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Theo comes to my side. His palm rests briefly against the back of my neck, warm through my curls. “What do you need?”

“Help me look for anything written by Josephine. Back pages, loose notes, flower lists. Swamp lilies especially.”

He nods and takes the unknown pile and gives my investigation more hands.

We find the pressed lilies inside a recipe binder an hour and a half later. Three browned flowers lie between clean sheets of waxed paper beside a card for honey cake. The paper is yellowed but intact, protected by the closed binder. Each stem is wrapped with a short piece of white thread. A typed label sits beneath them.

Replacement plant specimens selected from J. Vines list after 1963 flood. Original placements are not to be moved unless exposed.

Tiny codes follow.

C-4.

D-1.

E-Dock.

I leave the waxed pages inside the recipe binder and photograph the flowers exactly where we found them. Then I slide the loose typed label into a clean sleeve from Darwin.

Scarlet holds the sleeve open for me. “Darwin makes an excellent assistant.”

“Right?”

From the other side of the table, Theo mutters, “He’s a cooler.”

“Don’t be jealous, alpha,” I tease him.

Scarlet looks toward me. “Do you think these codes are placement markers?”

“I think so. These look like reference specimens for the plants used at damaged route placements.”My phone rings before I can continue. Ezra’s face fills the screen, bright and solid in the studio window light.

“I enlarged the family tree photo,” he says. “There’s writing along the fold beside Josephine’s name. Turn it sideways.”

I lift the page carefully and adjust it toward the light. Faint pencil marks emerge where the paper has been creased against the program spine. J.V. copies kept backward. Green book carries proper order. J.S.V. source at Hall.

“JSV,” I say. “Jessamine Sage Vines.”

Her full name appears on the old Heritage Hall specimen register. Josephine used three initials when she meant Jessamine and two when she meant herself.

Scarlet exhales. “That is both useful and unnecessarily complicated.”

“It’s family paperwork. Clarity would violate tradition,” I say.

I look toward the notebooks still inside the box. “Only check the back pages.”

Scarlet begins opening each notebook from the rear cover.

Ms. Silver points her broom toward a bundle tied with blue ribbon near the bottom. “Those came from Lorna’s kitchen desk.”

Theo lifts the remaining papers out carefully and sets the bundle in front of me. There are six notebooks. Grocery lists. Garden plans. Weather records. Recipes written around family complaints. Josephine’s name appears inside the front cover of the fourth.

Josephine Rose Vines, 1961. Garden Guild and family copies for the route keepers.

I underline route keepers. “This is a historical title,” I say. “Whoever maintained these records and placements used the word keeper to indicate a role.”

I turn it over and open it from the back. The final page contains a list of funeral casseroles. The next one has a copied sketch of a water channel.

My entire body goes alert. “Found something.”