Copyright © 2025 by Veronica Mixon

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CHAPTER ONE

ATTIC INHERITANCE

Tuesday a.m.

Savannah has a way of pulling me back like an old quilt—worn, comforting, and slightly musty. I was home. Again.

“We should move to Atlanta,” Henry had said four years earlier, holding a printout like it was a golden ticket.

“Atlanta?” I squinted at him. “At our age?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You do remember we’re creeping up on retirement faster than a greyhound at the starting gate, right?”

He grinned. “I got an offer. Consulting work. Good money, short hours, full benefits. It’s a chance to pad things a bit before we slow down.”

I sighed. “We live in Savannah, this is where everyone moves to slow down.”

“Emma Lynn,” he said gently, “it’s just for a few years. Then we come back, better off.”

I didn’t believe the timeline for a second. But I believed in him. So I packed.

Then, three years later, my fitness fanatic and self-proclaimed spreadsheet whisperer husband had the nerve to drop dead after a brisk jog and a kale smoothie. Heart attack. Boom. Gone. The man could outrun a teenager and calculate compound interest in his sleep, but apparently, he couldn’t outrun fate.

Now Gran was gone, too. And something deep inside me gave way, like an old floorboard finally splintering under the weight of love and time. My heart would never be the same—one piece gone with Henry, another with Gran, like breath on glass—there, then gone, and no way to hold it.

But grief doesn’t pay the bills or feed the koi, so I did what any practical sixty-three-year-old woman does—I packed my sorrow, messy and unfinished, and set it on a high shelf in the back of my mind.

My head was all in on the “moving on” plan––my heart, however, still lingered in the doorway, not quite ready to leave.

So here I am, sandwiched between my past and whatever’s next, holed up in Gran’s creaky cottage near Forsyth Park. The wraparound porch sags like it’s in therapy, the screen door wheezes like an asthmatic ghost, and the attic is full of secrets and, if I’m being generous, spiders old enough to file taxes.

This was my first time back since Gran’s funeral. I’d mourned from Atlanta, which felt about as sincere as crying during a Budweiser commercial. Yesterday, I woke up convinced that my creative block wasn’t writer’s fatigue—it was grief’s clutter. So I packed the car, hit the road, and made the necessary pilgrimage to Buc-ee’s, where I lost forty-five minutes to brisket sandwiches and an emotionally confusing sock aisle.

Once I got into town, I called my best friend, Margaret, and made lunch plans for after her library shift. She worked part-time now, less out of necessity and more because she’d finally run out of patience for people who whisper-read too loud. We’d have the whole afternoon to rehash our high school antics and catch up on Savannah’s latest scandals, which, frankly, was our favorite form of cardio. We never ran out of material––or opinions.

I also texted Graham last night—Gran’s neighbor and the third in Margaret’s and my high school trio of Musketeers—to let him know I was back and would take over feeding the koi. Whether he read it was anybody’s guess—he still used the Yellow Pages, an answering machine, and once referred to Netflix as “that flicker box.”

So, I had a few hours to myself. Figured I’d start in the attic and work my way down. It was an easy plan. It was logical. It was emotionally naïve.

The attic greeted me like a cranky aunt—stifling, dusty, and dramatically overdressed in thirty years of clutter. It smelled like cedar, mothballs, and old paper.

Dust floated in the angled light like sleepy fireflies. The whole space glowed faintly, paused in time. This wasn’t just an attic. It was a memory museum—equal parts forgotten treasures and emotional landmines.

I crouched beside a steamer trunk that looked like it had taken a wrong turn off the Titanic. It groaned theatrically when I pried it open, the kind of sound that said, “Open me at your own risk, sweetheart.”

But I wasn’t here for drama. I was here for estate business. Sort, pack, donate, cry discreetly into a tea towel, and get back to Atlanta before my ghostwriting deadlines circled like vultures. I had a manuscript due for a retired surgeon who thought he was Hemingway and opened every chapter with, Let me cut to the chase. The man bled metaphors. I needed this trip to be short and surgical––puns intended.

Naturally, I ended up stalling—because isn’t that what everyone does when they go back home?

I ran my fingers over Gran’s pink Depression glass—the kind she used to bring out for “company,” even if that just meant me and a slice of pecan pie at the kitchen table. I remembered her saying a few years back that she’d packed them away for Carrie Rose. An old set of mixing bowls sat stacked by size, their interiors dimpled with dents from years of use—cookie dough, Sunday cornbread, maybe a few kitchen mishaps no one ever confessed to. And those old portrait frames with the wavy glass—every face behind them looked like it was peering through a puddle. Maybe that’s what memories are. Wet, slippery things you try to catch with dry hands.

My knees popped as I knelt to reach for an old quilt—hand-stitched, heavy, and probably holding more family history than my Ancestry.com account. Beneath it sat a velvet-lined trunk with a jewelry box inside. The kind of box people gave when they wanted to be remembered.

I didn’t recognize it, which was strange. In this house, I knew every dish, every doily, every squeaky floorboard that gave away your midnight snack run. But this? This box didn’t belong.

I opened the top and peered inside at a black-and-white photograph, an old key, and a folded note. The photo showed two women standing in front of a house I didn’t recognize, but the two women were my people. Gran on the left, her hair pinned like she is going into battle, and Delilah on the right.

Delilah Hart.

She used to visit Gran when I was little, and I absolutely adored her. I insisted on calling her Aunt Delilah, even though we weren’t the least bit related, and neither she nor Gran ever corrected me. A kid can dream.

By the time I was six, I’d figured something out: if the people you came from weren’t working out—say, a mama who dropped you off as easily as a bag of old clothes she never planned to reclaim—then you just went ahead and made your own family circle.

If I closed my eyes, I could still smell Aunt Delilah—rosewater and laughter and the faintest trace of warm blueberry muffins. She never visited Gran without bringing a pocketful of those old-fashioned caramels wrapped in wax paper, the kind that glued themselves to your molars like a bad decision.

Then, one day, she vanished. Just gone. Like Savannah had swallowed her whole

I picked up the note.

She found the proof–he took her land—and then she disappeared.

Twelve words, no signature. Just enough to stir the attic air like a whisper.

The key looked like it belonged in a gothic novel—iron, old, with a shape that promised trouble or treasure, maybe both.

I sat back on my heels, letting the silence settle. The attic creaked like it agreed with me. This wasn’t just a cleaning job. This was the start of something else. Something tangled and important.

My writer’s brain immediately started scurrying through scenarios—half plot, half dread—trying to make sense of the box.

I slipped the photo, key, and note back into the jewelry box, closed it gently, and held it in my lap like it might start talking if I rocked it just right.

Some things, you don’t choose to carry. They just wait patiently for you to come home. I’d lost Henry, then Gran. And now Aunt Delilah had slid from the shadows with a secret in her hand and that wild glint in her eye like she still wasn’t done stirring the pot.

I’d thought I buried the hard parts. But shadows don’t go away.

They wait.

Quiet and patient.

Until you finally come back upstairs.

CHAPTER TWO

ATTIC, KOI, AND UNSPOKEN NAMES

Tuesday a.m.

It’s strange what you find when you’re not really looking. I came up to the attic hoping to clear out a few old boxes and maybe, just maybe, feel like I was doing something productive with my grief. Instead, I found myself sitting cross-legged in the heat, holding a jewelry box that felt heavier than it had any right to be—like it was packed with more than wood, velvet, and time.

Dust swirled in the slanted light, quiet as a prayer, until it tickled my nose and launched a sneeze loud enough to make the old rafters creak in protest.

“Well, if there were any ghosts up here, they’re wide awake now,” I muttered, wiping my nose and brushing grit off my knee. “Just a heads-up—I don’t do jump scares before my third cup of coffee.”

What a picture I must make—knees aching, hair frizzing in the heat, sitting smack in the middle of my late grandmother’s attic, having a moment with a box and a handful of shadows.

My phone chirped—Carrie Rose. I let it go to voicemail. I’d call her on the way to meet Margaret; that way, I’d have a built-in excuse to keep our call short.

After Henry’s funeral, our daughter Carrie Rose launched a full-on campaign to get me to move to California—land of palm trees, pastel salads, and people who say “Namaste” like it’s a magic word. But I gently declined Carrie Rose’s offer, using Gran as my excuse not to leave Georgia, and bless her, she didn’t even know she was being weaponized.

Now that Gran had officially claimed her heavenly reward, she was in no position to save me—unless the afterlife included a hotline for granddaughter emergencies.

If so, knowing Gran, she'd have organized it, staffed it with sharp old ladies, and expected me to take notes. Now that she was off doing whatever angels do—probably organizing the clouds by shape and size—Carrie Rose had made it her mission to bring up my moving west on every single call.

My strategy?

Change the subject faster than a preacher dodging gossip. So far, so good. But my daughter inherited my stubborn streak, which meant my days of verbal gymnastics were officially numbered.

If I had my rathers, I’d admit the truth outright: “Sweetheart, I can’t stand California. It’s too bright and glossy, and everyone seems allergic to literal and figurative shade. And don’t get me started on the freeways. I’d rather parallel park in downtown Savannah during peak tourist season than brave six lanes of sunlit existential dread.”

That conversation wouldn’t go over well.

Carrie Rose had the whole West Coast starter pack: husband, two kids, and a life so sunny it practically came with its own Instagram filter. I adored her, but let’s be honest—I’d last about ten minutes in a world where brunch is a competitive sport and rain is just a rumor.

My house is in Atlanta, another big city with more traffic than manners, where everything—and everyone—moves too fast for a proper second thought.

But now I am back at the cottage that’s always felt like home—using this visit to figure out whether coming back to Savannah is just a pause or the start of something permanent.

The attic smelled like time itself—old paper, cedar, and, drifting up from the box, a hint of lavender that didn’t belong to this century and seemed in no hurry to leave it.

I sat with it for a moment, letting the scent and the weight of memory settle, then gave myself a mental nudge—there was still a mountain of boxes waiting to be sorted.

Funny how one small thing can yank you backward. I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t in the attic anymore—I was barefoot and eight years old, skin sticky with sweat, squinting up into the thick limbs of the old pecan tree in the backyard. Gran stood nearby with her arms crossed, watching as I scraped my way up the trunk. When I slipped, she didn’t rush over. Just said, “Don’t look down. Keep moving up, or you’ll stay stuck where you are.”

She had a way of boiling down life into recipes and one-liners. Advice was doled out like cough syrup—quick, bitter, and meant to make you tough. When my mama left, Gran stepped in and held my life together with a biscuit cutter in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other.

Mama eventually came back, this time with a new boyfriend and the same old bad habits. She hauled me off to California when I was ten—me kicking, screaming, and making a scene big enough to ensure the neighbors got their popcorn.

I’d never taken to the West Coast after that. Too many memories baked into the sidewalks of San Diego—me sulking in backseats, Mama pretending we were a family, and whatever boyfriend-of-the-month pretending not to notice. I suspect that’s where my allergy to palm trees and proximity to Carrie Rose’s zip code really started. But I never told my daughter that. Lord, that would’ve led to a three-hour debate complete with dramatic sighs and generational misunderstandings, and I didn’t have enough strength—or caffeine—for that.

By thirteen, I’d stirred up enough trouble that Mama offered me an out. I took it. Showed up on Gran’s porch skinnier, sassier, and sure I’d burned all my bridges. Gran didn’t blink. Just opened the door and said, “Hope you’re hungry.” That was her love language—grits and second chances.

After that, the house settled around me like a porch swing at dusk—gentle, steady, and just creaky enough to remind you it had been there a while. I learned Gran’s rhythm: mornings in the garden with dirt under her nails, afternoons dusted in flour and biscuit dough, evenings with her feet propped up and one eyebrow cocked at the evening news like it owed her rent. We didn’t say much—but we didn’t have to. She gave me space, which, if you ask me, is sometimes better than all that well-meaning helicopter love. Space grows kids who are sturdy, sharp-tongued, and just the right amount of unruly. My kind of people.

When I left for college—NC State, two states and a universe away—Gran wrote me letters. Some were long and chatty, filled with church gossip and recipes. Some were so short they felt like haiku written under duress. And then there were the odd ones, kind of like the note in the jewelry box: She found the proof–he took her land—and then she disappeared. Sharp. Sliced clean through time. She called them story starters—the first line of a story she wanted me to finish.

In college, I chose journalism because I believed truth lived in facts—neatly stacked, clearly sourced, impossible to argue with. But deep down, what I really wanted was to tell the kinds of stories that settled in people’s bones—quiet, lasting, and impossible to shake.

Gran used to ask, “Where’s my story?” every time I called. And I’d always say, “It’s coming. Just working out a few details.” The truth? I never thought I was good enough to write under my own name. So I slipped into ghostwriting—telling other people’s lives, folks who seemed braver, louder, more worth listening to than me.

The only thing I ever did that I think truly disappointed Gran was not publishing in my own name—and I felt that quiet ache every time she asked, so gently, why my words always belonged to someone else.

The one exception was the piece I’d written about her cousin Beatrice and Beatrice’s granddaughter Sadie. Gran adored that story—and she was downright beaming when it snagged second place in a Reader’s Digest nonfiction contest.

I brushed my thumb over the edge of the note again. Who was he? What proof? What land?

The attic air pressed close around me. Secrets soaked the beams, seeped into every dusty crevice. I gathered the box under my arm and headed down, each step a creak of history beneath me.

Downstairs smelled faintly of Pine-Sol—my quick stab at clearing out the cobwebs, both the kind that clung to the corners of the cottage and the ones tangled up in my head.

I shut the attic door and caught my reflection in the hallway mirror. Hair in a messy bun. Cargo shorts dusted with attic grit. Eyes…tired. Still searching.

I checked the clock on the stove, not enough time for a shower before lunch with Margaret. I brushed most of the dust off my clothes, grabbed my keys from the table, and was nearly out the door before it hit me—I hadn’t fed the koi.

I headed for the back door, and even though Easter was still a few weeks off, Savannah had already decided spring was overrated. Summer met me like an old friend with a sweaty hug and no sense of boundaries.

I opened the fish food bin, scooped the cup full, and followed the familiar stone path through the backyard. Halfway down, I passed Gran’s herb garden. The rosemary was thriving—stubborn as ever—but the thyme looked like it had eloped with the basil and started a rebellion. I smiled, guessing Graham had kept it watered.

Graham.

He still lived two houses down. He’d been Gran’s neighbor since Jesus was in sandals. But long before that, he’d been the boy in my homeroom who’d once handed me a pencil like it was a declaration of love. We were friends, the kind who exchanged shy smiles and heart-thudding silences. One time, at a bonfire party during our junior year, he almost kissed me. Or maybe I almost kissed him. We never did figure out whose move it was.

Then college happened. I met Henry in the library—he was tutoring calculus, and I was pretending to understand statistics. He made me laugh, brought me flowers wrapped in notebook paper, and planned our lives like he built a spreadsheet for forever. That was that.

Graham and I never talked about what never came to be. Some stories quietly slip between the pages. We stayed in touch—warm smiles when I visited Gran, thoughtful Christmas cards—but after I married Henry, life pulled us in different directions. Still, there was always a gentle fondness, even in the space between us.

I reached the koi pond tucked beneath the old oak, where the water shimmered in lazy ripples, stirred only by the slow ballet of its residents. Bogie, Bacall, Rita, Cary, and Gable—named after Gran’s favorite 1940s movie legends, and treated with the reverence of royalty. She’d won them in a church raffle years ago, and Graham, ever the handyman with a soft spot for anything with gills, built the pond to give them a proper home. Koi can live thirty, even forty years with the right care—long enough to outlast a few presidents, several hairstyles, and most houseplants. After Gran died, Graham took up the torch of feeding the koi like it was a sacred duty. Judging by their plump, shimmering selves, they were loving every minute of it.

I scattered the pellets across the pond, and the fish rose like old friends—patient and hungry. I sat on the weathered bench beneath the tree to visit with them for a moment, and traced the faded heart carved into the wood armrest: E.L. + ??

I had left the question marks on purpose. A mystery for Gran and maybe the ?? boy.

I looked up—and there he was.

Graham, bent over a planter box in his backyard, his shoulders broad and steady. He stood and shaded his eyes, spotting me like he’d felt my gaze before he saw it. He gave a wave. Not flashy. Just familiar.

I raised my hand in return, my chest warming with something soft and unspoken.

He hadn’t changed much. A little more silver at the temples. A little more quiet in his smile. But the steadiness? Still there. Always there.

Since Gran passed, he’d been taking care of the koi. He’d also fixed a sagging gutter without being asked and left a basket of tomatoes on the porch the last time I visited Gran—with a note that read, “Still sweet. Like you.”

I pretended it was meant for Gran, let myself believe that for about five seconds. But I knew better.

I turned back to the koi. The big orange one, Bogie, floated near the surface, staring at me like he knew more than he should.

“Oh, hush up,” I whispered.

My phone buzzed with my lunch date reminder. Thank goodness—without those little nudges, I’d wander around like a Roomba with commitment issues.

But today felt different, and I wasn’t about to be late. This wasn’t just lunch—it felt like the start of something I couldn’t quite name. Finishing Gran’s story was going to take more than my imagination this time. I planned to find out exactly what happened to my Aunt Delilah, no matter how deep I had to dig. And for that, I’d need Margaret’s card-catalog memory, a few well-placed archival miracles, and maybe a little divine intervention to help connect the dots.

