“Edna must have really trusted Carlotta,” Dalton said. “I’m not sure I’d let my niece go off with just anyone when she was so young.”

“Well, Edna and Carlotta were kin. Trust comes more naturally in family, I guess,” Talley said.

“Edna was Carlotta’s aunt, right?” Ivy asked.

“Well, that’s what everyone thought.” Talley grew silent, as if weighing what she was about to say. “Truth was Edna was Carlotta’s real mama.”

“Edna had another daughter?” Ivy asked.

“She had two other daughters. Carol and Beth Ann. Edna had her twin girls in 1920. She gave one of the girls to Aunt Patsy to raise and the other to Grandma Jenkins.” Talley was quiet for a moment as she traced the faces of the young girls in the photograph. “When Carol and Beth Ann were fifteen, they left town together. The aunts and cousins sometimes whispered about their leaving during my growing-up years. Carol—we didn’t know her as Carlotta then—would send money home to her parents to help out. But no one heard from Beth Ann.”

“Carol and Beth Ann would have been about thirty in 1950,” Ivy said.

“Thereabouts, yes.”

Dalton tapped the picture of Carlotta and the group picture of the women gathered around the poolside table. “Carol became Carlotta. And Beth Ann became . . .”

“Ann Manchester,” Talley said.

“My father’s mother,” Dalton said.

“That’s right.”

This explained why Dani had not been able to track her grandmother’s lineage. The woman had created a new identity out of thin air.

The trio was silent for a moment before Ivy asked, “Was this the first time Edna had both Carlotta and Ann at the Seaside Resort together?”

“It was. But no one talked about it,” Talley said. “Mrs. Manchester was nervous and jittery around her husband. I’m sure she was terrified he’d find out about her past.”

“She was afraid he’d find out she wasn’t an orphan?” Dalton asked.

“Yes,” Talley said.

“What about her family made her so ashamed?” Dalton asked.

“They were poor mountain folks. But good people for the most part,” Talley said.

Ivy sensed there had to be more. Was poverty such a sin that Ann felt she had to wipe out her past?

Dalton didn’t appear satisfied by the narrative, either, but instead of pressing shifted tactics. “My grandfather died in the summer of 1950.”

Talley adjusted her glasses. “That’s right. He drowned. He was a drinker, and everyone believed that he’d stumbled and fallen into the surf.”

“That’s what everyone says,” Dalton said carefully. “Was it true?”

Talley looked up at Dalton but didn’t answer.

“My father, Pete, is a good man,” he said. “And if I could find out what happened to his father, I would.”

“He drowned in the surf,” Talley repeated softly.

“That’s never rung true with me,” Dalton said.