Even as she was gasping for breath, dying of emphysema, she told her best friend - one who knew her secret - that her family had disowned her and should never be contacted. "They're probably all dead anyway," the dying woman said.

Only now, more than a month since Teri Naimo died, are relatives and friends on the East Coast and in Nebraska learning the truth:

For more than a half-century, Naimo had lived a lie, using a new identity and fabricating a past. Her real name was Twylia May Embrey. Some 54 years ago, at age 18, she ran away from a stern father in the Frontier County, Neb., town of Maywood.

Her half-century charade, while understandable to some, has been hard on others. "She was my maid of honor," said Philamena Wetzler, of Wilmington, Mass., a friend for 49 years. "I'm very upset about this whole thing."

"We're just in shock," said sister-in-law Jeanette Corbett of Reading, Mass.

The Twylia May mystery begun unraveling a week and a half ago, when three researchers led by a great-niece found an obituary on the Internet from a Stoneham, Mass., funeral home. Names in it matched those of Embrey's real parents. Since then, layers of her secret life have been peeling back like the pages of a long-lost novel.

A life that began on a dirt-poor Keystone, Neb., farm, where she shared a bed with seven siblings, ended in Stoneham in a threebedroom home filled with her handmade crafts. Dozens of interviews with those who knew her in Massachusetts, plus court documents, show that Twylia May's new life was anything but dull.

• She crisscrossed the country after fleeing Nebraska, assuming the name "Theresa Jonne Trende" because she'd always liked "Theresa" and knew someone who spelled her name "Jonne."

• She worked at a cafe in Albuquerque, N.M., and a "gin mill" in Jacksonville, Fla., with a stop in New Orleans in between. She then moved to Boston and a job as a secretary for John Hancock Insurance Co.

• She married twice. The first marriage, in Florida to a fast-talking Marine named Bill Keeley, lasted four years and ended in 1958. The second, for 45 years, was to a soft-spoken Massachusetts engineer, Joe Naimo.

• She became a surrogate mother to nieces, nephews and the children of a best friend. She bailed them out of scrapes, gave them money in hard times and provided a home away from home.

• She confided her secret identity to both husbands and a best friend, but swore them to secrecy. She said she feared her father might find her or that a new Social Security card under her false name could get her into trouble.

Her best friend, Helen Ferrante of Quincy, Mass., said Teri made her promise she wouldn't try to contact her family in Nebraska. "She made a new life for herself," Ferrante said. "She was very happy. And that's the way she wanted to leave it.

"Teri, she said, tried to contact her Nebraska family years ago. But letters sent to two of her six sisters were returned unopened, Ferrante said. "She figured that they didn't care about her."

That was far from the truth, said her great-niece Jennifer Kitt of York, Neb., as she paged through a 4-inch-thick, three-ring binder of documents tracking the family's efforts to find Twylia May. Her father, Charles Embrey, sold his farm equipment in 1957 and traveled the western United States, living out of a station wagon, in a fruitless search for his daughter. He died in 1971.

Twylia's mother, Adeline, went to her deathbed at a Curtis, Neb., rest home in 1989 calling out Twylia May's name. "She died of a broken heart," Kitt said.

Kitt's grandmother, Midge Garner of Wellfleet, Neb., picked up the search in 1981 after an old boyfriend of Twylia May's, Bill Wederski, then of North Bend, Neb., mysteriously contacted her about Twylia May's whereabouts. But Wederski, after collecting several photographs from Garner, disappeared. He died in 2002.

Garner wrote letters to the Social Security Administration in 1981, but Twylia May still could not be found.

Kitt picked up the search in December 2004 after reading news stories of a 50-year-old unsolved murder in Boulder, Colo., involving a "Jane Doe" who fit her great-aunt's description. DNA tests disproved any link.

Sitting at her kitchen table last week, Kitt said that learning about Twylia May's assumed identity only raised more questions for the family.

Twylia May disappeared in late 1952 or early 1953. She told a fellow waitress at the Little Lemon Cafe in North Platte's then-seedy downtown that she was hopping a train for California.

Relatives recalled a big fight between Twylia May and her father. He slapped her. She vowed to "never be seen again" after graduating from Maywood High in 1952.

But Kitt said she has learned that Twylia May's father also confronted her at the cafe before she left town, calling her "a whore." Twylia May "liked boys," her great-niece said.

Twylia's first husband knew few additional details on why she left Nebraska. "Teri never wanted to get in touch with her family. She never told me why," said Keeley, now 75, of Medford, Mass.

Friends and relatives from her second marriage said they sensed a certain sadness about her past. But they described her as an elegant woman who loved to entertain, liked folk music and organized trips with friends and neighbors. She could create grapevine wreaths and dried-flower arrangements like Martha Stewart. She had the beauty of a movie star - slim, with a preference for high heels and low-back dresses.

"She looked like Faye Dunaway," said a brother-in-law, Phil Corbett, of Reading, Mass.
She was generous, said Angela Cacciatore, 56, a niece who teaches school in Charlottesville, Va.

Cacciatore, a divorced mother who raised four children, said Aunt Teri was her surrogate mother, sending her money when she couldn't pay bills and flying to California to help after the birth of her children. "It was always our secret," Cacciatore said of the money.

While Teri Naimo never spoke of her sisters or brothers, she would become angry when Cacciatore said she hadn't called her own siblings.

The woman then known as Teri Keeley met Joe Naimo on a blind date. They married in 1959. He was a sports fan who ran a civil engineering firm. After the wedding, she worked sparingly, sometimes filling in as a clerk at his firm, but mostly staying at home, doing crafts.

She had trouble fitting in with Naimo's close-knit sisters, according to those interviewed, plus there was friction over her husband's estate. She was completely different, added Cacciatore, the niece, than her Italian sisters-in-law.

Brian Corbett, a nephew, said Joe Naimo told him of his wife's secret identity shortly before his death in 2004. Corbett kept the secret until his aunt died on March 30. Then he called the telephone company serving Keystone, Neb., in an unsuccessful bid to find Nebraska relatives.

Since then, the Naimos on the East Coast and the Embreys in Nebraska have exchanged dozens of e-mails and phone calls, family photos and remembrances, hoping to fill the blanks in the dual lives of Twylia May/Teri.

Kitt said she hopes to travel from York to Massachusetts and unite two of Twylia May's sisters, Garner and Margie Danbom of Curtis, with those who knew Teri Naimo.

They may get a mixed reception. While the Naimos say they're eager to meet, Helen Ferrante, the best friend, feels there's not much more to talk about.

"She's gone now, and she's resting in peace," Ferrante said. "That's all that matters."