The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare

by Kimberly Brock

Genres: World War II; Ghost

Synopsis

The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.

In the waning days of World War II, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.

In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.

Praise for The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare:

“From the haunting first line, The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare transports the reader to a mysterious land, time and family . . . the captivating women of the Dare legacy must find their true inheritance hiding behind the untold secrets.” —Patti Callahan, New York Times bestselling author

• Historical women’s fiction
• Stand-alone novel
• Book length: approximately 135,000 words

Release date: April 12, 2022

Publisher: Harper Muse

Print pages: 416

Sample

Chapter One

Alice

“I’m telling you, we’re not lost,” I said, but my daughter looked worried.

Really, we were stranded with a dead battery a few miles south of Savannah. We’d traveled all day, over three hundred miles to cross the length of the state, from the mountains in the north. But my planning had been poor, to say the least. I’d underestimated the distance, then taken a wrong turn that had cost us time. Now, as dusk settled around us, I felt sick as we stared at my daddy’s broken-down ’38 Ford pickup truck.

Penn said, “What’ll we do now?”

“It’s fine,” I lied, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Come on. We can walk there.”

We’d passed Hawkes’s Feed and Seed about a mile and a half back, the only store on the road that might have been a help to us, although I dreaded walking into the place again. In any case, it was already closed up tight for the night.

The shadows stretched as the swampy air filled with a choir of indistinct insects and frogs, and I knew there were things in these wetlands that were dangerous. I reached under the seat for a flashlight but came up empty-handed.

I said, “I know this road. We’re not far. We’ll be there before it’s really dark. We’ll deal with the truck in the morning.”

Penn pulled the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, looking around with hesitation. I shouldered my own thin bag. I hardly knew what I’d packed.

“I can’t see anything. There’s nothing out here,” Penn moaned.

Clearly this was not the adventure she’d had in mind when we’d left home in such a rush late this morning. I’d shut Merely’s, our family-owned service station, and told my stepmother, Imegine, not to open it to strangers. She’d rolled her eyes at what she deemed my unfortunate mistrust in my fellow man. I knew as soon as we left she’d be happily feeding hobos out the front door and they’d all love her for it. Imegine was honey where’d I’d always been turpentine.

“You wanted to come here, remember?” I teased Penn. “It’ll be worth it. It’s not that bad.”

I was counting on it. I needed a way to snap her out of the dreamy, despondent state that had settled over her in the last two years, changed her from a daring daddy’s girl to some shadow of herself. I feared where things were leading.

Three years ago, when she was only ten, Penn had become enamored with the Brenau Academy, the only all-girls college preparatory boarding school in Georgia, grades nine through twelve, a few hours from us. We’d just entered the war, but her daddy had enlisted immediately and gone overseas to fight. She was restless and worried and fed up with the dull education she was enduring in Helen, where local kids often dropped out around seventh grade to farm. Even though she wouldn’t even be eligible until high school, she’d called the school for an admissions packet and started writing an essay with a determination that could have won awards, begging to apply early to ensure her chances of a slot. The waiting list was years long. But I’d refused. I’d made excuses. I had reasons that were personal, secret reasons that reached beyond the financial challenge or Penn’s chances of acceptance.

But then I’d watched Penn forget her dreams. And her heartbreak was worse than anything I had feared. Last night, while everyone slept, I’d dropped her packet in the mail. Out of caution for her feelings, I wasn’t sharing the extent of my plan until I knew for sure that I could pull it off.

It was now the spring of 1945 and my husband, Finch, had been killed in Italy two years before. The war had crept into the small rooms where we lived above the motor garage my daddy had owned on the outskirts of Helen, Georgia, a remote and failing logging community on the verge of becoming a ghost town with less and less traffic on the highway. The change was so quiet we hardly felt it at first, but with so few travelers, the need for our services was all but obsolete. Rations limited the food on our table and, although Penn didn’t know it, the savings in our account.

