Returning inside, she closed the door and turned toward the papers piled on the dining room table. Most appeared to be junk mail, bills, and newspapers that someone had dutifully collected and placed on the table in the last few weeks. She grabbed the garbage bag rattling with old spice jars and began sorting the top layer, tossing all junk mail into a bag while creating a pile for papers that needed her attention. If she had learned anything in the last few weeks, it was that death generated lots of paperwork.

It took nearly a half hour before she had cleared the top layer and reached what appeared to be a hotel-registration book spanning the 1930s. Opening it, she skimmed her fingers over signatures written in bold black ink, leafed through the yellowing pages, and studied the unfamiliar names written in a careful penmanship that seemed to have been the norm in those days. Her own handwriting had been described as a scrawl only a doctor or cryptographer could love.

Beyond knowing Ruth had been born on January 2, 1938, Ivy knew Ruth’s mother, Edna Wheeler, had been in her midthirties at the time. Not so remarkable now, but that was considered an advanced age for baby making in the 1930s.

Ruth was the only child of Edna and Jake Wheeler. From what Ruth had said, Edna had been a bit of a rebel. Though she had been born in 1902 in western North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains to a large family, she had moved east to the Outer Banks in 1920 to find work. She had met Jake Wheeler, he’d hired her on the spot, and the two had married within a year of her arrival.

Ruth married around 1960, but her husband, as the story went, died in a fishing accident. And when Jake Wheeler died months later, Ruth, a new mother now herself, stepped up and, with Edna, took over the hotel’s operation.

Next to the register was a leather-bound address book. Filled out in Ruth’s block letters, the names meant nothing to Ivy. Ruth had raised Ivy, and yet Ivy knew very little about her.

“Maybe this is our time to get acquainted, Ruth.”

A knock at the front door had her crossing the room. She opened the door, half expecting to see Dalton.

Instead, it was his younger sister, Dani Manchester, who stood on the front porch, holding up two bottles of wine and wearing the grin she defaulted to when she wanted to make peace. “Welcome home!”

Ivy tensed, searching for words as she stared at Dani’s long-limbed body and angled face, which were a little fuller since high school. Her blonde hair remained thick, and her makeup was still expertly applied. She wore a heavy emerald-green overcoat, tortoiseshell-framed glasses, black jeans, a sweater, and red Chucks. If Ivy had put that outfit together, she’d look ridiculous, but Dani made it all work.

Twelve years since Ivy had called home to Ruth, homesick and ready to return after four months in the Big Apple. Twelve years since she’d wanted to beg Dani and Matthew for forgiveness. “How’s Dani? I’ve been meaning to call her, but I haven’t screwed up the nerve.”