There are three things Susanne Bradshaw knows for sure: 1) Her mother is dead. 2) She has no living relatives. 3) Her last summer before freshman year of college will be spent alone.
But with her mother's death, Susanne learns her family's deepest...
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The drive to the Bradshaw estate showed an island full of mansions—and not the tacky, confusing McMansions, where random pieces of Greek architecture, western styles and mismatching textures were stacked together in a half-assed attempt to appear well-off.
These were timeless pieces, all fenced in with neat, iron fences and perfectly manicured lawns with evergreen shrubs sheared into globes, squares, and the ever-so-often swan. Most properties we passed were three stories high, all towering over surrounding trees. They each looked like what a summer home should be— wide, sweeping windows replaced portions of walls, French doors painted in bright neutrals, and wrap-around-porches built to enjoy long, lazy summers.
This island matched the same pristineness of the airport and the Yarborough Cancer Care Center. Nothing bad could ever happen here. Death did not and could not exist on this island of luscious green and lapping, gray waters. Broken bones, terminal illness, and every wicked thought could be cured by a morning spent basking on those porches, drinking orange juice with your favorite people.
The Cadillac continued deeper and deeper into the island, and as it did, the iron railings grew taller and the houses slowly moved out of sight from the public road. Soon, we crossed miles that were marked only by the change of fences with each passing property.
Rose slowed down the car until we took an abrupt right turn. In front of us, a sturdy, black iron gate, complete with decadent twirls wrapped around the rods and sharp, coned points stationed at each tip— those steel pricks made it virtually unclimbable. One long tower of painted white bricks stood four feet before the gate and connected to it was a small keypad with numbers zero through nine.
Rose rolled down the window and pressed a series of six numbers. 6-7-9-3-4-1. He ended the code with a sharp push to the '#' button. Before us, the gate reeled open, taking its time before clearing a path.
I leaned toward the middle of the car, where my face fit into the empty space between Leonora and Rose. In front of me was a sprawling, cement driveway, framed in red maple trees neatly spread apart. The crimson and orange leaves held onto the gray branches like wilting petals.
"Most Maples don't turn red until the winter," Leonora said as if she could read my mind. "But we are never here later than September. They're called Summer Red."
"They're beautiful," I whispered.
The car drove another forty seconds, all of us in a comfortable silence, when I saw my first, true peak of the Bradshaw estate.
The home stood two stories high, with an equal amount of white wooden boards and cream-colored bricks covering its exterior. Like every other home on Daisy Isle, it was framed in a large, wrap around porch— but above it, on the second floor, was an overhanging balcony held up on dark exposed wood. French doors and sweeping windows dotted the exterior in a mirrored pattern. Every few feet: another window, another door. Always an entrance, sometimes an exit. A tall, gray chimney rose up from the brown roof, disrupting the home's balanced symmetry.