We were like almost all the other families around us. The sorrow of neighbor women shone in the gold stars flying on flags outside our doors and we mourned the ordinary lives we once believed we would live. Mysteries were the meat on our tables. We didn’t long for the unknown but fantasized about full pantries, dirty boots by the door, and the soft snores of sleeping men who would never breathe beside us again. Finch had been headed for a POW camp, but then the army learned later from an Italian POW who’d been present at the execution that he’d been shot and rolled into a mass grave in some farmer’s field. The prisoner’s memory surfaced only after Italy declared itself an ally in 1943, more than six months after Finch’s capture, and amounted to only a vague location, no other details. When the news finally came by way of a very young officer standing at our door, we’d been given hope that at least they might find remains and he’d be brought home. It would have been better had Penn not had that expectation, for it consumed her, though it appeared less and less likely the more time that passed. Whatever his dreams had been for himself or his family, Finch had taken them with him, and hers, too, it seemed. His pension was all that was left now, barely enough for us to live on. Not that it was any excuse for the choices I was making, but I’d been working hard to be both mother and father to Penn, and I was exhausted long before we’d ended up on this roadside in southern Georgia at the edge of night.

The service station was all we had, and all Penn had of her father, and I knew what it was to lose your home. For a while, I’d bartered rubber patches for fresh vegetables and took in wash to get cloth for Penn’s clothes. I’d made do every way I knew as long as I could. And I had been foolish enough to think our lot couldn’t be any sorrier, but then my daddy had died.

The church had still smelled of leftover lilies from the service a full week before. Barely a dozen people had been there for us. Afterward, Penn and I walked alongside Imegine through town, filing into the bank to collect the contents of my daddy’s safe deposit box. At first, everything was orderly, sorted, exactly what we’d expected from my daddy. There’d been no sentimental notes, no official will and testament to be read, only an envelope for each of us, containing short lists divvying up his scant belongings. Imegine inherited Merely’s and what monies he had saved, enough to keep her comfortable into old age. For Penn, there was his truck. No surprises.

Only my envelope remained. What I found there hit me between the eyes—the deed to Evertell, along with the antique key to the rambling old estate. When I pulled out that paper, the key clattered to the floor. I’d grabbed it up fast, like I might have a sharp knife. It was maybe six inches long with an ornate handle and large teeth on the end of the shaft, and I’d closed both hands around it, my thoughts rushing back to the memory of Evertell. Days after they’d buried Mama, I’d whispered in Daddy’s ear something to comfort him, sweet enough to make us forget. “I’m nothing like her. I never want to go back.”

But now he’d left me with the choice. “I thought he sold it years ago.”

“I guess it never was his to sell, Alice,” Imegine said.

“You knew?”

“Of course not.”

Imegine was the one I should have been comforting. Instead, she’d squeezed my hand as I stood there, dumbfounded.

“What’s Evertell?” Penn had asked.

The unknown was powerful. It was the monster in the dark, the secret in the box, the poison in the wine. We’d kept everything about Evertell a secret, like so many things I’d never intended to tell Penn. But here was a question that would have to be answered. One she would never stop asking. I’d stared at the deed and felt my hands tingle.

“It’s where my mama was from,” I’d finally said. “Where I grew up. A farm.”

There was a note scratched at the bottom of the document in my daddy’s cramped handwriting, followed by the name of the estate’s executor and an address for the man.

Upon my death, see O. Lewallen in Savannah, Georgia, for any business with this property.

“Savannah?”

“Yes, that’s where the house is, on the river.” I’d looked into Penn’s face. If we stayed in Helen now, I feared I would watch her opportunities wither. Her fate would set hard and fast like the other girls without choices. Surely she was destined for an early marriage to whomever this war had left to her, saddled too young with the burden of a widowed mother and grandmother. And me? I’d end up a gas chiseler, caught out soon enough. Or I could take what fortune we’d been given without dithering over my conscience and change everything again, this time for Penn. Farmland in Georgia wasn’t going for as much as some places, but I’d seen it listed for thirty-five dollars an acre. At that rate, I figured it up in my head, the property from my mama’s family would bring enough to cover school and then some.

Imegine leaned in to peer at the deed and put a steadying hand at the small of my back. “You don’t have to do anything with this, Alice,” she said.

