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Barrett stopped a few yards ahead and turned. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I looked from the map to the limestone around us. “She really came down here.”

He nodded. “She knew the ground.”

Barrett had looked at the landmarks and trusted what Grandma had drawn more readily than I had. “You never doubted this part, did you?”

Barrett shrugged one massive shoulder. “Map’s good.”

I tucked it away and caught up with him. “How much farther to the first location?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“And you know the route?”

He gave me a look.

“Right. Stupid question.”

At the first site Grandma had marked, we found nothing. The second produced a patch of delicate fernlike growth that sent my pulse racing for approximately thirty seconds before I got close enough to identify it as maidenhair spleenwort.

Pretty. Perfectly respectable. Completely unhelpful.

The third was more interesting.

Tiny white flowers clustered beside an underground spring, their almost translucent petals curled tightly around yellow centers. I spent nearly forty minutes photographing them, recording the temperature and humidity, and estimating the size of the colony.

Barrett crouched several feet away, elbows resting on his knees as he watched me return the measuring tape to my bag.

“You’re not taking one?”

“Not until I know how many there are.”

His nod of approval warmed my stomach.

I smiled and stood, brushing limestone grit from my knees. Then I pulled out Grandma’s map and traced our route with one finger. There was only one site left.

“This one,” I said, tapping Grandma’s final mark. “How far?”

Barrett shook his head as he looked at the map. “The cave doesn’t go any further.”

I glanced beyond him and frowned. The passage continued another thirty feet before terminating at a broad wall of pale limestone.

I traced Grandma’s line with my finger. “But… her map keeps going.”

Barrett studied it for a moment, then glanced toward the limestone wall ahead.

He knew this cave. Knew where it narrowed, where the floor dipped, where the water collected after heavy rain. There was no passage beyond that wall.

But he didn’t argue.

“Come on,” he said, taking my hand. “I’ll show you.”

We walked the last few yards together.

Grandma’s landmarks were all there: the underground spring behind us, the narrow seam of darker rock running diagonally across the right wall. Even a protrusion she had drawn at the edge of the passage was exactly where it should have been.

Then her pencil line continued straight through several feet of solid limestone.