I stood, brushed the sand from the seat of my pants, and started back toward the house. Some stories refuse to stay buried. And some hearts don’t stay closed forever.

It felt like it might just be the time to unearth both.

CHAPTER THREE

ESPRESSO AND ECHOES

Tuesday p.m.

Fox & Fig sat beside an old church with faded shutters and vines that clung to the brick like Savannah clings to its secrets. The air smelled like espresso, orange blossom, and the subtle warning of nutritional yeast.

If I was going to unravel the mystery of Delilah Hart, lunch with Margaret was the logical place to start. She knew everything about everybody in Savannah—and a few things they didn’t even know about themselves.

Margaret had staked her claim at her usual corner table, already two coffees deep and holding court like she owned the place—which, emotionally speaking, she did. She sat with her back straight, surrounded by a fortress of library books and her ever-loyal laptop. Her coffee mug was cradled in both hands like it might offer wisdom—or at the very least, insulation from foolishness.

She’d always been lovely, but Margaret had grown downright striking with age—high cheekbones, sharp wit, and a presence that made people sit up straighter without knowing why. Sort of a Savannah-bred Katherine Hepburn, if Hepburn had been raised on cornbread and church committee meetings.

She was an only child of an only child, raised in one of those Jones Street townhouses that managed to be both historic and intimidating. Married young, right out of college, to Lawrence—sweet as tea and gone too soon, taken by Marfan syndrome before their son Thadeus was out of diapers. Margaret raised Thadeus in the very house she grew up in, which was how it went if you were lucky enough to inherit a roof with gingerbread trim and a proper parlor.

She never remarried. Never even dated, as far as anyone knew. Whenever someone—usually a woman with too many rings and too much time—would ask her why not, Margaret would lean in and say, “Now why would I go and mess up my perfect memories with the love of my life?” It shut them up every time. More polite than “none of your business,” but just as effective.

Thadeus grew up tall, kind, and unexpectedly Catholic. A priest, no less—which still made Margaret, a devout Methodist, wince just a bit, even though she loved him to pieces. “He went to school up North,” she explained more than once, as if the weather itself had lured him across denominational lines. “It’s the snow. Softens their judgment.”

I stepped inside and made my way to the table. She looked up, already reading my face like a catalog entry.

“Emma Lynn Whitmore,” she said, sipping her coffee. “You’ve got that ‘I found something in the attic, and now the past is misbehaving’ look.”

“Well,” I said, sliding into the chair across from her, “you’re not wrong.”

She gave a satisfied nod. “Good. I didn’t put on my pearl earrings for small talk.”

Margaret set her mug down with the kind of deliberate care usually reserved for heirlooms and ultimatums. “All right then,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Spill it.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the jewelry box, setting it between us with a soft, expectant click. Then I slid the photo across the table—edges curled like it had been trying to disappear but didn’t quite have the nerve.

Margaret leaned in, adjusting her glasses with one finger, then let out a quiet hmph. “That’s your grandmother, sure as sunrise. Same look she used to give you when she caught you turning down corners in a library book.”

I smiled. “Definitely one of Gran’s pet peeves.”

“She said it was a crime against paper,” Margaret added, deadpan. “And I believed her.”

The waitress floated over. “What can I get you, Ms. Whitmore?”

I paused a second, caught off guard. Not by her tone—that was sweet enough—but by the name.

Ms. Whitmore.

In Savannah, your family name sticks. Doesn’t matter how far you run, who you marry, or how many years you spend trying to reinvent yourself. The name clings like a polite ghost—well-mannered, ever-present, and just nosy enough to make sure you behave in public.

It felt oddly fitting, being called by it again. Living in Savannah meant history wasn’t something behind you—it was something that rode in the passenger seat and offered commentary at every stoplight.

I ordered a latte with coconut milk and the special—a quiche so determinedly healthy it didn’t bother with eggs or meat. After the waitress left, I turned my attention back to Margaret.

She pointed to the photo. “That’s Delilah Hart, isn’t it?” Her tone suddenly cautious. “I haven’t heard that name in decades.”

I nodded. “Gran’s friend who went missing.”

Margaret went still. Not dramatically—but in that subtle way cats do when they hear something they’re not sure they like.

“She ever come up in conversation?”

“She came up in whispers,” Margaret said, her voice softer now. “Some said she ran off. Others said she didn’t. But no one filed a report, and no one looked too hard.”

I slid the note across the table. Margaret read it once. Then again. Her expression didn’t change, but something behind her eyes shifted like a door cracking open.

She found the proof–he took her land—and then she disappeared.

“Well,” she said flatly, “That’s vague enough to be a Faulkner short story. But the then she disappeared part? That little itch could be a country song.”

“Think it’s about Delilah?”

“Or your grandmother, Clara. Or someone they both knew. But if that came from Clara’s attic…” She tapped the paper once, then sat back in her chair. “Sounds like she wanted it found.”

“I also found this.” I pulled out the key and set it between us. It landed with a soft metallic clink that somehow felt louder than it should have.

Margaret raised a brow. “That’s old. Not for a house, though. Bank box, maybe. Storage. Something worth hiding.”

She turned the key over in her hand, slow and careful. She was quiet for a long beat.

“Aunt Delilah disappeared when I was about nine. I know she wasn’t married, but that’s about it. Do you know anything else about her?” I asked.

She nodded, slowly at first, then more firmly as her librarian brain began rearranging dusty memory boxes. “My mom and I talked about her disappearance once. As I remember, Delilah had no husband. No kids. She worked for the county—title research, I think. Back when paperwork still meant paper. Her family owned land out near the old ferry road. They were old Savannah stock. Her parents died in a wreck. Big in the Jehovah’s Witness scene. She had a sister, Eleanor, who left town and took her daughter Eva with her. That girl would be about Carrie Rose’s age now. I only remember the name because Eva’s what my grandmother went by.”

“And Gran and Delilah?”

“Inseparable. One never showed up without the other. Until Delilah didn’t.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I picked up the key again, turning it over in my fingers. “Do you think something happened to her?”

Margaret’s lips tightened. “Honey, something happens to all of us. But if you’re asking if I think someone made sure Delilah disappeared, well,” she sipped her coffee, “I think someone in Savannah knows exactly what happened and hasn’t had the manners or the nerve to say it out loud.”

I let out a slow breath. “Can you help me dig into the records? Property, probate, anything tied to her family?”

Margaret leveled me with a flat stare over her mug. “You mean illegally help you?”

I gave her a slow smile. “Let’s just say… help me satisfy my archival curiosity.”

She sighed like she’d already regretted agreeing. “You’d better meet me at the library first thing tomorrow. Before the volunteers show up and start asking questions I’m too sober to answer.”

I nodded, slipping the key and the note back into the jewelry box and then into my tote. “If her family owned land out near the ferry road, that’s where I’ll start.”

Margaret snapped her laptop shut. “That land changed hands, but it never changed stories. Be careful poking at things buried under marsh and moss. You know as well as I do, Savannah doesn’t take kindly to being stirred.”

Our lunch arrived, and we moved on to local gossip—our usual ritual of trading tidbits, speculating on neighbors’ secrets, and pretending we weren’t just as nosy as everyone else in Savannah.

We asked for the check, and I asked how early we could meet at the library.

Margaret sighed. “Meet me at ten—and bring pastries.” She gave me a long, assessing look, like she was weighing the price of what came next—for her, for me, maybe for both of us. “If you’re really set on digging into Delilah, Emma Lynn, you’d better be ready for the fallout. The deeper you dig in Savannah, the more likely you are to find trouble buried with the truth.

I glanced out the window just as the wind nudged the café sign, making it rattle against the glass—soft and insistent, like someone knocking from the other side.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE LEDGER AND THE LIE

Wednesday a.m.

The Live Oak Library sat behind a stretch of old magnolias, their pale blossoms drooping in the heat and waxy leaves gleaming like they’d been polished by hand. The building itself carried a dignified kind of hush—white columns worn soft by time, wrought-iron lanterns that hadn’t been lit in decades, and wide steps that creaked just enough to remind you this was a place that remembered everything. Even before you stepped through the doors, the air shifted—quieter, more reverent. The kind of place that made you whisper without meaning to.

Inside, the cool air met me like a secret handshake—part chill from the AC, part hush from the stories tucked between book spines, each one standing at attention like a soldier on the shelf. In the far corner, a row of humming computers glowed softly, slightly out of step with the room’s quiet reverence. The smell was familiar—paper, orange oil polish, and something faintly floral, like gardenia perfume that had drifted in hours ago and decided to stay.

The main reading room glowed with that particular, timeless library light—dim, gold, softened by tall windows and dust that had earned the right to settle where it pleased. A college student in headphones slouched near the poetry shelves, while an older man in suspenders turned the pages of a Civil War atlas with quiet devotion. Near the circulation desk, a young mother read a picture book to her toddler, both cross-legged on the floor.

Margaret waved me over from a side table tucked beneath the arched windows. It was already buried in a spread of maps, manila folders, blueprints, and a granola bar she’d clearly forgotten existed. A roll of peppermints sat by her elbow. She claimed they helped her focus. Personally, I suspected it was the librarian version of stress eating.

“You work fast,” I said, settling into the chair across from her and sliding a white paper bag across the table. “As requested—two almond croissants, still warm.”

Margaret’s eyes lit up as she peeked inside. “Bless you,” she said, tearing off a flaky corner and closing her eyes in exaggerated bliss. “If your ghost writing gig ever dries up, you could make a killing in pastry delivery.”

Her silver hoop earrings swung as she waved a hand over the maps and ledgers. “I came in early. I knew Delilah’s name would be buried deep—and I was right.”

She pushed a yellowed ledger toward me. The thing looked like it would crumble if you breathed on it wrong, the pages curled and dry with age. Her fingers hovered for a moment before she let go. “Look at the 1982 entry.”

I read the line she’d marked with a yellow sticky note. Delilah Hart, co-owner of a sixty-acre parcel on Wilmington Island. Three acres, marshside. Registered under Blake Properties Holdings.

“Blake?” I asked.

“Victor Blake,” she said, and the name landed like a dropped book between us. He’d been wrapped around Savannah real estate for decades—developer, philanthropist, power broker. The kind of man whose smile came with fine print.

“Didn’t he die a few years ago?”

Margaret nodded. “He did, but his grandson—Mason—is still around. Took over the business.”

I traced my finger down the page, noting block numbers and zoning codes, none of which meant much to me. “Delilah worked for the city. If she had investments with Blake, it must’ve been speculative—a development project or something.”

“Maybe,” Margaret said, folding her hands. “But something shifted the year she disappeared. The records show that after she vanished, the property quietly transferred to a holding company tied directly to Victor Blake. No sale. No probate. Just a quiet change of hands.”

“So, he absorbed the land.”

“Legally? Yes. Ethically?” She let the question hang. “Let’s just say the ink dried fast, and nobody asked why.”

She passed me a photocopy of an old newspaper clipping—Savannah Daily Chronicle, 1981. A photo from a social gala at the Colonial Ballroom. My grandmother and Delilah, side by side in satin and pearls, smiling like they knew exactly what it meant to be seen. And next to them, a younger Victor Blake. His grin was polished, rehearsed. The kind of smile that made you check for your wallet afterward.

The caption read: Local Leaders Gather for Historic Preservation Gala.

Margaret’s voice dropped slightly. “They may have preserved the wetland but they developed the rest. That land is worth a fortune now. Marshside. Waterfront. If Delilah’s name had stayed on the deed, someone would’ve noticed. Likely, her younger sister, Eleanor, might’ve asked questions. But Delilah disappears, and suddenly—no questions asked.”

I leaned back, and the old library chair creaked beneath me like it didn’t approve of the weight of what I’d just learned. Outside the window, a bird darted through the branches, and the world kept going like nothing had changed.

“Do you think my grandmother knew about this?” I asked.

Margaret didn’t answer right away. She folded the clipping carefully and slid it toward me. Her eyes met mine.

“I think your grandmother knew more than she let on,” she said gently. “And I think someone made sure Delilah didn’t come back to tell her side.”

The printer near the reference desk sputtered to life, breaking the stillness. The toddler dropped her book with a soft thump. No one else moved. In a library like this, everyone knew that stories didn’t always begin with a bang. Sometimes they began with a whisper. Or a paper jam.

I tucked the clipping into my bag and stood. “Thanks, Margaret. You’ve earned lunch. And maybe sainthood.”

She smiled faintly, cradling the ledger like a holy relic. “I’ll settle for not getting fired for pulling county land records without clearance. Technically, I’m supposed to fill out a request and wait three to five business days—but that’s not exactly compatible with ghost hunting.”

Outside, the afternoon had shifted. Savannah really only had two seasons—summer and that brief two or three days when it pretended not to be summer before doubling back with a vengeance.

The breeze had vanished. The air pressed close, thick with things unsaid. Savannah didn’t just keep its secrets—it embroidered them into the heat, wrapped them around you until you couldn’t tell if what you were feeling was memory or warning.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FORGOTTEN LOT

Thursday a.m.

I didn’t wake up planning to visit Bonaventure.

But there I was—keys in hand, shoes barely tied, telling myself I just wanted some air. Margaret, of course, saw right through that.

“You’re going because of the note, aren’t you?” she asked over the rim of her coffee cup.

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s the photo. Or maybe I just need to look Gran’s memory in the eye and see if it looks back.” Grief’s pull was slippery like that––part ache, part unfinished sentence.

“Well,” she said, standing up and patting her pants flat, “then I’m coming too. I’m off today, and I’ve got ancestors out that way who haven’t had company since shoulder pads were considered high fashion.”

We didn’t say much on the drive, which suited us both just fine. Some friends talk to fill the silence. We let it breathe.

Bonaventure Cemetery didn’t hide its ghosts. It wore them like an old shawl—frayed, fragrant, and familiar. The scent of jasmine and sun-warmed stone clung to everything, even our conversation. Spanish moss hung from the oaks like something out of a Southern gothic novel, and the gravel paths curved with a kind of lazy intention, as if daring you to get lost.

“Your people in the whispering section or the wailing one?” Margaret asked as we rounded a bend.

“Definitely the porch-sitting, long-sighing section,” I said. “Gran never raised her voice unless there was a snake or a salesman involved.”

We reached my family plot, just past a bend where the magnolias had taken root like they had something to prove. The azaleas were blooming, too—magenta and brilliant against the stone.

“You go ahead,” Margaret said, tipping her head toward the magnolia’s shade. “I’ll commune with the dearly long-winded over yonder.”

I stepped over the granite border—four inches high and square as a postage stamp. There were eight plots, three filled.

Granddaddy Whitmore, World War II soldier and love letter author. His stone was plain and proud. I always imagined his voice had been steady, like his handwriting.

Then Mama—Sophie Anne. Her memory felt fragile, like she’d been made of glass. Gone too young, shattered in ways only Gran ever seemed to see. I still remembered how Gran went quiet after the call came. It wasn’t just grief—it was a silence that felt like surrender.

And then Gran—Clara Rose. The keeper of the porch light. Her stone rested between theirs like a final word. She Kept the Light On.

That was my idea. She always did, even when no one was coming. Just in case, she used to say.

I crouched to brush a few stray petals from her name. A small white stone rested just above it—smooth, warm, too purposeful to be a coincidence. We weren’t rock-leaving Baptists, but someone had been here. Someone who knew her, or at least thought they did.

I turned the stone in my hand. Margaret would say I was romanticizing it. She also cried at Publix’s holiday commercials, so I’d take that with a grain of salt.

The bench under the magnolia hadn’t changed in thirty years. I used to sit on it as a girl, legs swinging, asking Gran endless questions she rarely answered. She liked quiet when visiting the dead, she used to say.

Now I stood beside the bench, older and heavier in all the ways that mattered, full of questions that still had nowhere to go.

“You all right?” Margaret called from across the plot. She eyed the grave like it had cut her off in traffic twenty years ago.

“Just talking to dead people. Nothing new.”

She gave me a little salute and wandered toward a row of Barrows and McElroys.

I lingered a minute more, then followed the tug that had brought me here in the first place. The photo from the attic was folded in my bag—Gran, Delilah Hart, and Victor Blake looking like they belonged in a noir film. And tucked beneath it, the note: She found the proof–he took her land—and then she disappeared. 

The deeper I went into Bonaventure, the more it felt like walking through a diary no one had finished. Every stone a sentence. Every tree a parenthesis.

I followed the grave map I’d tucked into my glove compartment the day we buried Gran and made my way to the plot I was looking for—a nearly forgotten corner of Bonaventure, hidden behind a rusted iron gate barely clinging to the word HART, its letters faded and half-swallowed by time.

Inside, most of the headstones leaned like tired shoulders or lay cracked open, bleached by the sun and softened by years—all except one.

Delilah Grace Hart

1937–1971

Polished granite. Sharp edges. Not a speck of moss or lichen. No epitaph. No flowers. Just her name, her birth year, and the year she vanished, etched like a secret no one wanted found.

It looked like it had been set yesterday.

And yet the ground in front of it told a different story—grass growing thick and undisturbed, a few stubborn weeds sprouting along the edges. No fresh soil, no signs of digging. The kind of settled earth that hadn’t been touched in decades.

I pulled out my phone and began snapping photos—the headstone, the iron fence, the layout of the plot—trying to capture what I couldn’t explain but couldn’t ignore.

Margaret appeared at my elbow like she’d known exactly where I’d gone. “Friend of yours?”

“Not exactly,” I murmured. “More like a shadow in the attic.”

