Carlotta covered Beth Ann with a blanket, gathered up the wet cherry dress, bra, and panties, and rinsed them out in the kitchen sink. Out on the deck, she pinned the dress and undergarments to the line.

Maybe Peter Manchester had banished his demons for a time, and they would be happy for a while. Flowers, chocolates, sweet words. That was the usual pattern with these couples.

Perhaps Beth Ann would see this moment as a chance to change her life again. Perhaps not.

When Carlotta woke, the sun was peering over the horizon, and Ann was gone. The only sign she’d been here was the half-drunk glass of water beside the folded robe and blanket on the couch.

Carlotta hung up the robe and looked out at the ocean. Normally, she slept until late morning, but Beth Ann’s arrival had churned up long-buried memories.

She wanted to believe that, like Beth Ann, she never looked back to their days growing up in the mountains, but of course, in the difficult times she did. She dreamed of the adoptive mother who’d done her best to love her and Beth Ann, the sister-cousin she’d always seemed to find at family gatherings.

She took her camera and walked out onto the beach to see the wreck. She ran her fingers over the wood drying in the sunlight and hollowed by the sea creatures that had burrowed into it. She climbed up onto the deck and closed her eyes, thinking of young Francesca, sailing back to a cruel husband.

“Poor Francesca.”

She turned, framed her image of the wooden hull, the ocean, and the rising sun, and snapped a picture.

“Miss Carlotta.”

Hearing Ruth’s voice reminded her of the girl’s question yesterday that had struck such a familiar cord in Carlotta. “Ruth. You’re up early.”

“I like the morning light the best.” She had pulled her dark, curly hair up into a ponytail. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose under olive skin. She wore a yellow top and a white skirt that skimmed below her knees.

“Where’s your cousin Talley?”

“She’s running late because she’s reading a book from the lost and found.”

Talley and Carlotta’s shared kin didn’t come from a family of readers. The men went into the fields or the mines, and the women had children and kept home. Time was used to put food on the table and roofs over heads. Talley would have been an outlier in a world that distrusted readings beyond the Good Book. It wasn’t lost on Carlotta that all the family’s outcasts had found each other by this restless shore.

Carlotta walked down the side of the wreckage and jumped off the end. “Can I take your picture?”

“Why? I’m not that special.”

“You are special,” Carlotta said.

“But I’m not your daughter.”