But already my mind was running ahead of itself, thinking of new clothes for the fall and a future to look forward to, all suddenly possible for my daughter because of this forsaken legacy I’d believed was a curse.

“We have to go there,” Penn said. Imegine and I looked from the deed to Penn, then to each other. This was the first interest Penn had shown in anything in so long that we stood silent, as if we might scare away a wild thing. But she looked clear-eyed and eager, like herself. She had such confidence in her conclusion. I’d taught her that. Straight ahead. See for yourself. “I want to see it. I want to go.”

“Not now,” I said. “You have school.” Penn rolled her eyes. She’d always excelled in her classes and I’d let her stay home more than I should this last year and she knew there were only a few weeks left in the school year. Her absence for a few more days wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow from the powers that be, given she was a star student while other kids were dropping out left and right. All it would take was a note from me and Penn knew it. But she was thirteen, the age my mama had claimed was the year of visions for the girls in our family. The timing scared me. “Maybe sometime,” I said, trying to placate her, ignoring her disappointment, seeing full well she knew I was lying. Knowing she would simply bide her time, grow up, and live for the day she could do as she pleased. I still thought I had things in hand.

But last week I’d sold a barrel of black-market gasoline out the back door.

Afterward, I’d run inside to vomit. Honestly, it wasn’t the betrayal of my scruples that bothered me. I was fairly certain that in the scheme of things my pitiful crime wouldn’t rate much, but these days people were quick to turn on one another to save themselves, and it frightened me that I’d compromised our fragile household. I couldn’t bear the idea of being charged and separated from Penn. I’d been careful to keep the extra income secret and independent from the finances I’d managed for Merely’s. But even as I’d stared down at the false numbers on the page, I was struck that this would be the account of my life. The only legacy I left to my daughter. And it turned out, that was the thing with which I couldn’t live.

***

Still, I wasn’t here to lead my girl down the primrose path. Stark reality was my aim. Evertell was no fabled kingdom. It was worth everything if it could pay the way for what she wanted, but in truth I hardly knew what to expect after being gone so many years. I felt anxious and cranky, and it didn’t take long before we both realized I was wrong about how far we were going to have to walk. We were starting to struggle to see the sandy path as the light diminished. The air was so slick it draped over us. For once, Penn was quiet. After a few moments she stopped short so I almost stumbled into her. “Is that it? Listen,” she said. “I think I hear it.”

“You can’t hear the ocean. We’re not close enough.”

Penn had never seen the ocean and she was expecting it around every corner. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to take her, to smell the salt or hear the gulls. She only knew the clear streams and high mountains of the northeast corner of this state.

“That could be it. I think that’s it,” she said. “What’s that stink?”

“Fish. Mud. You’ll see when it’s light.”

“Ew.” Penn was getting nervous. I could hear it in her breathing. “Tell me again what we’re going to do.”

“We’re going to visit so you can see where the other side of the family came from before we sell it. Then we’ll put that money in the bank and you’ll have a fat nest egg. Think of all the places you can go, all the things you can see, Penn. Travel, college.” I’d said that before we left this morning and I liked the sound of it. Now I was laying out visions like sweater sets, waiting to see what she might choose. “What’ll you do first?”

“I could go to Europe,” she mused dully. I knew she was thinking of Finch. She’d once dreamed she would go to Italy and find him there. I tried not to worry she’d brought it up again. “But not until the war’s over.”

“Well, no, not until then. And there are plenty of places to see right here.”

She sighed. “Tell me what you remember.”

“Uh, well. Let me think.”

I hadn’t talked about my mama or Evertell in so long that at first the words wouldn’t come to me, only brief images, like flickering photographs. There was a lot of ground to cover before we reached the estate, both physically and metaphorically. Some of it, Penn wasn’t going to like.

“I remember a big white house on a saltwater marsh with a deep forest behind it, between us and the sea. It’s old. The land was granted to our family by King George II.”

“King?” Penn said, fully impressed. “Not really.”

I nodded. I had to carry her back, gradually, through centuries of history, if I was going to get to the heart of our story. The house was only the beginning. “That’s what I was told. Wars were fought over this land for years before our family came here, battles between the Spanish, the British, and the Creek and Cherokee. People are always loving and losing land. Makes the best and makes the worst of us, too, how we all want to call a place home and what we do to each other to have it. You’d think there’d be enough room on this earth for everybody.”