She peered at the headstone and gave a short, unimpressed sniff. “Hmph. Delilah Hart’s got herself a headstone. Clean as a whistle, too. Somebody suddenly got sentimental after fifty years? Sounds fishy.”

“Or someone wanted a story buried where no one would think to dig.”

We stood there a moment, letting the silence speak. Then I felt it—the photo in my bag, suddenly warm against my hip. Probably the sun, I told myself. Or a side effect of a sleepless night in a no longer familiar bed. Too many dreams, too little rest. Still, the heat lingered, subtle but insistent, like it had something to say.

CHAPTER SIX

LOOSE ENDS AND LADDER RUNGS

Thursday evening

By the time we pulled back into the driveway, the air had turned syrupy with that late Savannah heat that sticks to your skin like regret. The light had shifted—a golden-hour slant that made the whole cottage look like it belonged in a memory. I caught Margaret pausing at the front steps, squinting toward the porch like she wasn’t sure if it had always looked this haunted.

“Why does it feel like we’re about to walk into Act Two of a ghost story?” she asked, following me inside.

“Because we are,” I said. “And you're not even getting popcorn for it.”

The lock clicked behind us, and the silence that followed made my skin prickle. Not empty. Not peaceful. Just...paused.

I dropped my canvas tote on the table. And emptied the weight of the day, the small jewelry box, the photo of Gran and Delilah, Margaret’s scribbled notes, a few photocopied property deeds, and a freshly printed snapshot of Delilah’s headstone from Bonaventure. Margaret insisted we swing by the library—apparently, their printer didn’t butcher shadows like mine did.

Margaret pulled out a chair and sat down like she was clocking in. “You think we’ve got enough for a conspiracy yet?”

“Not even close,” I said. “But it’s starting to form a shape. The edges, at least.”

She tapped the photo from the attic with her fingers. “This still gives me the creeps. Like it wants to tell us something but keeps changing the subject.”

“And then there’s this,” I said, fishing the brass key from the inner pocket of my bag.

She leaned closer. “Still can’t figure why this would be in your Gran’s jewelry box?”

I nodded. “No label. No clue. Just enough mystery to make me want a bourbon.”

Margaret reached for it, studied it in the light, then handed it back. “Maybe your attic’s got more to say.”

I looked toward the stairs. The key caught a glint from the window. It felt warmer now. Or maybe just heavier. Either way, we weren’t done.

“Come on,” I said, pushing back from the table. “If there’s anything left to find about Delilah in this house, it’s up there.”

Ten seconds later, we were climbing into the attic—me first, as always, with Margaret holding the flashlight like it was a ceremonial torch. “If a possum jumps out, you’re the one fighting it,” she said.

I switched on the overhead light at the top of the stairs. “Deal. You negotiate with ghosts, I’ll handle wildlife.”

The attic greeted us with that same familiar mix of dust, insulation, and memories that never learned how to sit still. The trunk in the corner hadn’t moved. Neither had the layers of dust.

Margaret pointed to the stack of brittle magazines beside the trunk. “You sure you didn’t miss anything under all this Reader’s Digest optimism?”

“I’m sure.” But even as I said it, something snagged my eye. A corner of metal. Tucked half out of view beneath a collapsing pile of photo albums and outdated Christmas wrapping.

I brushed the stack aside to reveal a small narrow metal file cabinet—mostly forgotten, definitely overlooked.

“Well, well,” Margaret said, crouching beside me. “What do we think this is? Government secrets or old fruitcake recipes?”

The handle squeaked open like it held a personal grudge. Inside: folders stuffed with paper, bloated with age. Most of it useless—ancient tax returns, appliance manuals, the usual paper trail of a long life lived thoroughly.

But a large yellow envelope marked DH caught my attention. I pulled it free. Inside a handwritten contract, “Southern Storage,” I read aloud. “Unit 121B. Account holder: Delilah Hart. Secondary: Clara Whitmore.”

Behind the contract was a stack of receipts—years of payments mostly made in cash, two by money order.

Margaret peered over my shoulder. “Your Gran cosigned a storage unit for Delilah?”

“For forty years,” I said, flipping to the last page. “The last payment was for five years in advance. In 1988.”

“That’s seventeen years after Delilah’s death date on the headstone,” she said slowly. “What was your Gran paying to keep locked away?”

There was a phone number scribbled in the corner of one receipt. I keyed it into my phone. Disconnected.

Of course it was.

I felt it then—that ripple in the air. Like the attic had just whispered told you so.

The creaking floorboards under our feet groaned again as we made our way down, envelope in hand. At the landing, something tugged at my attention, and I turned toward the window.

Movement. Just past the edge of the trees. Fast. Flickering.

Too fast to be wind. Too upright to be animal. Just enough to make the hairs on my arm stand at attention.

“What?” Margaret asked, pausing on the steps behind me.

“Nothing,” I said too quickly. “Just...nothing.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and opened my laptop. The Southern Storage website was sparse—just an address and a phone number that rang five times before dropping me into silence.

Still there, though. Still waiting.

"Whatever was there won’t be there now," Margaret said, nodding toward the envelope. "According to this, the last five-year prepayment was made in 1988. We were in our mid-twenties." She chuckled, shaking her head. "A long time ago."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, sure. A whole era ago. Back when I thought 'adulting' meant choosing between pizza or Chinese food for dinner, not sorting through dusty old records that time forgot."

I spread the receipts out on the table and snapped a photo with my phone, documenting everything. The screen flashed.

And then buzzed.

A new message. Unknown number. Two words.

Stop digging.

No greeting. No punctuation. No clue who sent it.

I handed my phone to Margaret. She scanned the screen, scrunching her face. "Well. That’s not ominous at all."

I set the phone down carefully, as though it might sprout legs and run. My pulse kicked up. "Someone knows what we found."

“Which means we’re getting close,” she said. “Creepy texts are practically a rite of passage.”

“I need air,” I muttered.

We stepped out onto the back path, gravel crunching beneath our feet as we moved toward the koi pond under the live oak. Gran’s old bench waited like it always had, solid and steady beneath the canopy.

The fish surfaced one by one. Calm. Graceful. Unbothered.

“She used to talk to them like they were the town council,” I said.

Margaret smiled. “I remember. She once gave them a full lecture about the importance of punctuality.”

We sat on the bench, letting the hush settle in around us. Graham’s porch light blinked on across the yard. A soft glow, steady and comforting.

“I wonder if he’s seen anything strange,” I murmured.

“You mean other than the woman next door climbing around her attic in linen pants and solving cold cases before dinner?”

I snorted. “Point taken.”

Above us, the branches stirred. The wind moved like it had something to say.

You’re not done yet.

And I wasn’t.

Not even close.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE EDGES OF MEMORY

Friday a.m.

It would’ve taken a bulldozer—and possibly a restraining order—to keep Margaret from tagging along to the storage unit. So I waited until after her shift at the library, figuring if I was going to be murdered in broad daylight, I might as well bring a witness with sharp instincts and no patience for nonsense. Also, she packed granola bars and pepper spray.

Southern Storage sat behind a sagging chain-link fence off a cracked two-lane road that hadn’t seen fresh asphalt since perms were a political statement and Barry Manilow ruled the airwaves.

Margaret scanned the lot as we pulled in. “Tell me again how this doesn’t end with us being interviewed on a true crime podcast?”

“We're too practical to be victims,” I said. “And you’re not wearing heels. That’s already survival-level thinking.”

“This place looks like a tetanus shot waiting to happen,” Margaret said, peering through the windshield as we slowed to a crunching stop in the gravel lot.

I parked beside what I assumed was the office—an aging concrete box that looked like it had weathered more than one hurricane and a handful of bad decisions.

“We sure this isn’t an elaborate setup to harvest our kidneys?” she asked.

“Only one way to find out,” I muttered, pocketing the key. “But I get dibs on keeping my spleen.”

The only sign of life was a warped sheet of printer paper taped to the office window, its message bleached and sagging:

Back in 15

Margaret squinted. “Fifteen what? Minutes? Hours? Presidents ago?”

“There’s no time stamp, so I’m going with ‘vague shrug of eternity’.”

The keypad by the gate had seen better days, probably sometime during the Reagan administration. The duct tape holding it together had curled back in surrender, but a small green light blinked steadily beneath the grime.

Margaret leaned in, inspecting it. “Looks like it’s powered by spite and possibly haunted.”

“Still blinking, though,” I said, typing in the code I’d found scrawled on one of the storage receipts. The gate clanked open a few inches with the enthusiasm of a retired mall Santa.

“Charming,” Margaret muttered. “You first.”

The rows of units stretched flat across the property, each beige door stamped with a peeling white number. The layout was efficient in that soul-draining, no-one-will-hear-you-scream kind of way.

We tried walking in silence but our footsteps echoed off the metal. Margaret glanced around. “Places like this are why I watch true crime before bed. Builds immunity.”

“Remind me to never borrow your comfort playlist,” I said.

Unit 121B was in the far back. Last row, center. The door was cracked two inches. Just enough to whisper Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.

Margaret stopped to inspect a crooked "No Trespassing" sign that looked like it had given up sometime around the tail end of disco, then lollygagged over to stand beside me. “Did you already open it?”

“Nope.”

Her brows lifted. “Well, that’s not concerning at all.”

I nudged the door open slowly. It gave way with a groan that echoed too long.

Empty.

Impossibly, suspiciously empty.

Margaret peered in and crossed her arms. “Well, this is underwhelming.”

The space was too clean. Not just swept—it had been scrubbed. Like someone had gone full Marie Kondo with bleach and a grudge.

Which was odd, considering the rest of the place hadn’t seen a broom, a mop, or a passing thought of sanitation in at least thirty years.

“Someone tried erasing this unit,” I said.

We stepped inside, the overhead bulb flickering once before settling into a steady buzz. A faint whiff of Pine-Sol—or some industrial cleaner strong enough to singe nose hairs—hung in the air, out of place in a building that looked like it should’ve smelled like mildew and forgotten Christmas decorations. I scanned the concrete floor—bare, except for a faint scuff mark near the center. Curved. Like something heavy had been dragged.

“Think it was a trunk?” Margaret asked.

“Or a safe. Or a filing cabinet filled with family secrets and the original Coca-Cola recipe.” I studied the scuff mark. “Or a coffin with a dead body.”

She pointed to the corner. “What’s that?”

Tucked near the wall, half hidden under a crooked screw, was a scrap of paper pinned to the concrete like an afterthought. I crouched to retrieve it, the edge catching and tearing slightly.

A photograph. Or what was left of one.

I held it toward the light. Gran. Same hairstyle. Same pearls. But not the same expression. This time, her face was all sharp edges and tension. Her eyes wide, hands clenched at her sides.

Fear.

Not subtle. Not posed. A flash-captured moment of panic.

“Emma…,” Margaret’s voice was softer now. “That’s not just a bad day. That’s a woman who knew something was about to go sideways.”

I slipped the photo into my bag. “And someone wanted me to see it.”

“They cleaned the unit, left no trace—except that. That’s not a mistake. That’s a signature.”

We backed out, our movements quieter now, more measured. Sunlight hit my face like a slap—bright, uninvited, like we’d just crawled out of a bunker.

Back in the Jeep, I pulled the door shut and exhaled. The partial photograph still sat heavy in my bag, like it knew too much.

Margaret snapped her seatbelt and turned to me. “All right. What now?”

“I want to know who owns Southern Storage,” I said, starting the engine. “That much secrecy doesn’t happen by accident.”

Margaret was already tapping into her phone. “On it. Let’s see if this place is owned by an LLC with five shell companies or just a guy named Earl with a basement full of conspiracy theories.”

“Either way,” I said, easing us back onto the road, “I’d like to know who’s trying to scrub history clean. And why they left just enough behind to mess with me.”

She glanced at me, her tone lighter. “You know, it’s possible someone left that photo as a breadcrumb.” She shrugged. “Or a trap.”

“Breadcrumbs don’t usually come with ominous lighting and the distinct vibe of run while you still can,” I said. “That was a warning.”

“Then good thing you brought me,” she said, cracking open a Ziplock bag. “I brought snickerdoodles and a healthy disrespect for threats.”

My phone pinged with a message, and I fished it out of my purse.

Unknown Number.

Stop digging

No punctuation. No flair. Just the same two words, flat and cold as the concrete we'd just stood on.

“Well,” Margaret said, reading over my shoulder. “Looks like we’ve annoyed someone with very poor texting etiquette.”

I scrolled back to the original warning and checked the number. Different number. Different area code. My pulse kicked up—fear, anger, curiosity all elbowing for space.

“Someone’s watching.”

Margaret didn’t flinch. “Then let’s give them something worth watching.”

I drove us back toward town. Neither of us said much. But I could feel it, same as her—something had shifted.

Gran’s photo. The empty unit. The message.

Whoever had cleared out 121B hadn’t just cleaned—they’d wiped it down with the kind of precision that screams cover-up. And they’d left one thing behind.

Fear.

Theirs.

And now, mine.

But fear wasn’t a stop sign. It was just a warning. And I’d never been much good at heeding those.

I was a writer. Margaret, a retired librarian who could conduct research in her sleep. Between us, we had an overactive sense of curiosity and a fully charged iPhone—basically, the amateur sleuth starter pack.

Together, we would either uncover a long-buried truth—or land on the evening news.

Either way, we were committed.

And from here on out?

We were digging.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHEN IN DOUBT, CALL THE GUY WITH THE BANANA KEYCHAIN

Friday p.m.

By the time I made it back to the cottage, the sky had turned—heavy clouds sagging low, like they were waiting for the perfect moment to break open. The wind moved through the treetops in a restless moan, and thunder rolled in the distance, low and unsettled. The kind of weather that made the hair on your arms rise. The kind that made you feel watched, though it could have been just my writer’s imagination.

I pulled into the gravel drive and let the Jeep idle, eyes on the cottage. Everything looked still. Untouched. The porch lamp was off. The windows stared back, blank. The wind chime ticked softly against the siding, uncertain—caught between music and warning.

I reached for my door handle—then froze.

The front door was shut—but not all the way. A narrow gap, just a sliver of darkness along the edge. Easy to overlook. But I didn’t.

I knew that door. I knew how it sat when it was latched. And this…this wasn’t it. Something had moved. Something had opened that should’ve stayed shut. Because I always locked it. Always.

Always.

My mind stalled, my hands tightened on the steering wheel. That wire-tight feeling returned—low in my gut. I’d seen enough Hallmark mysteries to recognize what it meant.

Do. Not. Go. Inside.

And I didn’t.

I stepped out quietly, left the Jeep behind, cut through my yard, and hurried down the sidewalk. My destination: the second house on the right.

Lights glowed behind the gauzy curtains, and the hum of jazz trickled faintly from the porch speaker.

Graham Candler’s place.

He had lived in this modest carriage house since we were in high school. A good son who took care of his aging parents until their death and now lived alone. Graham was the kind of neighbor people either loved or avoided. He had solar panels rigged up on his roof, fixed his own plumbing, and once built a working trebuchet in the front yard for his high school’s physics club. Never married. Never left Savannah. And still, somehow, one of the most grounded people I knew.

I knocked once on the doorframe.

It opened almost immediately.

Graham stood barefoot in the entryway, wearing plaid pajama pants and a bright yellow Banana Ball or Bust T-shirt from the Savannah Bananas’ 2022 “No Rules Tour.” I had a matching shirt in my drawer, just like all self-respecting Savannahians. Buying Savannah Banana game wear was akin to buying Girl Scout cookies from the youngsters in front of Publix every spring. After all, Savannah was the home of Juliette Gordon Lowe, and we took our Thin Mints very seriously.

A pencil was tucked behind Graham’s ear, and he held a large cereal bowl—not a mug––a bowl that could easily hold four cups of cereal and two cups of milk. He had it filled to the brim with black coffee.

“You’re either here to talk conspiracy theories or report a crime,” he said. “You look too serious for conspiracy theories.”

“My front door’s open,” I said. “Not all the way. Just…unlatched. I locked it when I left.”

That got his attention. The joking left his face like someone had flipped a switch.

“Anyone still in there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t check. I came here instead.”

He nodded once, like I’d just solved world peace. Then he set his cereal bowl on the hall table, grabbed a flashlight and his keys—dangling from a tiny banana keychain, of course—and headed out the door.

Still barefoot.

“You’re not wearing shoes,” I said as we walked up the road.

“Shoes are for people who fear commitment,” he said. “Also, I stepped in nacho cheese at the game last night. They’re currently recovering in the laundry room.”

“You only have one pair?”

He looked genuinely puzzled, like I’d asked if he owned more than one toothbrush. “You can only wear one pair at a time. Why complicate things?”

“Savannah Bananas strike again.”

He grinned. “And I’d do it all over again for those nachos.”

We walked in silence for a stretch after that, thunder rumbling again as we approached the porch. Graham slowed, scanning the steps, the windows, the yard.

“Don’t go in until I say it’s clear,” he murmured.

“I’m not helpless, Graham.”

“No. But you’re important.”

That shut me up.

He pressed a hand to the wood and nudged the door with the lightest touch. It creaked inward. The air inside felt warmer than it should have been. Like someone had been standing there not long ago, breathing in all the oxygen.

He stepped in quietly. The old oak floorboards creaked under his bare feet.

I stood in the threshold, pulse fluttering in my throat, until I heard him call my name.

“Emma Lynn.”

I moved fast.

