Skeptoid to the rescue, as usual for such questions- it’s always a great resource.
“The late Irish historian David Beers Quinn was probably our most knowledgeable scholar on the Roanoke colony. He devoted his career to the study of the colonization of America. Quinn’s theory, developed after decades of studying many such accounts, is that the colonists abandoned Croatoan and separated into two groups. One group peacefully assimilated into the Carolina tribes to the west, and the other group went north to live with the friendly Chesapeake, reasoning that Virginia was the most likely place to which any future English colonists might come. We know that any who went north ultimately died, either naturally or at the hands of the Powhatan, but the fate of those who went to the Carolina mainland is less clear.”