This was a familiar idea for Penn, having grown up collecting arrowheads along the banks of the mountain rivers and streams near Helen and hearing of the Cherokee people being marched to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.

“Our family came in 1758 with a religious group from South Carolina. They’d been asked to settle here as part of the British effort to establish a nearby port.”

“We’re from South Carolina?”

“And before that, lots of places. Florida, even before it was Florida. Then Barbados, because of pirate raids.”

“You’re joking. Pirates?”

“Pirates. One woman and her daughter—Catarina and Marguerite—were captured in St. Augustine and sold into service. Marguerite’s daughter, Francoise, was born out of wedlock. Later, she was hanged as a witch.”

“But was she a witch? Really?”

I shrugged. “It’s what they called her. A word for a woman who must have caused trouble for somebody. But I doubt she rode a broomstick. Lucky for us, Esme, her daughter, was sent to South Carolina and carried on, even after all of that.”

“I can’t keep them straight.”

“I memorized their names when I was about your age,” I said. “Esme married a religious man, a Congregationalist, and when she was a very old woman, she came here with her daughter, Garnet Lee, and her husband. They built a little tabby cottage, a farm, a church, and a mill, and we’ve been here ever since. The first house was just one room, really, built before anything was anything. Evertell was part of a land grant from the English king. Of course, what King George didn’t count on, I guess, is that the folks he sent here would all eventually join the Revolution, including our family. It’s a bloody history.”

“Here? The Revolutionary War happened here? In Georgia?”

I shuddered to think what they weren’t teaching her in school. “Yes, here. During that war, this place was sort of a no-man’s land, so Evertell went unharmed aside from being a sanctuary for men from both sides who passed through and took their rest. And later, it was the same with the War Between the States. Over the years, the house grew around those first rooms. You can count the years of Evertell like rings in a tree, my mama said, if you know where to look.”

“She told you all of this? What else did she say? What do you remember about Grandmama Claire?”

“I remember watching her catch fireflies. She was beautiful. She believed in signs and fate. She had a book that belonged to the women in her family, passed down with the house. A kind of journal or scrapbook with poems and recipes and things. Their names are all listed there. I always wondered what happened to it.”

“All of this is in that book?”

“Some of it. Some were just stories people told.”

The book, like the estate, had passed from each lady of the house to her eldest daughter for centuries, making it an unusual legacy for unusual women, women who were both literate and property owners for generations. I recalled the evenings I’d spent with my mama, the ancient book open in her lap, the soft rustle of pages turning, the smell of her skin, vanilla and something sweeter, the perfume of jasmine blossoms. There’d been ink drawings of plants and constellations. There were entries about the weather and the changing seasons and the births of babies, all written in different hands by different authors over many centuries.

I took advantage of the dark when I wouldn’t have to look at Penn. I’d raised her in a world of engines and oils, machines that could be repaired, men who predictably woke and worked. Stories were novel, coming from my mouth. But as Penn and I marched on, I found it was easier than I thought to let the old tale whisper its way back into the world. “But what we know about our family started even before Evertell. My mama once told me she knew the fate of a woman named Eleanor White Dare. She was part of a first colony from England that disappeared. They were called the Lost Colony of Roanoke.”

“Oh, wait,” Penn said quickly. “You mean like the message on that rock at Brenau Academy?”

“That’s right.” Of course she knew about the stone. “The Dare Stone, yes. Eleanor’s part of the story.” Penn knew everything about Brenau but nothing of our history with that stone. I spoke carefully, gently laying out the details. “It turned up in 1937. It was found in North Carolina. Some man just tripped over it one day and it was a big discovery, all over the news. Everybody said it wasn’t real, just a big hoax.”

Penn looked puzzled. I could see she was trying to make a connection, waiting for answers. “Grandmama Claire knew about Eleanor Dare? We learned about her last year in class, about the actual history. A whole bunch of poor English people got left behind on an island in North Carolina somewhere. And nobody knows if they were killed or went somewhere else to live with the Indians, right? Nobody ever found them.”