He was in the kitchen doorway, expression unreadable, his arms folded across his chest.

The place had been ransacked. My tote lay dumped out on the floor, papers scattered like fallen leaves. Notes torn in half. My grandmother’s jewelry box pried open and empty. The old photograph of Delilah and Gran—gone. Everything that mattered most—touched, taken, or destroyed.

“They weren’t guessing,” Graham said quietly. “They knew what to look for.”

I stepped closer, heart pounding. “They found the envelope of receipts. How did they even know where they were? I hid them in the cupboard!”

Graham crouched and picked up one of the discarded receipts, the corner had been ripped.

We moved through the rest of the house. The bedroom drawers had been yanked out and rifled through, but the laptop on the desk was untouched. So was the small wad of cash I had tucked into Gran’s sock drawer—nothing of real value was missing.

“They weren’t after money,” I said.

“Nope. They were after you. They took their time. Took what they thought mattered. And nothing else.”

We stood in the kitchen again, the wreckage laid out between us. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the two things I’d managed to salvage before bolting—the key and the half-torn photo someone had left behind in the storage unit. My hand trembled slightly as I set them on the table.

“They didn’t get everything,” I said.

Graham studied the photo, then the key. “Emma Lynn…what exactly are we looking at here?”

I let out a breath and gave him the rundown—what I’d found in the attic, the trip Margaret and I had made to Southern Storage, and the two text messages. “My gut says Delilah knew something. Something important. And someone got rid of her because of it. I plan to expose whatever it was.”

He didn’t flinch. “Then we’d better figure out what she knew.”

His gaze met mine—solid and steady. Not just curious. Committed. And just like that, we were the Savannah Sleuths again—Margaret, Graham, and me—back in business, whether we meant to be or not.

Back when we were fifteen and still in high school, Margaret, Graham, and I uncovered a murder most people in Savannah didn’t even know had happened. A visiting girl was found dead in the lot between Gran’s house and Graham’s. As we dug deeper, we realized her death was connected to a much older case—the disappearance of her aunt decades earlier. A woman who, as it turned out, was a distant relative of mine.

What started as hallway whispers and a strange clue in my attic turned into after-school library dives, late-night phone calls, and one very close call with the wrong end of a shovel. I wrote about it later, called it Buried Beneath the Ivy, and entered it in the Reader’s Digest true crime contest. To my surprise, it won. I still have the letter somewhere, folded between old school papers and a dried corsage. Proof that the truth matters—even when you’re fifteen and the adults think you’re just imagining things.

A flash of lightning lit up the room for a split second. Graham crossed to the window and scanned the yard, eyes sweeping the tree line. When he turned back, that familiar spark was there—the same one he got when the Bananas were trailing and he was convinced a rally was coming.

“You’re not staying here tonight,” he said. “Grab what you need. We’ll go to the library, a coffee shop—or, better yet, the ballpark. I’m not about to let you get boxed in here alone.”

“It looks like rain,” I said.

“It’s supposed to pass in an hour. Bananas will play on schedule.” He was already heading for the back door. “I’ll feed the fish while you change into baseball attire.”

“I fed them already.”

“Then I’ll just say hi.”

I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to watch a ballgame.

He paused, came back, and slipped an arm around my shoulders.

“When you moved back, I told myself I’d keep you safe,” he said. “Didn’t figure that would include breaking and entering, but I’m flexible.”

I bumped him with my elbow. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you’re long overdue for a Bananas game. Go put on your shirt.”

I gave him a look that should’ve ended the conversation.

“Emma Lynn,” he said, grinning, “nothing bad ever happens when Jesse Cole’s wearing his yellow tux.”

The image hit me—Jesse in his bright suit and top hat, grinning like mischief itself—and despite everything, I laughed. It came out shaky but real. And for a moment, the house didn’t seem quite so dark.

CHAPTER NINE

ONE GHOSTWRITER, TWO CROCS, AND A TAIL

Friday p.m.

I refused to go to the game with Graham unless he agreed to wear shoes. It seemed like a reasonable boundary—somewhere between public decency and basic survival.

He huffed like I’d asked him to wear his Sunday suit, but ten minutes later, he emerged proudly in a pair of worn gray gardening Crocs. “Canvas sneakers are still drying,” he declared. “But these count. Technically shoes. Also blessed by the gods of practicality.”

“Crocs aren’t shoes, Graham. They’re a lifestyle choice.”

He wiggled his toes through the ventilation holes and grinned. “A lifestyle I’m proud of.”

Margaret and I had many conversations over the years dissecting Graham’s quirks, but her explanation remained the most efficient—and delightfully vague.

Well, he’s Methodist. We see the world a little off-skew. It’s the potluck theology.

I never quite knew what that meant, but somehow it accounted for both the Crocs and his longstanding feud with kombucha.

We made it to the ballpark just in time for the pregame antics—dancers, trick pitches, and one Banana who attempted a cartwheel into home plate and failed spectacularly. We ate nachos the size of our heads, shared beers, and hollered until our voices cracked. Graham knew half the crowd and waved at the rest. He wore his yellow “Banana Ball or Bust” shirt like armor. I wore mine under a hoodie, but he insisted it still counted.

“You can’t eat those nachos and then insult the shirt,” he told me. “It’s a package deal.”

After the game, we wandered through Forsyth Park, cutting past shuttered cafés and quiet townhomes. Graham walked beside me, hands in his jacket pockets. For once, no jokes, no trivia—just silence charged with something unspoken, like static before a storm.

We circled the block once. Then again.

Neither of us said why.

The streets near Liberty were nearly empty. Dim shop windows. Wrought-iron fences. A trio of college kids zipped past on bikes, earbuds glowing neon. A woman walked her golden retriever across the street, leash slack, eyes on her phone. Everything looked ordinary. Safe.

But I knew better.

That creeping itch settled between my shoulder blades. The kind of quiet hanging over the street felt staged. Intentional. I scanned alleyways, porches, dark windows—nothing moved. But that weight lingered. That sense I’d become too good at brushing off.

Eyes. Somewhere. Watching.

When we reached the Jeep, I slid into the driver’s seat and hit the lock button. Graham shut his door without a word. The silence inside felt louder than the street.

“You want to drive a couple loops?” he asked.

I nodded and started the engine.

We made slow turns through the downtown grid. Habersham. Montgomery. Jefferson. I doubled back more than once, threading side streets and moss-draped squares. My grip tightened on the wheel with every pass.

At a four-way stop, Graham leaned forward. “Don’t look now. Black sedan. Half a block back. Been with us since Whitaker.”

“Lights on?”

“Yeah. Not tailgating. Just…hovering.”

I turned left. So did they.

“Still there?”

“Same speed. Same distance.”

I took a sharp right and ducked down a side street, the kind where the oaks leaned in like they wanted to eavesdrop. The street lamps flickered. Shadows danced. The engine sounded too loud.

I pulled into a gravel lot beside an old, whitewashed church. Two cars sat under the trees, dusted with pollen. I cut the engine and stepped out.

“Emma—”

But I was already moving. Quick. Focused. The rhythm of my steps matched the drumbeat in my chest.

Graham’s door opened, but he didn’t follow. He let me lead. Always did.

The sedan pulled into the lot, then stopped. The driver’s side door opened.

A man stepped out. Mid-fifties. Trim. Polished. Forgettable by design. Rolled sleeves, crisp slacks, no tie, wingtip shoes. He radiated money, discretion, and quiet menace.

“Miss Whitmore,” he said, calm as if we had a meeting on the books.

I stopped several feet away. “Do I know you?”

“Not formally. But I’ve been briefed.”

Briefed.

Graham moved up beside me, solid and silent.

“You’ve been asking questions,” the man said. “Turning over stones better left where they fell.”

“Is this a threat of some kind?”

He offered a faint smile. All teeth, no warmth. “Some shadows are better undisturbed. You don’t want to get lost in them.”

“Wow, is that supposed to scare me?”

“No. It’s just a suggestion. Let the past rest. Not everyone enjoys having their stories rewritten.” He stepped closer, calm as ever. “You’re a ghostwriter, aren’t you? That’s what you do—put words in dead people’s mouths.”

“They’re not always dead,” I said.

“I think it’s time for you to head out,” Graham said, voice flat.

The man gave him the smallest nod, then turned back to me. “Be careful what you dig up. Some legacies were buried for a reason.”

And with that, he got back into his car and drove off. No screeching tires. Just a smooth turn and silence.

I stood frozen until the sedan disappeared.

“Charming fellow,” Graham muttered.  “I miss the days when villains had the decency to wait in the shadows.”

I didn’t answer. My heart was still pounding.

He’d known my name. My work. My movements.

He hadn’t guessed. He’d been sent.

And the message was clear: Back off.

We stood in the stillness of the gravel lot, the only sound the soft ticking of the Jeep’s engine as it cooled. Overhead, a breeze stirred the moss, whispering old secrets to the branches like they were in on something I wasn’t.

Graham finally let out a breath. “Next time we confront your mystery man, we’re bringing snacks. High-stakes drama goes down easier with peanut M&Ms.”

I gave a half-laugh—thin, unsteady. “Next time?”

He turned to me, deadpan. “Emma Lynn, you just got a warning from someone who probably starches his socks. There’s definitely going to be a next time.”

Tomorrow, I’d dig deeper. I always do.

But tonight, I’d lock the doors, keep the key close, and try to rest—while the shadows kept watch.

CHAPTER TEN

THE FORGOTTEN LAND

Saturday a.m.

Margaret had sent a triumphant middle-of-the-night email, and I read it while sipping my first cup of coffee, already bracing for whatever live thread she’d uncovered. After hours of digging—county records, LLC filings, and even some impressively dusty microfiche—she’d traced the ownership of Southern Storage through a snarl of shell companies: Dovetail Holdings, Graytree Management, and something called B&C Marsh Partners. On paper, they looked unrelated. But every thread led back to the same place—the estate of Morris Peterson. And just a few months ago, that estate quietly sold the entire three-acre lot to none other than Mason Blake Properties.

A clean paper trail, tidy and deliberate. The kind that assumes no one will bother to follow it. But we did.

And with that truth finally in hand, I knew it was time to see the land for myself—Delilah’s land. Even if, on paper, it now belonged to Mason Blake.

So as soon as the sun broke, I grabbed an old map, a half-charged phone, and a bottle of water I carried everywhere like a security blanket but almost never actually drank. It felt like the proper gear for poking around someone else's property with mild suspicion, medium anxiety, and absolutely no plan. Basically, I was a walking episode of Dateline: Amateur Hour.

The drive out to Wilmington Island twisted through sleepy neighborhoods and stretches of low country wild enough to make you question whether civilization had just quietly bowed out. Water oaks leaned over the narrow road, and mailboxes slumped at angles that screamed, “I give up.” Spanish moss hung like nature’s version of laundry left on the line too long. The whole ride felt like the road was whispering, “Turn back,” but in that Southern way that almost sounds polite.

That was the thing about Savannah. At its heart, it was a city built with intention—General James Oglethorpe and his famous grid system, all neat squares and orderly layouts like a Type-A wedding planner designed it. But the moment you got outside downtown, it was as if the city remembered it had a wild streak and decided to let it show. Streets looped like they’d had too much sweet tea and forgot where they were going. Alleys curved for no reason except to give the ghosts a shortcut. It was charming in that "might get lost forever" kind of way.

According to the old records Margaret had uncovered, the Blake Properties parcel edged right up against protected marshland—preserved, clearly marked, and legally untouchable. But just beyond that boundary sat over fifty acres of waterfront and marshfront land that had quietly changed hands. Within a couple of years of Delilah’s disappearance, that stretch was transformed into one of Savannah’s premier luxury developments—courtesy of Mason Blake Properties. Not built for the old-money families with four-generation homes in the historic district, but for the rising class. The new money. Entrepreneurs and real estate players who didn’t have a family name carved into church pews or garden gates but still wanted a spot at the country club.

On paper, it looked like a smart business move. In reality, it smelled like a cover-up with a view. Thanks to that development, Victor Blake became very rich very fast.

Today, my focus was on the stretch of undeveloped wetlands. When the GPS announced, “You’ve arrived at your destination,” I pulled onto a gravel shoulder that barely qualified as a road—more of a polite hint than a proper turnoff.

No house. No driveway. Just two tired-looking fence posts slouching toward one another like they were deep in conversation about retirement. A wooden sign hung crookedly: Private Property – No Trespassing.

I stepped out anyway, because that’s what all the best horror movie leads do right before Act Two.

The air hit me like a hot, salty hug from an elderly aunt I barely remembered. It smelled ancient, like marsh and memory and mildew with a grudge. The word that came to mind was muggy. I paused at the chain, hand on the strap of my bag, the photo inside tugging at me like a toddler in church.

I stepped over.

The path—if we were being generous—looked like it had retired years ago. Mostly overgrown, it fought back with every step. Saplings, brambles, and knee-high weeds took turns smacking my legs like nature’s version of a hazing ritual. At one point, I was fairly sure something small and judgmental scurried past my ankle. I chose not to look. Denial: not just for relationships anymore.

The deeper I went, the quieter it got. The trees closed in, and shadows stretched across the ground like they were trying to trip me on purpose. And then, just when I was sure I’d get tangled in a vine and need to gnaw my own foot off, the trees opened.

A clearing, bathed in late-afternoon gold. At the center sat a flat stone, no bigger than a dinner plate but oddly prominent. At first, it looked like a natural piece, half-sunk in the soil and mottled with lichen. But up close, it was clear—this wasn’t just any rock. It was slate, dark and smooth, with sharp edges that hadn’t been shaped by weather or time. And it didn’t match the land around it. There were no other stones like it nearby—no natural outcroppings, no gravel beds, no sign that slate even belonged in this part of the marsh. It felt placed. Intentional. Like someone wanted it found.

I crouched and swept the lichen aside, my fingers tracing the barely-there grooves of carved letters—so faded you’d never notice them unless you were nose-to-nose with the stone… or had x-ray vision.

D. H.

Delilah Hart.

No date. No flourish. Just the scratched initials. It was the kind of marking that didn’t ask to be found—it simply waited.

I took a quick photo of the stone with my phone, then glanced around the larger clearing, taking it all in. That’s when I saw it—tucked farther back, nearly lost in the grass and vines. A crumbling concrete slab. Barely more than a suggestion of what once had been a home.

The remains were humble—sunken cinder blocks, a few splintered boards clinging on out of sheer stubbornness, and the rusted frame of a stove tipped on its side like it had retired from cooking and was now performing modern art. Vines crept over the whole mess, shielding it from sunlight and possibly a nosy passerby.

I moved around the foundation slowly. No graffiti. No beer cans. No raccoon party aftermath. Just stillness, heavy and watching.

And just beyond the tree line, not even a mile away, sat Riverview Estates—the picture-perfect Southern dream with its gated entrance and judgmental hedges. A place where people paid extra for authenticity and then installed Wi-Fi-enabled porch swings. You could see their white columns from the marsh if the sun hit them just right, gleaming like rich people’s teeth.

Victor Blake had built that whole development. It was his claim to fame, the golden goose that laid the foundation for his empire. Blake Properties Holdings. Political donations. Street names. Golf tournaments.

And here—hidden beneath vines and forgotten dreams—was Delilah’s stone. Quiet. Uncelebrated. Sinking.

What had this place meant to her?

Her future?

Her family’s legacy?

The sudden crack of a branch snapped me out of it.

I froze. Listened.

Nothing.

But the silence afterward felt too tight, like the woods had swallowed the sound before I could find its shape.

On my way out, I stepped around Delilah’s stone, careful not to shift the ivy creeping up like it meant to swallow the marker whole. A single crow called in the distance, sharp against the hush, and for a moment, it felt like the trees were watching. Not menacing—just aware. Like they remembered.

I didn’t look back until I reached the road. I slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and locked it like I was starring in a low-budget thriller called Mildly Spooked but Still Curious. My hands tingled from where I’d touched the stone, and for a long time, I just sat there, staring into the woods.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ESPRESSO, EPITAPHS, AND EVASION

Saturday a.m.

The next morning, we met at The Haint & Bean, our go-to café and Savannah’s unofficial shrine to oat milk, quiet jazz, and pastries that tasted better than they had any right to, considering their ingredients had never once been introduced to butter.

Margaret liked the corner booth near the Ficus plant—claimed it had the best light and the least foot traffic. We’d met here anytime she needed caffeine and I needed clarity. Today, I needed both. Extra shot.

The café was calm in that carefully designed way—low conversation, polished concrete floors, an open window letting in a breeze that smelled faintly of rosemary and espresso. The rosemary usually meant the lunch special involved chicken, or in The Haint & Bean’s case, not chicken but something that really, really wanted to be.

The barista, who had a top knot and a lightning bolt tattoo on her neck, nodded at me as I passed. She already knew Margaret’s order. I gave her mine but had no idea what Graham might want. He seemed more like a Waffle House guy than a plant-based café regular.

Margaret arrived before Graham, her tote thumping against the bench like a full stop. She picked up her order on the way to the table—her usual: black coffee, no sugar, and a vegan lemon muffin she always claimed she didn’t need but somehow always managed to "accidentally finish."

My latte arrived a moment later—coconut milk, frothy and mildly hopeful. I took a sip and waited for the knot in my stomach to loosen. It didn’t.

Graham wandered in a few minutes after that, looking like he’d just rewired somebody’s porch. He wore jeans, a soft gray hoodie, and canvas shoes still stained orange from the nacho cheese incident at the Bananas game. His yellow team hat was crumpled and tucked into his back pocket.

