Carolina Isle Read online

  “Not a very good one,” Sara said.

  “Are you kidding? She was on Broadway in a play and she was really good.”

  “How do you know this about her?” Sara asked softly. She wouldn’t have thought that R.J. could shock her, but this did.

  He shrugged. “I typed her name on the Internet one day and it came up that she had a bit part in a Broadway play. I went to see it three nights in a row. She only had a walk-on part and three lines of dialogue, but I thought she was great. She was the heroine’s daughter’s best friend, and she wore one of those thin, white dresses that always makes you wonder what’s underneath.”

  Sara was so stunned she could hardly speak. When had he taken time out of his a-woman-every-night schedule to see her in a play? She started to say something, but he moved away to the far end of the ferry to look back at the mainland. He left Sara frowning in puzzlement over what he’d said.

  Finally, they reached the island. It was a perfect vision of yesteryear, and Sara knew that R.J. wouldn’t be disappointed. King’s Isle was rundown in a way that some people would think was romantic, but a businessman would know was anything but. Every house in view, every waterfront building, needed repair, and if they didn’t get it soon, they were going to fall down. R.J. was right, Sara thought. There’s no money here. And, worse, there was an air about the place that spoke of a failure to preserve what the place had once been. She didn’t think he was going to have much trouble buying the entire island.

  When she turned around, she saw that R.J. was staring at her, and she wondered what he was thinking. David and Ariel were standing by the rail, shoulder to shoulder, and they looked as though they were half-afraid of the island, half-hypnotized by it.

  When the ferry stopped, they got into the car and drove onto the island. Everyone was silent. Sara saw R.J. look in the rearview mirror several times. When she glanced back, Ariel and David were staring out the car windows with wide eyes. Sara was sitting straight up, looking ahead.

  There were no people around. No one at all. R.J. drove slowly down the street, looking at the run-down buildings. There was absolutely no one in sight.

  “Where are all the people?” Sara whispered.

  “Maybe it’s an island holiday,” David said. “St. Somebody’s birthday or something and they’re having a picnic.”

  No one said anything to that. Sara glanced at R.J. and thought that even he looked a bit unsettled. What could bother him?

  “I thought I’d drive around the island, have a good look at it, then we could go back,” R.J. said. “When’s the next ferry run?” He looked in the rearview mirror at Ariel, but Sara knew that she hadn’t looked at the schedule. But then, neither had Sara. Talking to R.J. as a person and not being ordered about by him had so unsettled her that she hadn’t thought of things that usually would be second nature to her.

  R.J. drove past two residential streets before coming to what was obviously the heart of the town, then he took a right and drove down the main street. It was deserted, completely empty of people. There were no traffic lights and no stop signs. Leaning forward, R.J. looked at the buildings.

  “What do you think?” Sara asked quietly.

  “This town is dead,” he said. “I think they’d welcome some money.”

  “Where are the people?” Ariel asked from the back.

  No one had a reply.

  R.J. glanced at the car clock. It was 1:30. “How soon do you think we can leave this place and get back to the mainland? Didn’t anyone see when the next ferry ran?”

  “I don’t like this place,” Sara whispered.

  R.J. took a left at the end of the street and entered a tree-lined residential area. There was one huge, old Victorian house after another. Each one needed painting and a lot of repairs. Some had windows with paper taped over them. Fallen trees had been left where they hit the ground.

  On the corner was an especially big house. It was brick, with dark green shutters that had been recently painted. There was a faded sign in the window: ROOMS TO LET.

  “Shall we spend the night?” R.J. asked, trying to dispel the gloom in the car.

  Silence was his answer. So much for humor, Sara thought. The hairs on her forearms were standing upright.

  All of them were looking at the houses so hard that no one was watching the road carefully. Sara yelled, “Look out!” and R.J. swerved to miss the dog that was lying in the middle of the road. He ran the car up onto the sidewalk and winced when he heard it scrape the bottom on the flaking concrete curb.

  Sara jumped out of the car before he’d turned the engine off and ran toward the dog. R.J. followed her, with Ariel and David on his heels. Sara was crouched down by the dog when they got there.

  “It’s been dead a while,” she said, looking up at R.J.

  “And wasn’t well cared for while it was alive,” David said in disgust. “The poor thing looks as though it was starved to death.”

  Ariel said nothing. Too frightened to move, she stood close to David, her eyes downcast.

  “Yeah,” R.J. said, looking about the place. The silence in the town was eerie. All they heard were birds chirping. No cars, trucks, no planes, not even any boats.

  “Do you think anyone lives in these houses?” Sara whispered into the silence.

  “Not people I’d want to know if they’d treat a dog like this,” David said.

  “Maybe it was old and—” R.J. began.

  David cut him off. “Look at it! That dog isn’t more than a year old, if that. I don’t think it’s even fully grown, but it’s been so mistreated that—”

  Ariel took David’s hand in hers and he calmed down.

  “I think we should go,” Sara said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  “How about if we take some photos, then leave?” R.J. said.

  “Yes,” Ariel whispered, still holding David’s hand. She looked as though she was standing in the middle of a haunted house.

  Sara, seeming to forget her disguise, silently held out her hand to R.J. for the keys, then went to the car and got his camera out of the trunk. She was soon clicking away as fast as a digital camera could go, making a circle of the street. “Done,” she said. “So let’s go find out when the next ferry runs to take us out of here.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  But David held back. “We can’t leave the dog where it is. We have to at least move it out of the road.” He started to pick it up by himself, but R.J. took one end of it and they set it on the far sidewalk, out of the way.

  “I think I should tell someone about the dog,” David said as he started toward the nearest house.

  “I think we should get the girls out of here,” R.J. said loudly.

  For a moment David seemed torn between his sense of chivalry and his love of animals. But then he looked at Ariel’s white face, and she won.

  No one said anything as they got back into the car.

  R.J. drove slowly back through the town, pausing now and then so Sara could snap photos out of the window. “I’ll have a lot to show Charley,” he said, forcing cheerfulness into his voice, but no one answered him.

  He went down two more residential streets, but they still saw no people. The houses were big and showed that King’s Isle had once been rich, but was now faded and poor. “I’ll report to Charley that I think he can buy the entire place for about ten dollars,” R.J. said to Sara.

  “Do you think he should buy this place?” she whispered back.

  R.J. drove down the main street again and they looked at the shops. Most of them were empty.

  “There’s fresh produce in that store,” Sara said, almost with excitement in her voice. “There are people here.”

  There was what looked to be a café and a hardware store. But since there were no people, they couldn’t tell what was open and what wasn’t. R.J. started to turn back to the ferry, but at the end of the street was a big building. “I think I saw somebody,” he said and kept going straight.

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