I took a breath, slowing my pace a little. “Well, people think different things about that. But used to be, that stone they have at the college was placed in the forest of our property here.”

“The same one?” Penn asked, confused but suddenly more animated.

“I think so. The pictures in the paper looked the same. It was carved with the same message. It was supposed to be Eleanor Dare’s message to her father, telling him what happened to her. And if you believe that, the women in Grandmama Claire’s family are what happened after that. The book has a list of descendants, starting with Eleanor’s name and all the way through the ones who built Evertell, all the way to my mama. If you believe it, it’s our family myth.”

“You’re making this up.” Of course she didn’t believe me. How much easier it would be if I could pretend it was all a joke.

“No,” I admitted. For once, Penn said nothing, only listened. “The way it was explained to me, the women in our family knew where Eleanor first put that stone, but Grandmama Claire didn’t think we ever had any business moving it here. It was a message to say Eleanor had survived, but it was also a gravestone. It marked the place where she lost her family.” I could hear my mama saying all this even now, an accusation, spitting it out like too much salt. I tried to tell it to Penn as I had been told. The names of the heirs marched through my head, and I did my best to keep the details simple for Penn.

“Bernadette Reece Telfair started it all,” I said. She’d been the heir who had finally completed Evertell in 1799. But over the years, she’d become obsessed with a hand-drawn map in the commonplace book, initialed EWD, showing Eleanor’s journey. She sent some men to find the place where the journey began in the wilds of the new world, to retrieve the marker Eleanor had left for her father, inscribed with the terrible fate of his family. The stone was found just where the map said it would be and brought to Georgia, to our forest, to protect it from anyone who might want to steal or deface it.

“Bernadette thought she was correcting a wrong, that she was honoring Eleanor’s legacy, bringing Eleanor home, I guess,” I said. “The trouble was, this was never Eleanor’s home, and it wasn’t long before people got fed up with Bernadette and how highly she thought of herself after that. They got a bad taste in their mouth about that stone, started whispering things about it, that it was asking for trouble to have it here.

“So when Bernadette’s daughter, Camille, had a little girl, then disappeared about three years later, just a few weeks after that stone came here, everybody blamed the stone. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe Camille took off with some man. Nobody knows. But even Bernadette believed she’d brought a curse on our family.”

Penn had taken my hand as we walked. “But Grandmama Claire loved Eleanor and tried to make peace with her. She visited the stone. She loved Eleanor’s book and all the things the other heirs had drawn or written there, their secrets and dreams. She wanted me to love them too. She believed that was what Eleanor had wanted, for us to have the book. My mama said it was a book written by women, full of women’s wisdom and mysteries.”

Penn was listening intently. And I realized with a kind of wonder that I was enjoying being the storyteller, a disarming thought. “You won’t find any of those stories in your history books, but I can tell you for sure that Eleanor Dare was a very real girl, just like you. Even if nobody knows what happened to her, just like nobody knows if the words on that stone were true or if we really are her descendants. That’s why I said it’s a myth.”

“I want to read this book.”

“We’ll have to see. Maybe we’ll look at it together. Girls read it after they come of age. Thirteen, like you. But it’s not a game or a toy, okay? It’s very old, something Grandmama Claire kept put away safe.” I saw her ponder this. “Anyway, we left it all behind—the house and everything that went with it. There’s no guarantee any of it is still there.”

“Like the stone? If it was protected in our woods, how come they found it so far away? Did Pop give it away too?” she mumbled.

Here was the question I’d avoided. I meant to keep the answer simple. I didn’t hesitate. “It was stolen.”

It was my fault. All of it was. I lost your birthright. I lost so much.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this? When they found it? You don’t believe in curses. I know you don’t.”

“No, I don’t. But it had nothing to do with us anymore. And you were so little when it showed up again. Why would you have cared?”

“I wasn’t so little. I was five.”

“Five is little, Penn.”

“Well, you could have told me anytime. You could have told me when I wanted to go to Brenau.” She made a low sound of disappointment.

