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We start with the Love Stone exhibit binder. Old labels, donor notes, installation sketches, festival pamphlet drafts. Theo handles the heavier boxes while I photograph anything with curved markings or water references.

After twenty minutes, patterns prick at the edge of my attention. The open curve appears near water in three separate sketches. A closed curve appears beside figures or structures. The town labels both as decorative but these archive records confirm that the marks repeat in different positions.

“They were never looking at it as placement,” I say.

Theo leans over my shoulder. His warmth steadies me. “They were looking for a love story.”

“They found one.” I tap the sketch. “But they flattened out parts, made them disappear.”

My phone buzzes.

Ezra: Send the crooked one again. The sketch with bad handwriting.

I send it.

Thirty seconds later, another text arrives.

Ezra: Rotate right. Look at the line weight near the open curve. It’s a different hand.

I rotate the photo. My breath catches. The open curve is darker, cut deeper into the sketch copy, as if someone traced over it later.

“The line weight is different,” I say.

Theo bends closer. “Meaning?”

“Someone corrected this.”

I flip to the back of the page. A faint pencil note sits near the bottom, nearly erased by time and handling.

J. Vines. East route. Curve belongs to current.

For a second, I only stare. My family name looks strange in museum pencil. With everything going on that I can’t explain, I think I expected something strange. Mystical maybe? Or like how Scarlet can see things that others can’t. It’s real, but I don’t have the terminology to describe it.

This note is practical. The handwriting is slightly cramped. The underline beneath the last phrase is bold, as though it was written by someone who wanted the next reader to stop making the same mistake.

“Theo.”

He reads it, and his hand settles on my shoulder. “That’s the same as what you said.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Pepper.” The softness in his voice breaks through my denial.

My eyes sting. “It says curve belongs to current. The open curve was never decorative. It was tied to moving water.”

“So, you were right.”

Marcy knocks softly on the archive room door before stepping inside with a narrow green ledger hugged to her chest. “Sheriff said you were also looking for information on the name Vines. I searched while you were working. J. Vines appears in the botanical accession records too.”

My breath catches. “Botanical?”

“She donated pressed specimens and water notes. Not many. Most of the old environmental material was folded into festival history, which is librarian-speak for badly mislabeled.” Marcy sets the ledger in front of me and opens it to a page protected by tissue-thin paper.

Jessamine Vines. Omega. Born 1871. Designation recorded at twenty-five.

Twenty-five. The number moves through me in a slow, quiet wave.

Below her name, Jessamine’s cramped handwriting marches in tidy columns: water depth, bloom date, current direction, scent changes, bond discomfort. Beside a pressed swamp lily, she wrote, Open curve belongs to moving water. Do not separate mark from current.