“I don’t trust food I can’t pronounce,” he said, eyeing the chalkboard menu like it had personally offended him.

“You say that every time,” Margaret replied, unbothered. “And yet, here you are.”

He ordered an oat milk latte “because the coconut one makes me feel like I’m drinking suntan lotion” and slid into the booth beside me.

“Did you sleep?” he asked, eyes flicking toward my barely touched cup.

“Sort of,” I lied.

Margaret arched a brow. “That’s the same answer you gave when I asked if you’d proofread the grant proposal for the historical society.”

“I’m consistent,” I said, and offered a weak smile that landed somewhere between sheepish and caffeine-deprived.

We sat for a beat, sipping in silence.

Then I said it. “I visited Delilah’s marshland this morning.”

That got their full attention.

“By yourself?” Margaret asked.

I nodded. “I told myself I was going to look at the area, do a quick ride-by and not stop, but then I did. I parked just beyond the tree line and walked in a bit.”

“Alone?” Graham asked, but his tone was more exasperating than questioning. “After last night’s wingtip mystery man?”

“I wasn’t exactly deep in the woods,” I said, then paused. “But I found something.”

Margaret folded her arms. “Please don’t say a bone.”

“Not quite.” I reached into my tote and pulled my phone and swiped to the photo.

“This.” I placed my phone in the middle of the table.

They both leaned in.

Graham squinted. “That a rock?”

“A flat stone. About a foot wide, partially buried in the dirt. Someone faintly carved initials into it—D.H.”

“Delilah Hart,” Margaret said, her voice low.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “It’s not too far from an old concrete slab—looked like the foundation of a cottage. But the flat stone looked too intentional to be random. And it’s slate. There’s no natural slate in that area.”

Graham scratched his chin. “Looks like the kind of grave marker I use in my yard when one of my dogs dies.”

“You have many of those, do you?” Margaret asked, popping a piece of muffin into her mouth without missing a beat.

“Lived in my house for over sixty years. We’ve had our share of pets. Seven or eight dogs.” He looked up like he was doing mental inventory. “Eight. And three cats. All buried respectfully, of course. Unlike my Uncle Reggie’s ashes, which accidentally got vacuumed up during spring cleaning.”

I patted his hand. “Still a better resting place than a shoebox on top of a fridge, which is where my cousin Nora kept her ex-husband.”

Margaret gave me a side glance but let it slide. “Emma Lynn, that rock being a marker is a leap. People carve initials into rocks and trees all the time. Kids. Hikers. People in love. People pretending to be in love.”

“Sure,” I said. “But this wasn’t on a trail. It wasn’t graffiti. It was centered. Clean. Intentional. I don’t think that stone was part of the landscape. It looked added.”

Graham leaned in again. “You really think Delilah’s buried out there on that marshland?”

I paused. “I don’t know what’s under that marker—but I’m not convinced she’s resting in that Bonaventure grave, either. If Delilah had come back to Savannah, even in a casket, Gran would’ve said something.”

Graham leaned back, letting out a low whistle. “Even I don’t have the street cred to get Bonaventure to dig up a grave just to see if it’s empty.”

“Could we at least pull the burial records?” I asked. “See who signed off? Who paid for the plot?”

Margaret nodded slowly. “Cemeteries keep meticulous records. But at Bonaventure, it’ll depend on how much was digitized—and whether the file’s still intact and untouched. They have records that go back to the Civil War—and a filing system that hasn’t aged nearly as well as the headstones. If there’s no body in that grave, chances are good someone tampered with the records.”

“And if we find something off?” I asked.

“Then we have to tread very carefully,” she said. “Because if you go poking around that marshland with a shovel, you’re going to jail faster than you can say ‘wrong kind of digging.’”

“I’m not stupid,” I said—my tone sharper than I meant.

“No,” Margaret replied. “But you’re desperate. And that’s when smart people do very dumb things.”

The truth stung, probably because it wasn’t far off.

“I’ve dug up stranger things than a hastily buried body,” I murmured.

“Same,” Graham said. “Though mine were mostly related to busted plumbing and raccoons with excellent hiding instincts.”

We all paused. Long enough for the weight of what we were discussing to settle between us.

Margaret sipped her coffee. “Best place to start is to find the next of kin. The sister, or if she’s gone, then the niece.”

“Let’s say you’re right.” Graham’s voice turned quiet. “Let’s say someone buried Delilah out there and passed off an empty coffin. Then what? You’d need solid proof it’s Delilah—DNA, dental records, a clear chain of custody, and legal permission to exhume. And a lawyer in your corner.”

“It’s a good thing Carrie Rose is a lawyer.”

“A nonpracticing divorce attorney’s not exactly built for this kind of brawl,” Margaret said dryly, as if I hadn’t already done that math. Then she added, “And let’s not forget—you’d be accusing one of the most connected families in Savannah of murder and a decades-old cover-up.” That doesn’t just come with blowback. It comes with lawyers, press conferences, and possibly anonymous threats written in fountain pen.”

I looked at both of them. “So we don’t dig—at least not yet. We follow the paperwork. Trace the signatures. Look for the cracks. Because one thing’s clear—that headstone’s too fresh, like it could’ve been set in the last 48 hours. But the ground in front of it? Looks like it hasn’t been disturbed in fifty years. Something about that grave doesn’t add up.”

Graham gave a slow nod. “You’ve always had good instincts. A suspicious headstone and a rock with initials? That’s not nothing.”

Margaret sighed, reaching for the rest of her muffin. “This is how I end up in the Savannah Tribune, isn’t it? ‘Librarian Caught Trespassing on Marshland, Found Clutching Plat Maps and Lemon Crumbs.’”

“Better than ‘Ghost Writer Written Off in Cemetery Plot,’” I offered.

That earned a reluctant chuckle from Graham.

Outside, the breeze stirred the Spanish moss. Inside, the café buzzed on—smooth jazz, clinking mugs, and quiet urgency buried beneath everyday calm.

We’d gone from shared muffins to gravestone theories in under twenty-four hours.

And I knew—deep in the pit of my stomach and a baseball-sized knot in my chest—we were getting close.

And if they thought I’d stop now, they didn’t know me at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

DIGITAL DUST AND OLD GHOSTS

Saturday p.m.

I found Delilah’s niece, Eva Hart, through a forgotten genealogy blog.

The kind of relic buried three pages deep in a search engine—half-functioning, barely formatted, with a background of pixelated oak leaves and a title that read Tracing Hart Roots in faded, serif type. It had the feel of something once carefully tended, then left behind. A digital attic no one had entered in years.

The links were spotty, some leading to blank pages, others to family trees missing whole branches. Most of the photos didn’t load. A few census records had been scanned in crooked. But I wasn’t looking for perfection.

I was looking for a name.

And there it was.

Delilah Grace Hart

No death date. Just a birth year and a dash that faded into nothing. Yet the brand-new headstone at Bonaventure read: Delilah Grace Hart, 1937–1971.

If someone had gone to the trouble of setting a fresh stone, it seemed logical that they’d been certain she died in 1971.

At the very least, it was worth finding out how they knew—and why they’d waited decades to mark the grave. And if Delilah really was buried at Bonaventure, why hadn’t Gran known her best friend was dead?

Someone knew the truth.

And it sounded like a story I needed to hear.

In Delilah’s family tree, there was Delilah and her sister, Eleanor. Under Eleanor, a daughter, Eva Anne Simmons, last known address, Chatham County. No photo. No phone number. Just an old Yahoo email address, tucked quietly beneath a family crest. Lowercase, underscored. The digital equivalent of a door left slightly ajar.

I stared at my blank email for a long time, fingers hovering over the keys. There was something sacred about old websites like this—like blowing dust off a handwritten letter. It felt intrusive to disturb it. But curiosity and instinct were stronger. I typed the briefest message I could write without sounding like a lunatic.

My name is Whitmore. I’m researching your aunt Delilah. I believe I’ve found something that belonged to her. Would you be willing to talk?

I hit send. And waited.

Honestly, I didn’t expect much. The account had probably been dormant for years. Maybe Eleanor had passed, or she and Eva had packed up and left Savannah behind. But Eva’s last listed address was still in Chatham County, so I held on to a sliver of hope.

In less than an hour, my phone rang.

Blocked number. No voicemail. Another cryptic warning?

I answered. “Yes?”

“What exactly did you find?” No hesitation in the voice that came through the line.

Sharp. Suspicious. No greeting.

Not a warning. I scrambled to catch up—Eva, Delilah’s niece. “I think I’ve found something connected to your aunt—a wooden box, a key, and a handwritten note.”

I kept the stolen photo to myself for now. Probably best not to reveal everything just yet.

Silence.

It stretched long enough that I thought the call had dropped. I checked the screen. Still connected.

Then, finally, her voice again—tighter this time. “I’ll meet you. Tomorrow morning. Early. I teach Sunday school, so it has to be at 7:00. But somewhere quiet—off the beaten path.”

She named a diner just beyond the Savannah city limits, off Route 80.

“You’ll know you’ve got the right place if you see the payphone on the wall and a jukebox in the corner. I’ll be in the back.”

She hung up before I could thank her.

I stared at my phone for a moment, unsettled. Why did she want to meet so far out of the way? What was she afraid of—or hiding? If this were just about old memories, why the need for secrecy?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE LETTER SHE NEVER MEANT TO MAIL

Sunday a.m.

I left early, just after sunrise, with the box, key, note, and new photograph left at the storage unit tucked safely inside a manila folder in my bag. The sky was dull and colorless, the kind of gray that made the day feel older than it was.

Route 80 cut straight through the outskirts, lined with pine and low-hanging branches that clawed softly at the road’s edge.

The restaurant sat half a mile from the nearest gas station, hugged by a row of thirsty hedges and a broken chain-link fence. The lot was mostly empty. A couple of pickup trucks, and a sedan that might have been older than me. The diner appeared like something out of a film—weathered siding, flickering neon sign that simply read EATS, and a rusted screen door that clattered when it swung shut.

Inside, the air smelled like grease, old coffee, and a lingering whisper of tobacco that had long since soaked into the vinyl. I found a booth at the far end near the windows and ordered nothing more than a cup of coffee, which arrived lukewarm and tasted like it had been sitting since dawn. I didn’t care.

Eva arrived ten minutes later.

She stepped through the door wearing an expression of someone expecting a fight. She kept her sunglasses on, even in the dim light. She wore a denim jacket, fitted but faded, over a T-shirt and a jean skirt that had seen real wear. Her plain black flats were scuffed at the toe. She scanned the diner quickly—once, twice—then walked over and sat across from me without so much as a nod to the waitress.

And in that moment, I remembered her.

Not as Delilah’s grandniece. I hadn’t known that part then.

I remembered a quiet girl who came to school in worn hand-me-downs, who kept her eyes down and her voice low. The one who never raised her hand, who always seemed half a step outside the circle.

And now, here she was. Tough. Guarded. Carrying more than she should have to.

“You look like Ms. Clara,” she said, taking off her sunglasses at last. “My mom kept Aunt Delilah’s scrapbook.”

Her voice was low, solid. Not gravelly, but used to silence.

“I remember you,” I said gently. “From grade school. You sat two rows over from Carrie Rose.”

Something flickered behind her eyes. “I never made the connection.”

Unsure of her reaction, I added, “Carrie Rose was my daughter.”

She looked down. “Yes, I remember you. Carrie Rose was kind. Always made space for people like me.”

There was weight in that sentence. It settled between us like another body at the table.

I hadn’t realized her connection to Delilah or how poor she was. Or maybe I had—and just didn’t slow down long enough to see her. Really see her. Another piece of Delilah’s story I’d overlooked. Another guilt to add to the growing pile.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a small notebook. Didn’t open it—just placed it on the table and leaned in.

“You said you found something of my aunt’s?”

I set the jewelry box, the key, and the note on the table. “Gran passed away recently. While I was cleaning out her attic, I came across these. There was also a photo of Gran and Delilah, but someone broke into my house and stole it.” I waited a moment for her to acknowledge the contents of the box, then added, “I think the break-in might be tied to me poking around in the past.”

Eva read the note, and her expression tightened. “Mama passed last November, but she paid for a unit at Southern Storage for over thirty years. I took over paying her bills toward the end and asked her about it. She said the storage unit held evidence—something meant to keep us safe. Told me to keep paying the rent but refused to say more.” She opened the black book. “She paid the same time every year, same amount. Never missed.”

“She paid the rent even though Delilah was gone?”

Eva nodded. “I was about nineteen when I came home one day and found my mom crying. She said it was Aunt Delilah’s birthday. Then she told me Delilah had called her—just two days before she disappeared. Said she was upset, crying, which wasn’t like her. She told Mom she was about to do something important. Something that might cost her everything.”

“She didn’t explain?”

“She just said that she’d uncovered something—and if anything happened to her to go to Clara. Said Clara would know what to do. She told Mom that she’d left insurance to protect us.”

Eva paused, then continued. “After Delilah vanished, Mom told me she and Ms. Clara made a pact. They agreed to protect the information Delilah had left behind—her so-called insurance—and only use it if someone in the family was in danger.”

“They must’ve put it in the storage unit to keep it safe,” I said.

Eva’s expression darkened. “Did they break into your house? They tore ours apart looking for it.”

“I don’t remember a break-in back then. Did they take anything from yours?”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Mrs. Whitmore, we didn’t have anything to steal. Back then, my mama cleaned houses and took in ironing just to make rent. She went to secretarial school at night and eventually got a job at the box plant. After that, we did okay.”

“Do you know what Delilah’s insurance actually was?”

“Mama said she and Mrs. Clara looked through it before they stored it—notes, maps, property records, maybe even affidavits. Enough evidence that, if anything happened to them—or anyone in the family—they could use it. But they were scared. Mama always believed Victor Blake had Delilah killed. And she said the Blakes stole our family’s land. He claimed Delilah sold it to him, then ran off with the money.”

“Your mother didn’t believe Delilah sold the land to Blake?”

“Not for a second. Mom said Delilah was the executor of my grandparents’ estate, but she’d never have stolen their inheritance, sold it off, and vanished. Blake did to my family exactly what Delilah was trying to stop—he silenced her, then took our land. Took my mother’s inheritance.”

“Delilah left behind proof that Victor Blake stole land?”

“Yes. Mom said it was complicated, and she and Clara didn’t understand it all. But according to Delilah’s notes, he used dummy corporations and real estate LLCs, tucked into offshore shell accounts. And at the center of it all? Victor Blake.”

I sat with that bombshell for a moment. “And Delilah collected the proof?”

“She did. And she knew exactly where to find it—she worked for the county. Chatham County Property Clerk’s Office. Back then, every deed, every transfer, every zoning appeal crossed her desk.”

I leaned back, stunned.

“And he got rid of her,” I said quietly.

Eva’s voice cracked. “Mom said he threatened to get rid of all of us.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Mom was heartbroken—and terrified of the Blakes. She was a single mom with no money and no power.”

I reached across the table and gently took Eva’s hand. “Your mother did what she thought was safest—for both of you. Just like my Gran.”

Gran had paid the rent in the beginning, probably because Eleanor couldn’t afford the rent. Then, later, when she got a good job, she took over the payments.

“Whatever Eleanor and Gran kept in that storage unit, it’s gone now. Someone cleaned it out.”

“The rent’s paid through August, so technically, that’s theft,” Eva’s scowling tone matched her expression. “My money’s on a Blake. Or someone still protecting the name. The Blakes have a reputation—people don’t cross them without paying for it.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded envelope. “I found this in a box of my mother’s things. Buried under school files and old report cards. I don’t know what to do with it. I work full-time and care for my son. He has epilepsy, and I’m all he has. And anyway, what difference would it make? What happened to Delilah? No one cares anymore.”

She slid the envelope across the table.

I pulled a photo and a key from the envelope. The key was tied with a blue ribbon and smelled faintly of lavender, and held a whole mess of unanswered questions.

“What’s the key open?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

I studied the photograph. Delilah and Gran stood barefoot on a sun-bleached dock, their hair tousled by the wind, caught mid-laugh. It wasn’t staged—just the kind of easy joy that sneaks up on you when no one’s looking. Sunlight shimmered off the water behind them, and a cooler sat crooked in the corner of the frame, half out of focus. Delilah’s head was thrown back, her eyes crinkled, and Gran leaned in, one arm slung casually around her shoulder.

My fingers hovered over the photo’s edge, as if I could slip into the moment, feel the warmth of that day, hear whatever joke had sparked their laughter.

Then I turned it over and read the handwriting on the back:

Not everyone stayed silent. Finish what she started.

Inside was a letter—written in looping, deliberate cursive.

If you're reading this, it means I didn’t finish what I started. It means he found out what I planned to do.

There’s a reason I kept it quiet. A reason I never told Clara everything. She would’ve tried to protect me, and that would’ve made her a target too.

The truth is, now someone has buried more than land records. And if they think no one’s watching, they’ll bury more.

—D.H.

“I Googled you,” she said. “You’re a writer, so I’m guessing you’re digging into this because you plan to tell my aunt’s story.” She paused, eyes steady. “If you’re going to tell it, tell the truth. Don’t water it down. And don’t let them scare you into softening the edges.”

She slid a black ledger across the table—thirty years of payments to Southern Storage. It confirmed what I suspected: when Gran stopped paying, Eleanor had quietly taken over. Was it to protect her daughter?