“Okay, I’m telling you now,” I said too sharply, then took a breath and tried for a calmer tone. Just the facts. A shiver ran through me. Curses might be dismissed as superstition, but consequences were very real. “I figured I’d tell you one day if you were ever interested. That’s all there is to it, really,” I said, trying to dust the story off my hands. “And here we are. Now you know.”

Even with all these revelations, I was holding back and Penn could sense that. I expected her to be angry. I expected her to feel like I’d lied to her or tricked her. She should have felt that way. But I didn’t expect what she said next.

“Eleanor Dare would like this, wouldn’t she? What we’re doing here.”

Penn’s mind turned in original ways that sometimes surprised me. “What do you mean?”

“We’re sort of the same as her, like you said. We have no idea what’s around the corner, but we’re going there anyway.”

“Evertell heirs always know how to find their way home. That’s what my mama said.” I felt hopeful in that moment. Penn was still young enough that every ordinary day could feel like a dream. “And I’m sure that you are just like Eleanor Dare. And if I know anything about Eleanor,” I added, “she’d have taken the cash on the barrel and never looked back. I am positive she had big dreams too. She ended up at Brenau,” I said. “How about that?”

Penn asked, “Did you believe it was real? When you were here? When you were little?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “At the time, I did. There was the stone and the book and Grandmama Claire’s stories. That seemed like all the proof I needed.”

“But about Eleanor and the curse? Do you still believe any of it now?”

“I don’t know.” That was true too. “I don’t know if it matters what I believe. Maybe it’s just a story to tell you.”

But there was still a lot of our story I didn’t know how to tell. Or if I ever would. And it started with the story my mother had written for me in the pages of the commonplace book: Eleanor’s Tale. If my mama was to be believed, Eleanor’s Tale contained the key to our true inheritance, a kind of mystical vision. She’d called it our Evertell, the inspiration that guided each heir. But she’d gotten sick, and when she died, both she and the conclusion had been lost. She’d never shared the ending of Eleanor’s Tale with me. No secret feminine wisdom had ever come to help guide my way. I was stumbling down this road in the dark, and my worst fear was that I’d never be the kind of mother to pass that kind of faith or magic to my daughter in such an uncertain world.

But the stories I did know seemed to satisfy Penn. She only slapped at a mosquito and said, “Can I have the key?”

“What?” I said, distracted.

“The key for the house, can I have it? When we get there, I want to be the one to let us into the house. I can’t believe it has a name. Evertell, Evertell,” she repeated.

I handed the heavy key over, an ache in my chest. The night seemed too quiet. “Listen, whatever we find here, if the house has fallen in, that’s fine. Don’t be too disappointed. It’s to be expected, right? If we need to, we’ll stay in Savannah for a few days,” I suggested brightly. “Or go out to Tybee Island, to the shore. Would you like that? Give Grandma Imegine a little peace and quiet.”

“Like an actual seaside holiday? We could do that?” I could hear the delight in her voice, but then hesitation too. “I don’t know. I don’t want to leave Grandma Imegine out,” she said, sounding tired. “Not when she’s so sad.” She trudged along for a moment, thinking, then added, “I just wanted to see where you grew up. And maybe Pop’s man you’re supposed to see will know what happened to Eleanor’s book. He might have it,” Penn said.

“He might.”

I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t already thought of that myself. The very idea that I might hold that book again filled me with both hope and dread. It had been foremost in my thoughts from the instant I’d learned Evertell remained my inheritance. But there were other possibilities, things and people I hadn’t told Penn about yet. I worried what else might be waiting for us here. Penn had so many questions. There’d been a time when I was just like her, when I’d believed all stories had conclusions and all things might be known.

In the dying light, I could make out the look of consternation on her face. The best I could do now was walk beside her and help her find her way forward, so we could stop looking back. I’d never have come here otherwise. I believed that given the chance, Penn would dream wider and farther than this place. Maybe I would finally hold that book again and see what my mama had wanted me to see. Because there was truth to Eleanor’s Tale in at least one regard: the fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.

