He reached for the hotel registry on the table and opened the cover. “1931 to 1939.”

“I have no idea why she saved the registration book.”

“The records room at the Seaside Resort was a total loss. The storm tore off that portion of the roof, and the rain flooded the room. Nothing could be salvaged, so she must have kept it here.”

“Wonder why?”

“Maybe she wanted you to find it.”

“Why not just tell me? Why the tangled mystery?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t know.” He scratched his beard. “That generation didn’t do open and honest too well. Or maybe it was too painful.”

“She always had a reason.” Ruth had lived a regimented and predictable life. Laundry on Saturday morning, fried chicken on Sundays and barbecue on Mondays, bookkeeping on Tuesdays, and grocery shopping on Wednesdays. Off-season, Ruth had spent some time with her sketch pads, but the next season had always been looming on the horizon.

“Let me know if I can help.”

“The construction dumpster is a big help. I just might fill it.”

A heavy sigh shuddered through him. “I suspected that when I carried all the stuff up here.” He strode toward the door and paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be right next door if you need anything. Plenty on my crew to haul out the heavy stuff.”

“I’ll take you up on that.”

“Good.” He twisted the rusted knob, descended the stairs, and strode toward the running truck, where Sailor was waiting in the front passenger seat.

Thunder cracked in the night sky and vibrated through the house, waking Ivy out of a quasi-sound sleep. She was still on the couch, huddled under one of the three dozen rose quilts salvaged from the hotel. She’d stopped cleaning out Ruth’s room about six, when she’d seen the rain-plump black clouds gathering above the dumpster. Her phone’s weather app had made no mention of a storm.

Ruth had never been a fan of television, so there wasn’t one in the cottage. And Dalton would have warned her if this was a big one. Impending storms were always the talk in town, and no one at the breakfast diner had said a word yesterday. But gales did pivot and surprise everyone.

She shifted off the bruising pressure on her right hip, looked out a window as lightning flashed in a starless sky. The winds howled, punching the cottage with twenty- or thirty-mile-an-hour gusts. Old timbers rattled, the eight-foot pylons under the house swayed, and the walls creaked.

She rose, wrapped the quilt around her shoulders, and padded in red Wonder Woman socks to the window. Drawing back the curtain, she squinted through the porch and the blackness toward the dunes and the beach. Thunder roared, and a bolt of lightning cracked the sky over churning waters.

Ivy tightened the folds of her blanket. Ocean waves rushed over the shore, up under the dune stairs, splashing white foam on the beach grass.