the other side of the thin walls. I can smell Mrs. Kim’s cooking and hear when Mr. Cohen has a hacking cough. Living in a place where you can’t tap messages in Morse code to your neighbors might be kind of nice.

  “It’s pretty.” I walked to the gate of the picket fence, pulled up the lock, and swung it open. “How do we get inside?”

  “The keys should be in the mailbox,” Mom said, skipping in front of me. She was almost giddy, like a kid on her way into Disneyland. “Look
at all these beautiful flowers! Smell that grass!”

  “They left the keys in the mailbox?” That I could not believe. People would never do that back home. They won’t even hold the door so you can follow them into a building.

  “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Mom singsonged to me. It was nice to see her so excited about something, after the past week. But at the same time, I didn’t want her to be too happy. She should be missing Dad, at least as much as I was. What did it mean if she wasn’t? My stomach started to feel sick, and not from the vending-machine hot chocolate.

  Mom pulled an envelope from the mailbox and ripped it open. Two shiny keys were inside, along with an information packet. She tucked the papers under her arm and shoved the key in the lock. The door popped open, and we stepped over the landing. It felt like a fairy house inside, all white and flowery. Even though the cottage was tiny, the vaulted ceiling made it feel spacious. I followed Mom around as she exclaimed over every detail. “You can pick which bedroom you want,” she offered.

  I peeked my head into both. One had a bright pink crocheted blanket as a bedspread and the other had a green comforter with embroidered leaves. “I’ll take the green room.” I dropped my messenger bag inside the door and stepped in. The floorboards creaked, making familiar sighing sounds as I walked over to the window. My view, once I parted the curtains, was of the back garden, which had four brightly painted Adirondack chairs on a little patio and a pergola above. Floral vines twined up and down both sides. My room was small and the ceiling slanted, but still fit a white dresser, a light teal nightstand, and an off-white vanity and mirror. There was even a small padded stool in front of the vanity. It reminded me of the one Jade had in her room. I wished I could show her this place. It would be an awesome space for a sleepover.

  While Mom flopped down on the pink bed, I wandered into the bathroom, which had a creepy clawfoot tub and one of those ancient toilets that still uses a chain. I felt a certain relief to find something that I didn’t like about this place, so if Dad called I wouldn’t get all gushy about where we were staying and make him feel like he was left out. Every time I thought about how it had been more than a week since I’d heard his voice, I felt that stabby stomach feeling again. I’d never gone that long in my whole life without talking to my dad.

  Next I scoped out the kitchen, which had checkered curtains and an old-fashioned sink—the kind with the rippled side for stacking dishes to dry. The fridge, small and rounded, was the kind my grandma would always call an “icebox.” But at least it had a big freezer compartment, so I wouldn’t have to give up sufficient Popsicle and ice-cream storage along with all the other sacrifices, big and small, I was making this summer. I unlocked the kitchen door and stepped out into the garden. Even though we were right in town, all I could hear was the soft breeze blowing and some cicadas buzzing. No honking taxis, no chortling buses, no kids laughing or supers yelling on the street. Tipping my head back to look up, I could see stars peeking out from the twilight sky, more than I’d ever seen in Manhattan—other than at the planetarium at Mom’s museum, of course. But those didn’t count.

  I sank into one of the Adirondack chairs, nestling into the cold, smooth wood. The light breeze smelled briny, tipped with pine and flowers.

  Mom stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Nell? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.”

  I turned toward her and smiled. “I’m only peckish.”

  “Ha-ha. Let’s see if we can’t get something delivered? I’m too wiped to go out and scavenge.” I followed Mom inside the kitchen. She pulled out her laptop and started searching for delivery places nearby.

  “Hmmm,” she said after a minute. “We seem to be limited to pizza or barbecue. Or, wait: Chinese!”

  “That’s fine. Do they have scallion pancakes?” My stomach started growling at the thought. I waited for Mom to click on the menu.

  “Bad news: no pancakes. And . . . let me see,” she scrolled to read something else, then glanced at the top right of the screen. “Worse news. They stopped delivering already.”

  “What? That’s crazy! It’s not even nine.” I only knew of two places in our neighborhood that quit delivering so early—the weird vegan restaurant and the after-school pizza place. Everywhere else delivers until late, late, late. At sleepovers, we’ve even called out for cookies after midnight. And they show up at your door, piping hot, in less than thirty minutes.

  “Same for barbecue. On to plan C, pizza.” Mom typed the number into her phone and hit call. I waited as she pressed the earpiece to her head. And waited. She pulled the phone away and pressed end. “They’re not picking up. Maybe they’re done for the night too.”

  I flopped onto the kitchen floor, sprawling out on the linoleum and making sad guttural noises. “I am starving. How do people live like this?”

  “They make their own food.” She bent to give me a sympathetic pat on the head. “Anyway, I bet there are places that do deliver—we just don’t know about them yet, and Google is asleep on the job.” Mom walked over to a brown grocery bag sitting on the counter and started pulling things out. “It looks like a dried mango with chile and sweet-and-salty trail mix night, sprout.”

