“Edna had learned to be a midwife from her mother. She didn’t get a chance to learn it all, but she had a good understanding even at seventeen how to deliver a baby.”

“Ruth was born on the Seaside Resort property.” All her life Ivy had thought Edna had given birth to Ruth, but now she knew her grandmother had been adopted.

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that Edna delivered Ruth?” Ivy asked.

“She did.”

Ivy ran her finger down the names in the old registration book.

“The Outer Banks in January 1938 might as well have been on the moon,” Dalton said. “Good place for a woman to give birth in secret.”

“I would learn later that most of the women who came to Edna in the winter months heavy with child didn’t have a husband. And in those days, many folks were struggling to eat. Edna must have found homes for a dozen babies in those years.”

“These weren’t legal adoptions, were they?” Ivy asked.

“Maybe some were, and some weren’t. She never did anything behind a mother’s back. But like I said, times were hard, and tough choices had to be made. Edna’s name was whispered in a lot of circles.”

“What does this have to do with Ann and her husband fighting?” Dalton asked.

“The letter Mr. Manchester found was from Edna to Ann. The letter warned Ann not to tell Ruth about their relationship.”

“Wait a minute,” Dalton said. “Are you saying Ann was Ruth’s biological mother?”

“That’s what Mr. Manchester said that night; however, Ann was crying, denying it. But her husband didn’t listen. He hit her hard, she pushed him, and she was able to get away. She ran toward the beach. I was worried, so I followed her. She spent the night at Miss Carlotta’s.”

Ivy scanned the list of names in January 1938. She stopped at the name B. A. Jenkins. Beth Ann Jenkins. “You said Beth Ann never kept up with the people back home. But she kept up with Edna because of Ruth.”

“That’s right,” Talley said.

“She vacationed at the Seaside Resort during and after the war,” Dalton said. “To see Ruth.”

“I suppose she just needed to know how Ruth was doing.”

Ivy sat back. “I thought Carlotta was Ruth’s birth mother.”

“That’s what I thought at first. Ruth thought it too. Made sense to think that Carlotta got in the family way, considering the life of a singer on a showboat. But it was Ann.”

“Peter Manchester discovered all this?” Dalton said.

“And he was mad. I think he wanted to kill Ann, Carlotta, even Ruth.”

“But he drowned in the surf,” Ivy said carefully.

“Not exactly,” Talley said.

CHAPTER THIRTY EDNA

CHAPTER THIRTY

EDNA

Monday, June 26, 1950, 1:00 a.m.