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Wes lowers beside Roman. “Cabinet?”

Roman slides one drawer open with a gloved hand. “Burial relocation files disturbed. Flood-year records too. Charity section index moved.” He angles the light toward the back. “There’s a clean gap in the dust. Narrow book or ledger. Cloth cover, judging by the fibers caught on the splinter.”

I look from the open cabinet to the disturbed patch beneath the live oak. “So someone came here looking through old burial records, then went directly to one of the undocumented plots.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Roman agrees.

Theo stares at the cabinet. “I think it was made of green cloth. Maybe. I moved one after the last roof leak.” He drags a hand over his mouth. “I never read it.”

“Did you know this marker was here?” I ask.

His gaze returns to the stone. “I knew there were unmapped burials in the old charity section. Every cemetery has record gaps if it’s old enough and poor enough.” His voice lowers. “I didn’t know any of them were connected to the old routes.”

I turn back to the marker and study it again. A swamp lily, a faint curve, and three water lines. No readable name. Jessamine’s handwriting rises in my mind. Do not separate mark from current.

This marker sits on dry ground now, above the shifted flood line. Jessamine wrote that the open curve belongs to moving water, so either the water used to reach this grave, or this mark means something different from the ones we’ve already found. Was this grave once on the water route? Or are we misreading this symbol? And, somehow Ezra could feel it being disturbed from inside the house. Why? What does that mean?

“Someone was looking for this,” Roman says.

“The records may have told them which undocumented plot to check.” I stand slowly. My knees are damp, my socks are ruined, and my hands are still shaking. “Theo was right. Hammer didn’t pull him away for a meeting.”

Theo’s breath catches.

I look at the unnamed stone, the picked cabinet, the disturbed sod, and the house glowing through the trees behind us. “He pulled him away so someone could confirm an unmapped grave.”

Wes watches me. “What does that prove?”

“Well, it doesn’t prove who is buried here.” I swallow past the ache in my throat. “Or what was in the missing ledger or why Ezra can feel a grave marker being disturbed from inside the house.”

Theo looks wrecked.

I keep going because if I stop, I’ll remember the bathroom floor too clearly and fall apart. “But it gives us a connection we didn’t have before.” I point toward the cabinet, then the marker. “Someone searched the old cemetery records and disturbed a grave carrying the same route language we’ve been finding everywhere else. Hammer pulled Theo away while it happened, and Ezra reacted from inside the house. I don’t know why those things connect yet,” I say. “But I don’t think they happened at the same time by accident.”

The phone speaker crackles. Ezra’s voice comes faint but steady. “Pepper?”

“I’m here.”

“Bring pictures back. No digging without me.”

A laugh slips out of me, wet and unsteady. “Let’s hope we never have to dig.”

Above us, the live oak creaks in the damp wind. Beneath its roots, the nameless marker waits with a swamp lily carved into its face and a route mark hidden close to the dirt. It’s as if someone once trusted the ground to remember what the town would not.

Chapter 26

Pepper Vines

After Wes and Roman leave, the house smells like cold coffee and the kind of fear nobody has been able to completely put away. The sun hasn’t come up yet, but the black outside the kitchen windows is softening around the edges. Somewhere out there, under the live oak, the nameless marker waits with more questions than answers. Inside, the three of us move carefully around one another.

Ezra sits on the couch with one hand wrapped around a mug of tea and the other resting near the bowl Theo filled with orange slices, pretzels, and the last of the cookies my mother sent. He has the blanket from the attic over his legs.

The faucet in the downstairs bathroom still runs low, a thin thread of water Theo hates wasting and no one has suggested turning off.

Ezra’s color is better, though the skin near his wrists still looks too thin when he moves. His humor is present, but it sits carefully in his mouth, as though he’s testing each word before trusting it.

Theo stands near the kitchen table with his phone face up beside the evidence log. Hammer’s texts remain open. He gave the phone to me without being asked a second time, but it doesn’t make my chest hurt less.

The house gives a soft creak. I glance toward the hall, braced for another knock or bell or strange little summons, but nothing calls us deeper inside. Instead, the porch lamp outside the kitchen window flickers once and a blue haze settles into a warmer glow, less harsh against the wet glass. Growing up, my mother used to always say when a regular porch light turns blue it means the lies we tell ourselves are hindering our sight.