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While we wait for a response, Ezra finds three more sale photos. I identify two old drainage lines and one fence that used to run closer to the live oak. Pepper writes questions in her new notebook, crosses out half, then rewrites them cleaner. Every so often, her knee bumps mine under the table.

When her phone finally buzzes, we all jump. Pepper reads the text aloud.

“Marcy says, ‘I’ve seen charity ground lilies in the festival florals index. Give me time. That box is a disaster.’”

Ezra smiles. “I like her.”

“She says it may take a few hours,” Pepper says.

Her gaze comes to me. Last night, a few hours would have made my skin feel too tight. I would have wanted to move, push, force an answer out of the ground with my bare hands.

Today, I set both palms flat on the table. “Let’s keep sorting and see if we can find anything else.”

Pepper’s shoulders loosen.

Outside, fog swallows the live oak until only the lowest branch shows. The Deacon floats in the ditch with his eyes above the water, standing vigil over graves I thought I knew. At my table, Pepper opens her new notebook to the next clean page. Ezra leans close, alive with interest, his shoulder brushing hers as she writes floral accession in careful letters.

I stay where they ask me to stay and let them tell me what comes next.

Chapter 28

Ezra Heron

Theo kneels on the dock with a pencil in his hand as we watch him through the kitchen window.

“Look at him,” I say.

“He communicated all morning.” Pepper leans against my shoulder, warm and sleep-soft in Theo’s shirt, her bare feet tucked beneath my thigh. “If he comes back with glitter, ready to do crafts, I’m signing pack paperwork.”

“He’d rather fight the Deacon than touch crafts.”

“Coward.”

The fog has thinned enough that I can see him clearly, but it still hangs low over the water and cemetery grass. The dock shifts in and out of shape behind him. One second, the boards look twenty feet away. The next, they stretch into the channel as if the water is trying to make them longer.

Theo told us he was going outside before he did it. Then he waited until Pepper nodded and I gave him the go-ahead. It feels like a grand romantic gesture from my overprotective alpha. My standards may have been damaged by last night’s bathtub crisis, but here we are.

On the coffee table in front of us, Pepper has spread the sketch we found of the charity grounds. It’s next to the envelope, her new field notebook, and three old property photos.

I moved to the couch because Pepper and Theo gave me matching looks when I stood too fast after breakfast. I could have argued. I’m a grown man with dignity who doesn’t need mothering. But really, what is there to argue about when I’m tucked against Pepper with her hand in my hair?

Theo takes photos of the dock marker before he touches the paper to it. Pepper watches with the sharp focus that makes her whole body seem awake.

“He’s pressing too hard,” she says.

I lift a hand and tap the window.

Theo looks up.

Pepper makes a little ease up motion.

He gives one short nod and adjusts.

“That’s pretty cute,” I say.

“That he listens?”

“That you’ve trained the giant cemetery man.”