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After I had everything out of the oven and the biscuits arranged in a cloth napkin–lined basket, I carried the casserole in and set it on the sideboard.
The man was standing at the window, looking out toward the downtown area. “Cute little town you have here.” He had an English accent, which caught my attention.
“Most people who live here like it,” I said, giving him a second look before heading back into the kitchen. It wasn’t uncommon to get foreigners on Roanoke Island, but something about him seemed familiar.
I grabbed the biscuits and the tray of butter, jellies, and jams and carried them into the dining room. The man was where I’d left him.
“You say most people. Are you not one of them?” he asked.
He was perceptive. Although these were researchers and not tourists, I still needed to be careful not to damage the image of our town. “No, of course not. I was born here and will die here.” Of that, I was certain. And it would probably happen sooner rather than later.
“Again, a strange way to put it.”
I cringed. Damn my need for honesty. Rearranging things on the sideboard, I kept my back to him. “I love Manteo, but things have been a bit crazy here lately.”
“Since the appearance of the colony?”
“Yes.”
“And what about the marks on the doors? The Native American symbols?”
I froze for a few seconds. Several guests had asked about them over the last couple of weeks, and I’d told them it was all part of the experience. This man’s question seemed more pointed.
I turned to look at him and was surprised to find myself face-to-face with Dr. Preston.
“You.” His eyes widened. “We met outside my office a couple of days ago.”
I froze, speechless and stunned.
“Why are those symbols on your doors?”
While hope surged inside me—He’s here! Maybe he can still help!—I had no idea how to go about getting the information I needed without scaring him away. “Are you part of the research team?”
He set his coffee cup on the table, his eyes narrowing in on me. “Not officially. I’m a guest of one of the researchers. He told me that Manteo’s hut was on site, and he asked me if I wanted to check it out.”
“Manteo had a hut in the village?” Myra had never told me. I knew the village had reappeared completely intact, as if it had been picked up in 1587 and dropped back into place over four hundred years later, with edible food and water still in washbowls. Everything had returned in usable condition. Except for the inhabitants, of course. They had returned as fully clothed skeletons. But those were the only details that had been released to the public. It had never occurred to me that Manteo would have lived with the colonists and kept a home there. Along with Ananias Dare, my multiple-great grandfather.
I needed to get into those huts.
His head tilted slightly as he observed me. “You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“What is your interest in Manteo and the Croatan?”
“How long are you here for?”
My question surprised him. “A couple of weeks. What does that have to do with anything?”
I could go about this one of two ways. While I’d love nothing more than to charge forward and tell him everything, I was sane enough to realize that it would scare him off. Slow and steady seemed the best way to go about this. I had two weeks to get information out of him. Even if I wasn’t sure the gods would wait that long.
He was watching me warily and I could tell he was becoming suspicious. The longer I took to answer, the stranger I looked. “I grew up on stories about the Lost Colony. We all know about Manteo, especially with the Lost Colony reenactment play. Shoot, I was the Dare baby.”
“What’s the Dare baby?”
“Every August they pick a baby to be baby Virginia Dare in the play. It’s quite an honor. You have no idea how badly people want their baby to be picked.”
He looked confused.