Eva stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. Her hand lingered on the edge of the booth as she looked at me—calm, resolved. The same kind of quiet strength I’d seen in Carrie Rose, even when fear threatened to break through her composure.

“Be careful who you trust, Ms. Whitmore,” she said. “Not everyone who claims they want the truth understands what it costs.”

Then she was gone.

No hope to see you again. Not even a smile. Just the faint trace of citrus in the air that I hadn’t realized was her scent until it vanished, a ledger on the table, and a letter between my hands that felt like a key to something I wasn’t sure I was ready to open.

But I was going to.

Because some stories don’t stay buried.

Not when they’re passed to the right hands.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHISPERS FROM THE MARSH

Sunday Night

I was back at Bonaventure. Or at least, some version of it.

The cemetery stretched wider than I remembered, the oaks taller, their branches bending low like they were listening. Spanish moss curled like smoke, and the air felt thick—not with heat, but with knowing.

I walked alone, though I couldn’t remember how I got there. My shoes made no sound. The path twisted in ways it never had before.

And then she was there.

Delilah.

Not as a ghost with flowing white robes or flickering edges. Just...Delilah. Hair swept back in a loose knot, wearing a faded blouse and slacks like she’d just come from the grocery store. Familiar and strange all at once.

She didn’t speak right away. Just stood by a headstone that wasn’t hers—one with no name, no dates, just a blank slab of stone. Her hand rested on the top like she was guarding it.

“You’re not done,” she finally said. Her voice didn’t echo—it sank, soft and sure, straight into my bones.

I opened my mouth to ask a dozen questions, but no sound came.

She turned slightly, gaze sweeping the horizon behind me. “They’ll tell you to stop. To let the dead stay buried.”

A pause. Her eyes, sharp and steady, locked on mine.

“But I’m not the one who buried the truth.”

A gust of wind rose from nowhere, carrying the scent of marsh water and something sweeter—honeysuckle, maybe. The trees rustled, whispering words I couldn’t quite catch.

Delilah smiled then. Sad, but not bitter.

“You’re closer than you think.”

And with that, she stepped back into the fog, her figure dissolving like morning dew. The headstone crumbled behind her, vines curling up from the ground to swallow what was left.

I woke with the image of her eyes still burned into my mind—steady, urging.

And one phrase looping like a song lyric I couldn’t shake:

I’m not the one who buried the truth.

My heart pounded and the sheets twisted around my legs. My skin was damp, my breath quick. The clock on the nightstand blinked back at me—3:42 a.m.—that in-between hour where everything feels heavier, more haunted.

For a long moment, I didn’t move. Just sat there in the dark, breathing hard, waiting for the dream to slip away like most dreams do.

But it didn’t.

It clung to me—sharp, vivid, too complete to feel random. The way Delilah had looked. The tone of her voice. That empty headstone crumbling behind her. It felt less like a dream and more like a memory I hadn’t lived through.

Still…maybe I was overreacting.

It had been a long, strange day. And I’d been sifting through attic dust and old secrets for days now. Read thirty years of payment records in a black ledger that felt like it had its own pulse. I’d stared into Eva’s guarded eyes while she told me her mother and Gran had feared the Blakes enough to hide evidence in a rented unit for decades. That kind of emotional weight doesn’t fade just because you brush your teeth and turn out the light. It lingers. It settles into the corners of your mind, ready to turn dreams into strange echoes of the day.

It made sense I’d dream of Delilah. Her name, her face, her story had been stirred up like silt in river water. How could my subconscious not latch on to all that?

I exhaled and rubbed my hands over my face, pushing the hair back from my damp forehead. My eyes drifted across the room to the far corner, where Gran’s old writing desk sat in a soft wash of moonlight. The top drawer held everything I’d found—Delilah’s jewelry box, the tarnished key, the folded note. Real objects. Real clues. Tangible pieces of a mystery I hadn’t meant to stumble into, but now couldn’t let go.

Was Delilah reaching out? Like Sadie once had?

That thought hit like a knock at the door in the dead of night—startling and familiar all at once.

Sadie had come to me in dreams, too. Only hers had been different. Subtle, yes, but unmistakably intentional. A face in a mirror that wasn’t mine. A whispered word that pointed us to the city plat book. A sudden image that led Margaret straight to Beatrice’s birth certificate buried in stacks of old files.

We hadn’t imagined Sadie. She’d helped us solve not one murder, but two—hers and Beatrice’s. She’d nudged us, pieced things together when we couldn’t.

But that had been different, hadn’t it? I was younger then. Less guarded. More willing to believe in things I couldn’t explain. Maybe too willing.

This—this could just be memory and emotion colliding in the dark. My brain sorting through everything I’d heard, smelled, read, and feared. The cemetery. The Blake family. A storage unit that had been emptied just before I got there. And Eva’s cryptic warning to watch who I trusted.

Still, I couldn’t shake Delilah’s voice.

I’m not the one who buried the truth.

It had weight to it. Like it was meant for me.

I pulled the covers around me, but it was no use. Sleep wouldn’t be coming back tonight.

What if it wasn’t just a dream?

What if Delilah was out there—like Sadie had been—caught somewhere in the in-between, waiting for us to uncover the truth? Waiting for justice, waiting to be seen.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ECHOES AND ENDINGS

Monday p.m.

In the Deep South, we don’t do business on Sundays—especially not the kind involving buried secrets, whispered warnings, or anything that might wake the dead. Even ghostly business has the decency to wait until Monday.

Gran would’ve haunted me sideways if I’d so much as brought up Delilah’s name before the church bulletin had been recycled. So I kept my mouth shut through the whole of Sunday service, sat beside Margaret in our usual pew at First Methodist, and tried to pay attention to the sermon—something about secrets, or forgiveness, or maybe casseroles. The details were fuzzy, but the guilt was crisp. By Monday morning, the weight of it all had stacked up like hymnals, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

Margaret was shelving books in the Savannah Room when I found her, fingers trailing the spines like she was reading them by memory. Her touch was slow, deliberate—like each volume held a secret, and she was just patient enough to wait for it to whisper. That room always felt like a hush inside a hush—the air denser, the quiet more practiced. Sunlight filtered through the high-arched windows, catching dust motes mid-air like they’d been hired to perform.

I paused in the doorway, letting the room hold me. That scent—orange oil polish, old bindings, and the faint trace of lavender from somewhere behind the circulation desk—wrapped around me like an old quilt. Familiar. Comforting. A little dusty, but in a good way.

I loved libraries. Always had.

Not just because they held answers, but because they held questions. Because they whispered instead of shouted. Because they made space for people who carried quiet things.

Margaret turned before I could speak, as if she’d felt me arrive. She gave me one long look and raised an eyebrow.

“You look like someone who hasn’t slept.”

“Not really the month for it,” I said, and offered a smile that had the structural integrity of wet paper.

She slid the book she’d been holding—something with a gold-rimmed spine and an attitude—back onto the shelf and fell into step beside me. We walked toward the rear of the room, where a study table waited beneath an oil portrait of Savannah’s second mayor, who looked like he disapproved of everything, including strong coffee and modern shoes.

I pulled the manila envelope from my bag and laid the photo on the table—just that. No words. Not yet.

Margaret didn’t speak as she studied it—Delilah and Clara, barefoot on a dock, caught in mid-laugh. The kind of joy you don’t pose for. Her fingers brushed the edge like she might reach into the moment itself. Then she flipped it over and read the handwriting:

Not everyone stayed silent. Finish what she started.

Her mouth tightened—not with surprise, but recognition. That deep-belly kind that comes when the final puzzle piece fits, and it’s the one you hoped wasn’t missing.

“Delilah was trying to take them down.” I slid the letter across the table. “She had evidence. Real documentation. And someone else knew—maybe helped her, maybe regretted it later. Eva found the photo and the letter two months ago, buried among her mother’s things.”

Margaret sank into the chair across from me, her movements slow and deliberate, like she was lowering herself into something deeper than she’d planned for today.

“This isn’t just a message,” she said. “It’s a passing of the torch.”

I nodded, the weight of it thick in my throat. “I think Gran and Delilah’s sister kept that storage unit open to protect what Delilah left behind. They knew it wasn’t safe to keep it at home. Maybe they believed they’d have time to tell us the whole story. But Gran never realized her memory was slipping. And Eleanor died suddenly of a heart attack.” I exhaled. “I pulled her obituary as soon as Eva left the restaurant.”

Margaret folded her hands in front of her like she was bracing for impact. “And now someone’s cleaning house. Quietly. Thoroughly. Making sure none of it ever sees the light.”

I leaned back. The chair creaked under me like it didn’t approve of the situation either. “I’m thinking of going to see Mason Blake.”

Margaret’s head snapped up. Eyebrows raised. “The grandson?”

“He owns the family’s coastal property now. Runs the company. He was barely in grammar school when Delilah disappeared. But he’s still Blake blood.”

She gave me a look like I’d just offered to wrestle a gator for sport. “You think that one is going to talk? He not only looks like his grandfather—he inherited his teeth, his haircut, and his capacity for selective memory.”

I shrugged. “I think if I press the right bruise, he might crack. I owe it to Delilah. And to Gran. Eva deserves to know what happened to her aunt.”

Margaret didn’t blink. “I think you should be careful what you ask for.”

“I know.”

“No,” she said more firmly, voice soft but steely. “I mean careful, Emma Lynn. This isn’t just old deeds and missing women anymore. You’ve stirred up something that already came looking for you once. And the kind of thing that hides in the dark doesn’t shrink in daylight. It adapts. It gets mean.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t need to.

She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small black notebook, setting it gently between us like she was handing me a matchbook in a room full of gasoline.

“If you don’t come back tonight,” she said, “this goes to the reporter at the Savannah Times. Everything we’ve uncovered. Names. Dates. Parcel numbers. Scanned plats. Enough to make the right people very nervous.”

I stared at the notebook. The cover was soft around the edges, dog-eared, well-worn—like it had lived a life before I ever showed up.

“But it’s not enough to make them pay for Delilah.”

“Not yet, but we’re not through collecting evidence.” She sighed. “You always think you’re alone,” Margaret said, voice low, “until someone reminds you you’re not.”

I reached for the binder, the leather warm from her hand. I returned it without a word, and she tucked it back into her satchel.

“If this goes south,” I said, “tell people Delilah mattered.”

“She always did,” Margaret replied. Then she added, “And for the record, if something happens to you, I’m coming after Mason Blake with a cast-iron skillet, a pair of garden shears, and zero remorse.” She shrugged. “I’m old. They’d never keep me locked up long—and I hear prison food’s improved.”

I cracked a smile. It was small, but it stuck.

“Have you spoken to Graham today?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“He called looking for you. Doesn’t he have your cell?”

“He does, but he can never seem to find it. He still calls Gran’s house phone—it’s listed in the phone book. I’d disconnect it, but I’d miss all his calls.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow. “You know he also sends emails from an AOL address, right?”

“I know. It’s like befriending a very kind time traveler.”

“So,” she said, “he wants to meet at the diner tonight. Said he has big news we’ll want to hear.”

“All right. My meeting with Mason shouldn’t take more than an hour.” I checked my watch. “How about eight? That gives me time to swing by the house and flip on some welcome-home lights. I don’t much like walking into a dark house anymore.”

Margaret gave a slow nod but didn’t try to stop me. She just watched with that librarian gaze—the one that cataloged things you didn’t even know you’d left exposed.

Outside, the afternoon had shifted. The sky had tilted into golden hour, and Savannah looked like a memory softened by time. The breeze carried the faint scent of river salt and old wisteria. It smelled like endings. Or maybe beginnings.

The whole city felt like it was holding its breath.

And this time?

I was ready to exhale.

It was time to finish what Delilah started.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE GIFT THAT BURNS

Monday p.m.

Blake’s house wasn’t just coastal—it was removed. Intentionally so. Like it had politely excused itself from the city it helped build, then changed its number and unlisted its location. Even GPS struggled with it, freezing, rerouting, and finally giving up like a frustrated concierge. It was designed not just for privacy, but for distance. Disconnection. The kind of place that didn’t ask to be remembered and rarely gave permission to be found.

The drive was like slipping through a time pocket—first farmland, then forest, then absolutely nothing but pine corridors and the kind of silence that makes you rethink your life choices. Spanish moss knotted itself through the limbs above, swaying as if whispering things you weren’t meant to hear. Or tattling.

I rolled down the window halfway and let the salt air blow in. It smelled like brine and old leaves, with a thread of woodsmoke running beneath. I’d taken three wrong turns and added twenty extra miles to the trip before I finally spotted the narrow turn-off—half-hidden, unmarked, and easy to miss unless you were already looking for something most people weren’t supposed to find.

The wrought-iron gates sat perched on the lip of a slender private inlet leading to a road so long it could’ve passed for a fire trail—or a test of just how badly you wanted answers. No keypad. No camera. No intercom. Just wide open. Not unlocked. Open.

As if someone had already decided to let me in.

That alone made my pulse flicker. Gates like this don’t open for strangers—unless someone wants them to. I eased my Jeep to a stop just past the entry and stepped out, Keenes crunching on gravel, heart ticking a little faster than it should’ve been. I didn’t hear birdsong. Didn’t hear wind. Just that thick, swamp-silenced hush that settles after someone says a name they shouldn’t.

I walked the rest of the way, letting the house reveal itself one smug inch at a time. Tall, curved, the kind of Southern statement piece that says, We have money and very specific opinions about monograms. Whitewashed brick. Clean lines. Dark shutters. Too much glass to feel warm. The kind of house that said, My great-grandfather owned a railroad and Please don’t touch anything unless you’re made of money or marble. It wasn’t the kind of house that begged to be admired, but it didn’t mind if you noticed.

Mason Blake was already waiting. He stood on the front porch like he was the one who’d summoned me. Casual but watchful. Sleeves rolled. Collar open. A glass of something amber in his hand, despite it being barely mid-afternoon—though I suppose when you’re rich enough, clocks are more of a suggestion.

I figured there must’ve been a few security cameras I’d missed on the way in—probably hidden among the swaying marsh grass or camouflaged in the reeds, maybe even tucked inside a few suspiciously still herons.

He looked like a man who’d never had to justify much in his life—and had no intention of starting now. But his eyes? They were sharp. Cool. Calculating. Like he was mentally appraising me for resale value.

“Miss Whitmore,” he called down, voice warm and distant, a tone reserved for old friends you didn’t really like. “I was wondering when you’d come.”

I stopped at the bottom step. “You’ve been following me.”

He didn’t deny it. Just gave me a smile that didn’t bother with sincerity. “You’ve been stirring up ghosts.”

I pulled the photo from my bag—the one Eva had handed me, edges soft as old linen—and held it up so he could see. “Your father helped cover up a woman’s disappearance. Maybe her death. Her name was Delilah Hart.”

He took a sip from his glass. Didn’t blink. “I know who she was.”

“Then you know what your family took from her.”

“I know she signed away the land,” he said calmly. “I’ve seen the paperwork. The deeds. The notarized transfers.”

“Papers can be forged.”

“And accusations can be romanticized.”

I stared at him. “I’m not here for romance.”

He nodded slightly, like I’d just said something obvious. “No. You’re here for a story.”

“You’re right, I am. A woman tried to tell the truth, and someone made sure she never got the chance. And another woman—my grandmother—carried that silence like a second spine.”

His expression didn’t change, but something in the air did. It tightened, like it was bracing for impact.

“There are things you don’t understand about this town,” he said. “About what it protects. About how easily it forgets the people who ask the wrong questions.”

“Try me.”

He motioned toward two wicker chairs on the porch—expensive, stiff with intention, probably arranged by a designer who charged by the comma. I didn’t move.

“I’m not here to sit and drink,” I said. “I’m here to name names.”

“You sure you want to do that?”

“You should’ve asked Delilah that question. You’re about fifty years too late.”

He looked out at the water like it might offer him a better answer. “My father paid people off. Judges. Clerks. City officials. People who mattered then—and still do. It wasn’t some shadowy cabal. It was just business.”

“And Delilah?” I asked. “What was she—collateral?”

He exhaled, slow and tight. “She made herself a problem. She thought the rules didn’t apply to her. She thought she could shine a light without consequence.”

“She was trying to bring the truth into the open—for the ones who couldn’t fight for themselves.”

“She was trying to fight a machine,” he said. “And people like her don’t win that kind of fight.”

I smiled. It wasn’t a nice one. “Well, it’s like I tell my clients—if you’ve got secrets you don’t want told, I’m not your ghostwriter.”

He smirked, bitter and thin. “I’m not hiring you to tell my granddaddy’s life story.”

I stepped up one more stair, just enough to meet his eye. “Think of it as a gift.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Ms. Whitmore.” His jaw tightened. “I don’t want your gift.”

I didn’t blink. “Oh, my gift isn’t for you, Mason. My gift is for Savannah.”

That landed. Harder than he wanted it to.

He looked away. Swallowed the last of whatever generational guilt he was sipping. “Whatever evidence you’re looking for—it’s gone. The documents are ash. There’s nothing left to save.”

“Because you made sure of it.”

He didn’t deny it.

“It was time,” he said finally.

“Time to bury Delilah Hart again, you mean. For good this time.”

The words lingered between us, shimmering in the air like heat rising off summer asphalt.

He drained his glass and set it down on the porch rail with a soft click that sounded almost like punctuation. Then he said, still not looking at me, “People like Delilah don’t win. That’s not how this place works.”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. I turned and walked back down the gravel path, my steps louder than the hush around them. The trees didn’t whisper this time—they just watched.