  We ate the mango and mix out in the garden, silently listening to the cicada buzz and breeze. But the good feeling that I’d started to get pre-dinner was gone, and the sounds and smells and stars made me feel so very far from home. My thoughts turned to those colonists. I wondered how the ones my age had felt upon arriving at Roanoke, hundreds of years ago—when they hadn’t traveled a half-dozen states south, but across a whole wide ocean.

  October 1587

  This is my tale.

  The story of how I journeyed across the sea, for a life in a new world.

  Our company set sail from Portsmouth on the twenty-sixth of April, in three ships. ’Twas a voyage most rough. Tempestuous seas. Quarrels constant between our fledgling colony’s governor, John White, and the ship’s pilot, Simon Fernandez. And even poisoning on the island of Santa Cruz. Arriving thither, we were most hungry and desperate for fresh food after weeks of chewing mouldy bread at sea, all our marmalade and butter devoured long ago. On the isle we found fruits most alluring and we did sup. But alas! They swelled our tongues so thick that we could speak nary a word. After, we kept unfamiliar green apples far from our bellies. My mother, she tasted my food before I took a bite, to keep me from harm.

  Then we drank the water of a pond. But the water was most evil, and sick we fell again, with burning faces and eyes swollen shut for six days. Our three ships next sailed for Saint John and anchored in Mosquitoes Bay, whither bloodsucking pests did drain us. Fearing the water, we dared only to drink beer.

  O, how I longed to be home.

  On that isle, we were to replenish our stores of precious salt, which would preserve food when we reached Virginia. But one of the men became convinced of danger most grave. “Beare up hard! Beare up hard!” Fernandez called. Before we could load the salt on board our ship, we were off again, tossed hither and thither and yon on the wide sea. We also had hoped to gather sprouts of pineapples and oranges to plant in Virginia, but that knave Fernandez denied us.

  Next we passed by the island of Hispaniola but saw no preparation for landing. We left sight of it. Stopped on the island of Caicos, we hunted swans. How fresh the air smelled! Crowded in the streets, crowded in the pubs, crowded in the theatres—London was ripe with people. Our ship stank of its sogged passengers, but these islands on which we dallied did not. Sweet-smelling were they, like a newfound Eden.

  We left with the goodly hope of next seeing Virginia. At long last, on the sixteenth of July, the first of our ships fell along with the mainland. We did intend to make our colony, under the charge given us by Sir Walter Raleigh, in a bay called the Chesapeake. ’Twas a fine place for a home—fertile land and good weather. We anchored near Roanoke only to join with the remaining fifteen Englishmen of Sir Richard Grenville’s colony. We waited and watched, anxious and des
irous of solid ground, as the men on the decks argued over some thing. At long last, we loaded into shore boats and rowed through the murk to the island called Roanoke.

  As the oars cut through the water, I had a remembrance of England, and my grandfather and grandmother, who cried the day we bid them farewell. Should e’er again I lay mine eyes upon them? Mother clasped my hand, then rose to see after Eleanor Dare, who was very much with child. Young George, Thomas, and I sat most quiet and still, and even the little children were good. The land in the distance looked dark and dense. ’Twas a mystery what lay ahead of us. How would we e’er tame such wildness into a home? Father said we were to have all the riches of Virginia. Gold and pearls. We should be landowners, with five hundred acres belonging to e’ry family. Verily, we arrived with nothing. All our goods, we did sell before we set sail.

  “My lad,” Father said, clapping his sea-worn hand on my shoulder. His signet ring glinted in the sun—it bore the same family crest as the smaller circle that encloseth my finger. Father bended down to meet my eyes. His shone bright with pride. He pulled out his drinking flask and thrust it toward me. “Take thou a swig. Yea, thou art a lord in a new land.” Mother smiled at me. I tipped my head and swallowed the bitter drink, with a cough. Though my father is brave, I was lily-livered. I gulped my fears away.

  My family and I watched the shore skip e’er nearer to our ship, taking in our new home as it loomed closer, closer.

  ’Tis with a heavy soul I hold this remembrance now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The sun streaming in through the curtains woke me, disoriented and hungry. First thing, I rolled over and pulled my phone off the nightstand. Dad had messaged me, but he didn’t answer any of my questions. Instead, he wrote: “This [your] life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” That’s from As You Like It. My translation: I know you want to be back in the city. But find the good in where you are. I hear it’s lovely there, on Roanoke. Lots of trees and brooks. I wanted to reply that I’d have an easier time finding the “good in everything” if I wasn’t worrying about his whereabouts. But my stomach was growling, so I heaved myself out of bed and padded into the kitchen. Mom sat at the white table, drinking a cup of coffee. A big plate of pancakes, some bacon, and scrambled eggs was sitting on the counter. “Morning, sunshine,” she said.