***

Soon enough, we came to a low concrete wall that led to a narrow iron gate hidden in palmetto fronds and a wild tangle of jasmine vine that scented the night air with a familiar sweetness I’d have known anywhere. The entrance was old, barely wide enough for an automobile to fit through. Fashioned into the iron were neat, clear letters. Penn touched them with her fingers. I didn’t need to read them to know what they said.

Evertell.

“It’s real,” Penn said, pushing her way through.

“Completely real.”

I followed her, my own eyes searching for a glimpse of the house. On the night breeze was the bitter smell of the yew hedges and the shrill call of tree frogs. Everything was cast in deep shadow with only a crescent moon to light the way. The long lane of crushed oyster shells crunched underfoot on the straight approach until we reached a curve at the end and still, Evertell was hidden. I remembered the grand porch and the wide, smooth lawns. The towering pines and oaks and the rustling sounds of the palm leaves in the sea breezes. Nothing like the home we’d known in the shadow of old mountains in Helen.

The main house had been stunning in Italianate style with white wooden walls that rose from the stone foundation and the dark greens, blues, and browns of the landscape. The house’s crown was a dainty cupola, trimmed in lacy moldings, with a view of the fields that lay inland and the broad, glistening river and marshes snaking behind the house until they were hidden behind the deep green forest of oaks and palms that stretched to the sea. Once, Evertell had seemed enduring, but I feared the shape it might be in, presumably after twenty-three years of neglect.

“So real, I’m afraid we’ll be lucky if we have a pot to piss in,” I mumbled, growing more anxious with every step.

Only a breath later, Penn said, “There’s something. Look.” She pointed through the hanging moss and the low-growing limbs of the twisted oaks and I caught a first glimpse of the line of the roof and cupola.

I squinted, unsure if I was imagining things. Maybe it was a firefly. Or maybe it was something else, showing us the way, exactly as my mother had always claimed. My heart pounded beneath my ribs. Already I was entertaining fanciful thoughts. I blinked to clear my vision, but it was still there. A faint glow shone high in the lead glass windows. A light inside Evertell.

“Holy mackerel,” Penn whispered. “Who do you think it might be? Maybe it’s haunted. Maybe there’s a ghost.”

“We don’t believe in ghosts,” I said as we came to stand below the porch.

“I might.” She giggled.

More of the jasmine vine grew up the railings and the side of the house, and the scent of the tiny white blossoms, like pricks of light in the glow of the moon, was so strong and sweet, I felt overwhelmed.

“Wait.” All at once, I didn’t know if I could take the last steps to the door. I thought of my last warnings to Imegine about strangers and realized I should have taken my own advice. “I should have thought better about this. We should have waited till morning to show up. It could be anybody squatting in there. Some old tramp. Some drunk with a gun.”

Penn dismissed all of this the way only a teenager can in the face of danger. “Don’t be crazy. You always think the worst. Nobody’s going to shoot us. We just have to introduce ourselves. They’ll see who we are. And we have the key.”

Before I could stop her, she leapt ahead and stood on the porch, so I had no choice but to scramble up beside her. I fastened my hand on her arm, stopping her. I looked at the heavy iron key. “Give me that.”

“But you said I could do it.”

I pushed Penn behind me, shushing her. My hand shook as I fumbled to fit the heavy key to the lock. With a twist, the door easily gave way and slowly swung open on well-oiled hinges. The air from the dark hall met our faces, carrying the scent of old wood and abandoned rooms as we peered into the gloom. Whoever or whatever had cast the light from upstairs, there was no sign of them down here, but then I heard shuffling in the shadows of the stairwell. The sound bounced off the empty walls of the vast foyer and I stiffened.

“Who’s there?” I called. “Hello? I’ve got a key so I’ve let myself in. Didn’t mean to startle you. We didn’t know anybody would be here.”

When I looked, I could see only a small light moving closer, throwing shadows through the railings, against the walls. My own voice shriveled in my throat. Someone descended the staircase in a rush from the highest landing. One foot dropped heavily on each step, followed by a lesser scrape. It was such a burdensome effort that there could be no doubt of the determination it took for the person to reach us. I recognized the sound.

I knew it because when I lost Evertell and everything about who I’d once been, I’d lost him too.