He hadn’t denied a thing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A PARCEL AND A PROMISE

Monday p.m.

Dinner was quiet for the first ten minutes.

Not awkward. Just heavy. The kind of quiet that settles after something seismic shifts and no one wants to be the first to poke it with a fork.

We were at the diner on Habersham—the one with cracked leather booths, chipped coffee mugs, and a cigarette machine that hadn’t worked since the Reagan years but was too iconic to throw out. At this point, it was more relic than appliance—part of the charm, or at least the legend.

Graham was partial to the diner because the iced tea was strong and unsweetened. Margaret liked it because the food came without fuss or garnish. I liked it because tonight, it felt like the kind of place that might hold what we said and not spill it later.

We took the corner booth without asking, like locals who’d earned it. Graham ordered the special and tore into his catfish plate like he’d personally held a vendetta against the fish. Margaret stirred her tea in slow circles, her spoon clinking like a ticking clock. I pushed lettuce around a plate that had the audacity to call itself a salad.

“He didn’t deny it,” I said finally. “Not once.”

Margaret looked up. “Mason?”

I nodded. “Didn’t even blink. Just leaned on that porch rail like some Southern prince whose bourbon came with built-in amnesia and said people like Delilah don’t win.”

Graham’s fork froze mid-air. “That’s about the coldest thing I’ve heard in a long time. And I once sat through a probate hearing with a man who tried to leave his inheritance to a poodle.”

“Mason also said the evidence was gone. Burned. Whatever Delilah had—documents, recordings—it’s ash now.”

Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “That’s always their first move. Burn the paper, then rewrite the story. And if they’re feeling real bold, they name a scholarship after her like that makes it better.”

“I told him I wasn’t his ghostwriter,” I said. “Told him if you’ve got secrets you don’t want told, I’m not your girl.”

Graham chuckled, wiping tartar sauce off his chin. “And let me guess—you said it with that smile that makes people nervous in courtrooms and church parking lots.”

“I may have smiled,” I said.

Margaret smirked behind her tea glass. “Dangerous woman.”

We let the moment breathe.

Then I said what I’d been turning over since the moment I left Mason’s porch.

“I think she’s buried out there. On that marsh parcel. The one Delilah co-owned with Blake.”

“I had a feeling we were going to revisit that idea.” Graham said.

I nodded. “It’s just too perfect. No witnesses. No development. No reason to ever dig. You could hide a secret out there so deep the Spanish moss would forget it.”

Graham leaned back in his seat, tossed his napkin on the table, and gave a small, satisfied grin. Which was usually the expression he wore right before dropping a bombshell or winning a trivia round.

“I did some checking after you mentioned the parcel,” he said. “Pulled the tax records, old zoning files, even found a topographic map from the last flood assessment. That parcel’s still vacant. Untouched.”

“Why?” Margaret asked, already suspicious.

“Too wet,” he said. “Bad soil, worse drainage. Not enough buildable elevation. You’d be better off building a houseboat on stilts.”

“So it has just sat there all these years?” Margaret asked, arms now crossed in librarian mode.

“Until today,” Graham said, sipping his tea with a level of smugness that made me brace myself.

Margaret raised a single brow. “What did you do?”

“I bought it.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

Graham shrugged like he’d just picked up milk on the way home. “Had my attorney submit an all-cash offer through an anonymous LLC. No contingencies. No questions asked.”

“You didn’t even get a survey?” Margaret asked, scandalized.

“Didn’t need one. Not planning to build. Just figured it’d make a nice place to picnic. Maybe add a bench. Invite some birds.”

“But why now?” I asked, heart already racing.

He leaned in, voice lower now. “Because if you’re right, Emma Lynn—if she’s out there—someone needs to go look. And now, I’m the only one who can dig without being handcuffed and thrown in the clink.”

My heart caught. “You’re serious.”

“Dead serious,” he said. “I’m going out there tomorrow. First light. Gonna clear the brush around that stone you found. Dig a few feet in every direction. See what’s there.”

Margaret went still. “You really think...?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just roots and raccoon bones. But if there’s even a chance she’s there, we owe it to her to check.”

I looked down at my hands, flexing my fingers against the glass like I could squeeze some of the helplessness out of them. “It makes me sick. That they stole all of it. Not just her life, but her legacy. Eva should’ve inherited that land. Half of the money the Blake family made off their fancy subdivision.”

“She’s the one caring for her son, right?” Graham asked.

I nodded. “Epilepsy. Full-time job. No help. Still shows up to life with better grace than half the people I’ve ever met.”

Margaret’s face tightened with resolve. “And meanwhile, Mason Blake sips whiskey on a porch he didn’t earn and wears linen like it’s a birthright.”

“It’s wrong,” I said. “And I plan to do something about it.”

Graham nodded slowly. “Let’s find the truth first. Then we talk about justice. Though if it involves digging up secrets and filing paperwork, I get to wear Crocs.”

“Absolutely not,” Margaret and I said in unison.

The waitress came by with refills and a slice of peach cobbler Graham hadn’t ordered but accepted like it was his constitutional right. The tension eased just enough for us to lean back in our seats. That silence that comes when something big’s been said—and now it’s time to let it root.

Outside, the wind pushed leaves into spirals along the sidewalk. The sky had dipped into a deep gray-blue, and the streetlamps blinked on like they knew something was coming.

Tomorrow, we’d go back to the marsh.

Not to picnic.

To dig.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

QUIET CLAIMS AND LOUD INTENTIONS

Tuesday a.m.

I was halfway through my second cup of coffee the next morning—just far enough along to believe I might survive the day—when Graham called.

No small talk. No Bananas trivia. No musings about the superiority of gas grills over charcoal. Just three clipped words that made my stomach drop.

“They lawyered up.”

I froze, mug halfway to my mouth. Set it down again, untouched. “Who?”

“Blake Properties. Mason didn’t waste any time. Filed an injunction late yesterday to block any ‘unauthorized activity’ on the marshland parcel.”

“But you own it.”

“Technically, my holding company does. And technically, that company doesn’t know I plan to take a shovel to the roots.”

I stood and started pacing the kitchen, the floorboards creaking under me like they’d been waiting for this particular drama all their life. “So they’re trying to stop you from digging.”

“They’re claiming restrictive covenants. From the original subdivision plan.”

“But that land was never developed.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re arguing that any ‘disturbance of terrain’ violates a conservation easement filed back in ’03.”

“An easement on a parcel they said was too soggy for squirrels to visit?”

“Exactly,” Graham said. “Which tells me one of two things—either they’re covering their bases or they know exactly what’s buried out there.”

I ran a hand through my hair and reached for my sweater. “We need a copy of that easement.”

“I’ve got Margaret looking,” he said. “She’s halfway through a stack of land use reports from the Chatham archives and already threatening to strangle the records clerk with his own lanyard.”

“Perfect,” I said, grabbing my keys. “Remind her that jail time would slow us down.”

“I tried. She said she’s lived a full life and doesn’t mind raising a little hell on her way out.”

I paused at the door. “Can they really stop you from digging on land you own?”

“They can try,” he said. “But they’ll have to take it to court to enforce the injunction. And that buys us time.”

I stepped out into the early chill, the sky already thick with clouds and the kind of wind that made you second-guess every life choice that didn’t involve flannel. “Then let’s use it.”

Graham hesitated before saying, “This move? It wasn’t about protecting wetlands.”

“No,” I said. “It was about keeping the dead from speaking.”

A pause.

“Emma Lynn,” he said, voice low, “they’re watching us now. Every step. Every word.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why we keep moving. But maybe don’t wear your Savannah Banana Squad shirt while committing minor acts of legal defiance.”

I hung up and drove straight to the library.

Margaret had already claimed the big table in the Savannah Room—her war table. A tall stack of manila folders rose beside her laptop like a paper fortress. Her glasses were perched on the tip of her nose, and her expression said she hadn’t had time for nonsense since 7:30.

She didn’t look up when I dropped my bag beside her.

“I’ve found three versions of the Blake Subdivision filing,” she said, flipping through the top folder. “Two from when they tried to annex the land for utility access, and one amendment that added the conservation clause.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Filed quietly. Signed off by someone who gets a fruitcake from the Blakes every December.”

She handed me a copy. “Judge Calloway. Retired now. Approved the easement despite the land being considered unfit for development. Probably did it between tee times.”

“And what exactly does the clause restrict?”

She pointed to a paragraph halfway down the page. “No excavation or surface disruption without written approval from the property association, which, fun fact, hasn’t existed since 2011 and may have never held an actual meeting.”

“So it’s a restriction without an enforcer.”

“Technically, yes,” she said.

“And legally?”

Margaret smiled, the kind of smile that usually preceded someone pulling a rabbit out of a hat—or a subpoena out of a handbag. “Legally, it’s a gray area. My favorite kind. Just murky enough for us to walk through with boots on and not get sued unless we start waving shovels like parade flags.”

I sat back, eyeing the fine print. The language was wound tight, carefully worded, and clearly designed by someone who’d once lost sleep over a misplaced semicolon. Blake’s people weren’t just playing defense—they were stalling, hoping we’d get bored or tangled up in red tape long enough to give up.

They didn’t realize we had Margaret. And Margaret didn’t get bored.

They thought the past was buried for good, but they didn’t know how deep I was willing to dig.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHAT DELILAH KNEW

Tuesday p.m.

I woke from a dream I couldn’t quite shake.

Delilah stood at the edge of a marsh, barefoot, the hem of her skirt damp with brackish water. The sun was rising behind her, casting long shadows across the reeds, but she didn’t look back at it. She was staring straight ahead—into the trees. Focused. Intent. Like she saw something coming that I couldn’t.

She turned to me just once and said, “They’ll rewrite everything if you let them.”

Then she was gone. Not vanished exactly—just faded, like a watercolor left in the rain.

I sat in the quiet kitchen, hands wrapped around a cup of lukewarm coffee, trying to make sense of the dream. Maybe it was nothing—just memory stirred up by my meeting with Eva Hart Simmons and the injunction Graham was planning to ignore. Dreams have a way of curling around whatever you take to bed.

And I’d gone to sleep thinking about all of it—the satchel, the ledger, the missing photo. The court order slapped on a piece of marshland everyone claimed was worthless. And Delilah—what she must’ve uncovered and what it might’ve cost her to try and bring it to light.

Still, the dream left a trace. Like smoke. Like the feeling someone had just left the room before you walked in.

Sometimes, when the house was quiet and the light shifted just right across the floorboards, I could still hear her voice.

Not clearly. Not the way a tape plays or a video echoes back the exact timbre of a sound. No—this was fainter. Softer. More like the whisper of wind slipping through pine branches, or the ghost of a lullaby hummed against a sleeping child’s hair. It wasn’t something I summoned. It was just…there. Threaded through memory like ribbon through lace. The voice of a woman long gone, stitched into the background of my childhood, quietly waiting to be remembered.

Delilah Hart had a voice like warm bourbon and worn lace. Smooth, sure, unhurried—but never fragile. It was the kind of voice that could wrap around you like a shawl or cut through nonsense like a blade, depending on what the moment called for. She called me bug when no one else did. Not as an insult, never as a tease. The way old Southern women sometimes name you for something small and beloved. A thing they plan to protect with all the force of their will.

“Come on, bug,” she used to say, holding out one hand, fingers gleaming with rings that caught the light and threw it back in sparkles—silver, gold, and a ruby that winked like it knew secrets. “Let’s see what kind of mischief you’ve got tucked under your sleeve today.”

I was nine the last time I saw her.

It was a Tuesday. I remember that clearly—not because the sky looked different or the air carried some heavy omen, but because Gran always made ham on Tuesdays, and Delilah hated ham. Said it was stringy and joyless. She’d wrinkle her nose and put on this dramatic face like ham had personally insulted her entire bloodline. It always made me laugh.

And because Delilah didn’t like ham, I didn’t like ham either. Not because of the taste—I liked that just fine—but because if ham was on the table, Delilah wouldn’t be joining us.

That’s why I was so surprised when she walked through the front door that day, clutching a brown leather satchel tight against her side like it was something alive. She didn’t carry it the way people carry a bag—she held it like it had teeth. Like whatever was inside might bite if it ever got out.

That was my first clue something was off—she never came on Tuesdays.

She hugged Gran in the foyer—no greeting, no small talk, just a long, silent embrace that settled over the house like dust in a still room. I watched from the hallway, legs crossed on the hardwood, a coloring book open in front of me, crayons scattered—some snapped, some worn to nubs.

I remember the way the sunlight poured through the front windows, casting their shadows across the floor—two women held together by love and something heavier. Something unspoken. And I remember thinking, even at that age, that whatever Delilah brought with her that day…it was important.

They didn’t head to the porch like they usually did. That was my second clue this wasn’t just a friendly drop-in. No tea, no creaking rocking chairs, no chatter about gardenias or hydrangeas or the neighbor who never managed to bring her trash bins in on time. Not even a word about the good-looking Baptist minister who was single and, according to Gran, absolutely perfect for Delilah.

Delilah didn’t even take off her coat.

She walked straight to the kitchen and closed the swinging door behind her. Not with a slam—but with a kind of finality that made the walls feel closer. Gran followed, shoulders squared like someone about to walk into a storm.

That door never closed. Not between them. And never to me.

I waited. One second. Then another.

Then I got up.

It wasn’t mischief that moved me. It wasn’t even curiosity, not really.

It was instinct. A knowing in my bones that something had shifted. That something unspoken was happening just beyond the reach of my understanding. So I tiptoed to the kitchen and pressed my ear to the cool wood of the door. Held my breath like it was contraband.

Their voices came low and quick. A staccato rhythm of worry. Delilah spoke faster than usual, her drawl sharpened at the edges. Gran answered in shorter phrases, more like sighs than sentences. I didn’t catch most of it. The words were too big, too adult. But a few clung to the walls of my memory like ivy:

Wetland—which, to my seven-year-old brain, sounded like a giant field of mud puddles or maybe a pond too messy for swimming.

Parcels—I couldn’t conjure a picture for that one at all. It just floated in my mind like a word waiting for a meaning.

Laundering—that one made sense, kind of. I pictured clothes flapping on a line in the backyard, clipped with wooden pins, Gran’s apron fluttering like a flag.

And illegal—I’d heard that before. Gran used it when the neighbor boy spray-painted the gas station and had to spend a weekend with his uncle in Jesup as punishment.

I didn’t understand what they were talking about—but I understood the tone. The urgency. The fear.

Words I’d only heard when grown-ups didn’t know I was listening. Words that didn’t belong in our kitchen.

And then—clearer than anything else—Delilah’s voice, woven with something fierce.

“If something happens to me⁠—”

No words. I remember how loud the silence felt.

“—if I vanish⁠—”

Another pause.

“Don’t let them say I went quietly.”

Even at seven, that chilled me.

I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but I understood the shape of it. The finality. The fear.

A second later, the door creaked open and I stumbled back like I hadn’t been standing there, listening with my whole body. Gran stood in the doorway, her face unreadable at first—neither angry nor surprised. Just tired. The kind of tired that went deeper than sleep could fix.

Her eyes met mine, and I saw something there I didn’t have words for then. A kind of ache. She reached into the freezer, pulled out a grape Popsicle, and handed it to me like it was a peace offering.

“Go on out to the porch, baby,” she said, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. “And don’t ever repeat anything you heard. All right?”

I nodded. I didn’t.

I sat on the porch steps with purple-stained lips and sticky fingers, watching the sky turn from blue to gold, the way it always did, like nothing had changed. But everything had. I just didn’t know it yet.

Delilah Hart vanished the following week.

No explanation. No arrest. No body.

No one talked about her. No one said that she’d been afraid.

There was no mention of her satchel. The tone of her voice that I didn’t understand as a child, but now knew had been her fighting voice that last day.

I remembered.

I remembered the weight in her voice. The steel behind her words. The warning that echoed like a farewell. She left our house ready to fight for the truth and never returned.

And now?

Now I understood what she’d been trying to say and what she’d tucked into that satchel and passed through time like a torch waiting to be picked up.

And I wasn’t about to let her go quietly.

CHAPTER TWENTY

LATE LIGHT TACTICS

Wednesday p.m.

We met at Margaret’s just after four.

Her townhouse on Jones Street looked the way a reliable friend might sound—steadfast, well-pressed, and always ready with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. If the house had a motto, it would’ve been Thou shalt not let dust settle.

Inside it was exactly what you’d imagine if someone told you she alphabetized her spices and vacuumed behind furniture no one ever moved. The kind of place where quiet was intentional and the floors never dared to creak. The shutters had been the same soft sage green since we were in elementary school, and the wrought iron railings gleamed no matter the weather—either due to divine intervention or Margaret’s quarterly polish routine. A small brass sign on the gate read: Please remove your assumptions at the door. I never asked where she got it. I assumed it was custom.

The place smelled like peppermint tea and whatever scent old books release once they’ve decided they’re staying put. That mix of comfort and sharpness. Like a hug that checks your posture.

The late afternoon light slanted through the front parlor windows, soft and golden. Margaret didn’t believe in overhead bulbs after 3 p.m.—she claimed they were “an offense to the circadian rhythm and anyone with decent bone structure.” I didn’t argue. You didn’t come to Margaret’s for ambiance. You came for intel and caffeine.

