Chapter 58
58
The motel room in St. Marys was tiny, but cheap. And most importantly, it had air-conditioning. Cara took a shower, brushed her teeth, and fell into bed. It was barely 9 p.m., but after the jarring encounter with Jack and the two-hour drive south from Savannah, she was exhausted.
In the morning, she had a convenience-store breakfast of coffee with a stale cheese Danish. As an extra precaution, she bought a bottle of water and two protein bars, which she tucked into her backpack.
By eight o’clock, she was in the ticket line at the ferry dock. A group of giggling Girl Scouts and their mothers were ahead of her in line, as were a pair of solidly built gray-haired ladies who were decked out for a day of bird-watching, with canvas rain hats, hiking boots, and cameras and binoculars strung around their necks.
After she bought her ticket for the early ferry, Cara took a brochure about the island from a display by the ticket window, found a seat in the shade, and watched with interest as cars and vans pulled up, disgorging campers and day-trippers loaded down with coolers, tents, beach chairs, and more.
It was an eclectic group, families with young children, gung ho hikers, and half a dozen college students, who stealthily swigged beer from brown paper sacks.
At 8:45, a voice came over the loudspeaker, and a couple of uniformed deckhands appeared, to direct them in loading onto the Cumberland Queen ferry.
With the sun beating down, Cara chose a seat on the lower deck and spent the forty-five-minute ride across the St. John’s River watching as seabirds wheeled in the sky above, and dolphins chased along in the boat’s wake.
She also studied the map in the Park Service brochure. The island’s major sightseeing spots were clearly marked. On the far north end was something called the Settlement. She found Plum Orchard, something called Yankee Paradise, Stafford Beach, Sea Camp, and Dungeness. Nowhere on the map was there a spot marked Loblolly.
But according to the internet, Loblolly had been built as a guest house/hunting lodge—adjacent to Plum Orchard. So. Find Plum Orchard, and Loblolly would be nearby. Wouldn’t it?
In her mind, she rehearsed what she would say when she found Brooke Trapnell. Occasionally, doubt crept in. What if she couldn’t find the bride-to-be? The brochure she clutched in her sweaty hands described Cumberland as nearly 17 miles long by 3.5 miles wide, with over 36,000 acres of beaches, marsh, mudflats, and wilderness areas.
And poisonous snakes, Cara thought, remembering Bert’s description. And alligators. But this wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t be hanging around Cumberland long enough to experience any reptile confrontations.
Planning a wedding or any event required organization, clear thinking, and flawless execution. By the time the Cumberland Queen was chugging toward the ferry dock on the island, Cara had worked out her game plan. Step 1. Get bike. Step 2. Find Loblolly. Step 3. Grab Brooke. Step 4. Take Brooke home. Step 5. Payday.
Bert had warned her about the primitive facilities on the island, so she hurried toward the ferry’s bathroom, and spotting the snack bar, bought another bottle of water.
***
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-shell 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 Cumberland 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 ass.”
***
Any other time, Cara would have been entranced by Cumberland’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 grass 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 Cumberland’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 space. 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.