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It’s got a plain cover with a green cloth spine and empty pages. I wrote in it before breakfast and almost put it back twice.

“Found this for you.”

Pepper looks down.

On the front, I wrote: Pepper’s Field Notes, Volume 2

Her fingers still.

“Your first one’s getting full,” I say.

She opens the cover.

For Pepper, who sees a map when the rest of us are staring at stones.

T.H.

The room goes soft with her scent. “Theo,” she says.

The way she says my name is enough to make my heart ache.

“I love it.” She presses the notebook to her chest for one breath, then turns and kisses the corner of my mouth. It’s a quick and quiet kind of treasure she gifts me, and it makes me feel as though maybe I won’t fuck up all this good stuff.

Ezra looks very hard at the photo in front of him.

Pepper clears her throat. “Okay. I’m going back to the records before I end up crying.”

She climbs off my lap before I’m ready and opens the cracked blue tub. The scents of old paper and mildew rise from inside. She sneezes once.

I reach for the tub.

She lifts a hand. “I’m fine. My nose is being dramatic.”

“That tub survived three hurricanes,” I say.

“It looks like it lost.”

Fair.

Pepper sorts through envelopes until her scent changes. “Here.”

Ezra pushes upright.

I lean closer but keep my hands to myself.

The envelope in her hand is stained along one corner and soft from age. The handwriting is slanted and careful, faded almost brown. Charity Ground, flood year. See floral accession.

Pepper’s eyes lift to mine.

My stomach drops.

She opens the envelope. Inside is a partial sketch of the old charity section. Names are missing or smeared. Dates are worse. A corner of the live oak is marked in rough pencil. Near the edge of the sketch, small and easy to miss, is a lily.

Pepper takes a photo of the sketch, then the envelope label. “I’m texting Marcy at the library.”

“Good.”

She sends the images, whispering as she types. “Charity Ground. Flood year. Floral accession. Have you ever seen something like this?”