“Oil? But he’s never been in the oil business.”

“That’s not true. After strugglin’ in the beginnin’ and losin’ two children, your granddaddy and Julia finally had a child—Marshall—and they had struck oil and knew they’d never want for anything ever again. They were so happy, Doxie told me, and started buildin’ a fine new house. Julia went to New Orleans to pick out furniture for it. But all she settled on that day was a set o’ fine white wicker porch furniture. I reckon you’ve been sittin’ on it all your life.”

“On Granddaddy’s porch?” Peyton was stunned.

“That’s right. Julia placed the order on Magazine Street not an hour before her driver went speedin’ around a corner, goin’ the wrong way on a one-way, and had a head-on collision with a bread truck. Threw ’em both outta the car and killed ’em, right there in the French Quarter. Left your granddaddy with a two-year-old child and an unfinished mansion and a whole bunch o’ money that didn’t mean a thing in the world to him without his wife.”

Peyton ran a finger over the sand, absently drawing the outline of a palm tree. “How did Granddaddy end up in Savannah?”

“About a year after Julia died, Celia came down from Virginia to visit some cousins in New Orleans. They also knew your granddaddy and invited him to a house dance. He was lonely. She was pretty. And she can be charmin’ when she wants to—when she wants something. That was that. The two of ’em agreed on a fresh start, and he had just read about a ton o’ good farm land comin’ available around Savannah. So they moved to Georgia, bought the land and a fine house, opened some cotton mills, and there you go. Everybody thinks cotton made him rich, but the truth is, he built those mills just to help all the poor communities around Savannah. His money came—and still comes—from those oil wells in Louisiana.”

“Does everybody know about his first wife and about Daddy—everybody in the family, I mean?”

“For a long time, nobody knew except Celia and Doxie. That’s how your granddaddy wanted it.”

“But why?”

“Because he didn’t want your daddy to be treated any differently than his other children—by the family or the community. ’Course, the irony o’ that was that George himself always treated Marshall a whole lot better than his other kids.”

Something moved in Peyton’s peripheral vision. He looked out over the water and saw two dolphins smoothly arch above the surface, then dip back under, the pair of them in perfect sync. Peyton watched them rise and fall together twice more before they disappeared in the ocean.

“Why didn’t Grandmother Cabot tell?” he wanted to know.

Aunt Gert swatted at a dragonfly strafing their blanket like a dive-bomber. “Celia didn’t really want anybody to know she was wife number two, so she was happy to raise Marshall as her own child. Accordin’ to Doxie, Celia’s so distant with her own kids, nobody’d ever suspect Marshall was any different. And as time went on, George figured out that fillin’ Celia’s purse was easier than meltin’ her heart, so he promised her that as long as she never told a livin’ soul about Marshall, he’d make sure she had everything she wanted—but if she did tell, he’d cut her off. That settled it for Celia. Doxie, on the other hand, decides for herself who needs to know what, and she up and decided one day that I needed to know.”