Graham was already there, hunched over the dining table like a retired cartographer. A zoning map lay stretched beneath his elbows, his reading glasses perched low on his nose. His pencil was tucked behind one ear, and his expression said he’d skipped lunch again and blamed the government for it.

He looked up when I came in, gave me a nod that said more than hello.

Something’s brewing.

Margaret handed me a mug without asking. That was her hospitality—no questions, just accuracy. The tea was strong, dark, lightly sweet, no cinnamon. She knew I hated cinnamon. She also knew I’d never say it out loud. Margaret played the long game.

I didn’t sit right away. Just hovered by the table, coat still on, the kind of tension you carry when something’s following you that hasn’t shown its face yet.

“They’re scared,” I said finally.

Graham didn’t flinch. “What makes you so sure?”

“They’re moving too fast. The injunction they filed yesterday? I sent it to Carrie Rose. She called it sloppy. Citations half-done. Language vague enough to qualify as modern poetry. Carrie Rose thinks they panicked when they realized it was Graham who purchased the land.”

Margaret settled beside Graham with her notebook already open, pen in hand. “But what are we getting close to?”

I sat and unfolded a photocopy of the conservation easement, sliding it across the table. “A body. A paper trail. Take your pick.”

She’d already marked it up like a professor grading a particularly slippery essay—green for legal wiggle room, red for the parts that smelled fishy, blue for phrases that made her mutter.

I pointed to the bottom of the page. “‘No surface disturbance without written consent.’ Carrie Rose said that’s not a restriction—it’s a riddle.”

Margaret sniffed. “Could mean no digging. Could mean no overly aggressive weeding. I hate this kind of language. It’s designed to make honest people feel guilty for breathing near a tree.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which means we might not be violating anything. Not technically.”

Graham leaned back, arms folded. “They won’t take us to court unless we’re too close. And if we’re too close, well...might as well go all in.”

I met his gaze. “What if we are?”

“Then we make it count.”

That was the moment we stopped pretending to be cautious.

For the next hour, we passed theories and maps like a slightly disheveled think tank. Graham marked three potential dig sites—all dry enough to be viable, and all within the conservation zone. One near a bend in the marsh. One behind a cedar thicket. One on a subtle rise so easy to miss, it practically whispered, Bury something here.

Margaret flipped through her pile of county records like she was shuffling tarot cards. “Here,” she said, tapping a gap in the chain-of-title log. “Between ’68 and ’72, this parcel floated. No tax history. No recorded transfer. Just...vanished.”

I leaned forward. “Judge Calloway.”

They both stilled.

“I remembered something. A conversation between Delilah and my grandmother. I must’ve been nine, because it was close to when she disappeared. I didn’t understand it then, but some words stuck: wetlands, parcel, laundering, illegal.” I pulled the scene into my mind, and a distant memory zoomed forward. “Delilah said the judge approved something without ever seeing the land.”

Margaret’s expression soured. “He probably signed it on the hood of a Lincoln Town Car. I never liked that man’s handwriting. Too smug.”

Graham tapped the map. “So now we’ve got motive, a window of time, and a few places to check. If there’s something out there, it’s in one of these three places.”

The room slipped into a rhythm after that. Notes passed. Pages flipped. Tea cooled. The grandfather clock ticked from the hallway like it was filing every minute for future reference.

By the time the sun had dipped behind the rooftops, casting long stripes of light across the table, we were each a little slouched, a little hoarse, but sharper than when we started.

“You know what keeps sticking with me?” I said. “Eva.”

Margaret looked up.

“I drove past her house today. She’s alone in that sagging old rental with her boy. The place looks like it’s held together with duct tape and prayers—porch railing half-rotted, paint peeling like old wallpaper. The pipes have to be older than the state constitution. She’s raising a son with epilepsy, working full-time, and still shows up, still keeps digging. Her family’s history was stolen, their financial legacy buried so deep most folks forgot it ever existed. And Mason Blake? He’s out there living like none of it ever happened.”

Graham’s mouth pulled tight. “Drinks bourbon on a porch built over lies.”

I nodded. “I’m not just doing this just for Delilah anymore. I’m doing it for Eva, too. And for every woman like her that Savannah politely forgot.”

Margaret reached over and rested her fingers on mine. “Then we dig smart. Deliberate. Like Delilah would’ve—if someone hadn’t made sure she ran out of time.”

I scanned the spread of maps, survey reports, signatures meant to hide more than they revealed.

Graham stood and stretched. “We head out at dawn. I want to be in place before the fog lifts.”

“And if Blake sends someone to stop us?” I asked.

He gave a half-smile. “Let them. I’ve got permits for soil testing and birdwatching. If they want a fight, they can have it with the chickadees.”

Margaret popped a peppermint into her mouth. “Just don’t forget your clipboard, Mr. Engineer. Nothing says legitimacy like laminated paper and an air of mild disinterest.”

We laughed—quiet, tired, but real.

But under the laughter, something harder had settled in.

Tomorrow, we’ll return to the marsh.

Not for whispers.

Not for warnings.

Not for ghosts.

We were digging for answers now.

And we were ready.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WHERE THE GROUND REMEMBERS

Thursday a.m.

We arrived just after dawn—right in that strange hour when the world hadn’t made up its mind yet. The sky hung low in a pale, undecided silver, like it needed another cup of coffee before committing to daylight. Fog clung to the marsh, curling around the cypress trunks and hiding the edges of everything familiar.

It was quiet, but not the peaceful kind. The kind that waited for you to speak first, just so it could decide how it felt about you.

The gravel under the truck’s tires crunched slow and tentative, still slick from the night’s rain. The air was damp with salt, moss, and a sharp whiff of old leaves, but the chill threading down my spine had nothing to do with weather.

It was the stillness.

Not the hush of morning stretching its arms—but the kind that knows something and isn’t telling you yet.

Graham eased the truck to a stop just inside the gate. The engine gave a final, reluctant cough and died. It felt like an omen.

We sat there for a moment, just listening to the fog get thicker. Margaret shifted in the front seat and looped her scarf tighter. From her expression, she appeared to be deciding whether to dig or conduct an exorcism.

“You said the marker’s by the cedar?” she asked.

I nodded, throat tight. “Just past the bend. Left of the inlet’s edge. Maybe ten feet in. It’s easy to miss—unless you’re looking for something you're not supposed to find.”

We stepped out together. The earth gave beneath my boots, soft and a little too welcoming—like it had been waiting on this moment longer than we had. This ground remembers. It holds on. And if you’re patient—or nosy—it’ll start talking.

Graham moved to the back of the truck and grabbed our tools: a narrow spade, a hand shovel, and a trowel that had seen more Southern clay than some county officials. No power tools. No gear that beeped or buzzed. Just the kind of equipment a man uses when the job’s personal and possibly illegal in three zoning districts.

He looked at me before we started. “This isn’t a backhoe-and-headline kind of dig.”

“I know,” I said. “This is a whisper job.”

We moved through the trees, their branches sagging with moisture. The woods felt closer with every step. And then I saw it—the marker.

Margaret paused behind us, her notebook already out. She wouldn’t dig—she was the designated historian. She could catalog a murder scene and critique your sentence structure in the same breath. Her measuring tape and ruler were looped through her belt like she was on a field trip for justice.

Graham knelt beside the stone and pressed his palm to the ground. In the gray morning light, I saw the faint carving: D. H.

“This spot feels wrong,” he said.

I crouched beside him. “Wrong how?”

He swept his hand in a slow arc. “See that dip? Somebody’s worked the ground—dug a hole, then filled it back in. That slight rise around it? That’s the extra dirt that didn’t quite settle right.”

Then he added, deadpan as ever, “And unless the marsh suddenly took up landscaping, I’d say this wasn’t nature’s doing.”

He started to dig. Slowly. Carefully. Each stroke of the trowel was reverent—like peeling back old wallpaper in your grandmother’s house and hoping it won’t reveal something cursed.

Roots. Leaves. Clay. Then⁠—

The texture changed.

Graham paused. “This was tamped. You feel that?”

“By hand?” Margaret called from behind a tree, already writing.

“Or by boot,” he said. “Not deep. But deliberate. Like someone didn’t have time to dig far or didn’t want to.”

My chest tightened. Margaret walked forward, and we leaned closer.

A few inches later, the shovel struck something solid. Not a thunk. Not a crack. A metallic scrape.

Graham brushed the soil away. A rusted lockbox emerged—dented at the corners, the metal dulled by time and secrets.

He sat back, shaking his head. “Well I’ll be. Either we found what we’re looking for, or someone buried their tax records with an unusual amount of ceremony.”

Margaret stepped closer, voice hushed. “Could it be hers? Do you think she might’ve buried backup?”

“She wouldn’t have trusted a bank vault,” I said. “This was a logical choice—the one piece of land she owned that was too useless to develop. Out of the way, overgrown, and not the kind of place anyone would find unless they were looking.”

Graham lifted the box with both hands, careful like he was carrying something sacred or possibly explosive.

There was no key on it.

But I had one.

The key Eva had given me at that roadside diner, tied with a blue ribbon, still smelled faintly of lavender. In the South, everything seemed to smell like lavender—hand soap, funeral sprays, your neighbor’s laundry, and half the casseroles at a Baptist potluck. I slid it from my pocket and fit it into the lock, hoping the scent wasn’t the only thing meant to soothe me.

It turned with a clean click—way too easy for a lock that’d spent four decades buried in Georgia dirt. Either someone oiled it last Tuesday, or fate’s got a dark sense of humor and a thing for dramatic timing.

The lid lifted slowly, and the air that rose from it carried a strange, old weight. Inside: a heavy-duty plastic bag, double-sealed, waterproof, airtight.

I pulled it out and opened the seals. Inside were folded papers tied with twine. A cassette tape, no label. A small, worn leather ledger with initials etched in the corner. And wrapped in a faded handkerchief, a delicate silver brooch shaped like a magnolia blossom.

Margaret gasped softly. “That was hers. Delilah wore it every Sunday.” She glanced at me, a hint of surprise in her voice. “Do you remember it? It sparkled in the light. I remember telling her I liked it once, and she said it was like wearing a secret on her shoulder.”

I did remember the magnolia pin Delilah often wore pinned to her lapel. Even as a child, I hadn’t understood the brooch’s worth, but it had sparkled when she leaned down to hug me, like it was winking—just for me.

We didn’t speak right away.

Just knelt there—three quiet shadows in the fog—huddled around a box that had outlasted the silence, waiting for someone brave enough to break it.

“She left this for someone,” I said softly. “Someone to carry the torch.”

Graham nodded, his gaze fixed on the brooch. “She wanted the truth to matter. To come out, no matter the cost.”

And now?

Now it was our turn to see it through.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LISTENING TO THE DEAD

Thursday a.m.

We didn’t go far.

Just back to the truck, where Graham dropped the tailgate with a low creak and motioned for us to sit.

It was April, but the weather still hadn’t gotten the memo. The sky spoke of rain even though it looked a bit apologetic about the breeze that felt like it had rolled straight off a pond in February. Spring in the South was always a little theatrical—Mother Nature liked to offer blooming azaleas and then act surprised when folks expected warmth to come with them. As if to say, I gave you pink blossoms and pollen you can see from space, what more do you want?

The mist was thinning, pulling back toward the water like it had done its part and was clocking out. I ignored my tingling fingers. My hands were full of history, and the kind that didn’t come with footnotes.

Margaret perched beside me, notebook in her lap, scarf tucked up to her chin like it was preparing her for battle. Graham stood nearby, arms crossed, scanning the tree line as if expecting a guest to step out.

The lockbox sat between us, its corners caked in enough rust to warrant a tetanus shot. I’d wiped it down with the hem of my jacket—Southern forensic work at its finest.

The cassette tape rested on top now—simple, unlabeled, the kind of thing that either held a confession or an old sermon. Graham held it like it might start talking without permission.

“You happen to have an old recorder?” I asked.

Graham rose and opened the driver door, then returned with a recorder.  He tapped the tailgate like it was an old friend. “Built it into the truck back in ’89. Used to record field notes on drives. Still got half a drawer full at home—soil reports, drainage rants, one or two angry letters to the DOT.”

Margaret raised a brow. “And it still works?”

He gave a shrug. “So do I. Mostly.”

He pulled it from its holder, flipped it open, and checked the batteries with the precision of a man who once took inventory for sport. The machine gave a low whirr—tired, but cooperative.

“I used to take this thing everywhere,” he said. “Fieldwork, surveys, once even recorded myself stuck in the truck during a thunderstorm. Narrated the drainage runoff patterns to keep myself from swearing at the lightning.”

“Healthy coping mechanism,” Margaret murmured, deadpan.

“Beats bourbon,” he replied, and pressed play.

A low hiss filled the truck bed. Static scratched at the edges. Then⁠—

Delilah’s voice.

Not faint. Not shaky. Strong. Like she’d been waiting just behind the curtain of time for someone to hit record.

“Clara. If you’re hearing this, then I was right to be afraid.”

I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing until the air returned, sharp and tight. Margaret’s pen stilled mid-sentence. Graham didn’t move.

“I kept the evidence. All of it. Copies, at least. The originals might not survive. But I made backups. I recorded everything. The parcels they stole. The people they paid off. I saw the judge take the envelope with my own eyes. I saw the surveyor change the lines.”

She paused. Just a breath. Just long enough to ache.

“I thought about going public. But I’m not sure I’d make it to the microphone.”

Her voice trembled—not from fear, but fatigue. The kind that seeps in when you’ve been holding truth like it’s breaking your bones from the inside out.

“I’ve received threats and they’re coming more often. If something happens to me—don’t go to the police. You won’t get anywhere. Go to someone who knows how to make noise. Someone who won’t be afraid to write the story. Someone who tells the truth, even when it hurts.”

My stomach turned. Not from dread—recognition.

“You always said stories matter, Clara. Maybe this one will, too. Someday.”

Then: silence. No sign-off. No fanfare. Just the tape humming like it still had more to say.

We sat there, the three of us, in that heavy quiet. Margaret was the first to speak.

“She didn’t know what would happen,” she said softly. “But she still made this and buried it in the hopes that one day someone would listen.”

I stared at the recorder, my fingers tight around the tailgate’s edge. Delilah hadn’t left us a trail. She’d left a torch.

I reached into the lockbox and pulled out the stack of papers—twine-wrapped, yellowed, and stiff like they’d been preserved in a time capsule. Margaret leaned in while I flipped through: land deeds, parcel maps, ledger entries. Everything stacked with precision.

Near the bottom, a typed list of names. Most I didn’t know. But Graham did.

“Judge Wallace,” he muttered. “Signed off on this variance in ’68. That project never should’ve gone through.”

“And this one?” I pointed to the next name.

“City planner. Retired just before an audit that had accounts that didn’t balance.” He didn’t add the eye roll, but it was implied.

Margaret frowned. “What we’ve got here is a greatest-hits list of people who should never have had access to stamps and ink.”

The ledger came next. Slim. Worn. But it had the gravitas of a preacher’s Bible and the sass of a Sunday bulletin. Inside were dollar amounts large enough to cause indigestion and arrows pointing where money shouldn’t have gone. The kind of records that don’t just tell you what happened—they tell you who profited.

“This alone could open the door,” I said.

Margaret’s brow furrowed. “But the tape holds it open long enough for the truth to walk through.”

At the bottom of the box, tucked into one corner like a secret someone hoped would still be seen, was Delilah’s magnolia brooch. Silver. Pearl center. The clasp was bent slightly, as if it had been pinned one too many Sundays to one too many wool coats.

“She wore this every week,” Margaret whispered. “Sat in the third pew like clockwork, that brooch catching the light like she dared the pastor to skip over her.”

Delilah had gone to the same church as Margaret’s family. The same one Henry and I joined early in our marriage—much to Gran’s quiet dismay. She never said a word, but her silence said plenty.

“She left it,” I murmured.

Graham tilted his head. “As a message?”

I nodded. “As a statement. Proof of who’d left this box.”

“Subtle,” he said.

“She was Southern,” Margaret reminded him. “We specialize in subtle. And judgment with a side of accessory flair.”

None of us laughed. But the corner of Graham’s mouth twitched—like even in grief, Delilah had gotten the last word.

The breeze picked up again. A bird cried out across the marsh. The fog had finally let go. The sky was open.

We had the tape. The records. The brooch.

A box full of truths no one expected us to find.

And now?

Now it was time to decide what we were going to do with them.

“Let’s get this back to the house,” I said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Margaret shut the recorder. Graham stowed the box in the truck like it was something sacred.

I stayed a moment longer, one hand on the tailgate, eyes still on the marsh. The ground had given us something today.

Delilah Hart had waited decades to be heard.

And now?

Now she wasn’t alone anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE WRITING DESK

Thursday p.m.

April in Savannah was supposed to be gentle—sunny mornings, breezy afternoons, and porch swings that didn’t creak with judgment. But not this year. Mother Nature had apparently decided blooming azaleas were enough of a contribution and left the rest to chance. I’d stepped outside wearing a cardigan and ended up regretting nothing except trusting a Southern spring to be consistent.

After we left the marsh, I spent the better part of the afternoon working in Gran’s flower beds—mostly to calm my nerves and partly because the weeds were staging a coup. I did my best thinking with dirt under my nails and sweet tea within arm’s reach. The koi swam in lazy, unimpressed circles, but they listened better than most people. I told them about Delilah’s box. They offered no advice, just a few bubbles and what I took as emotional support tail flicks.

After that deep and frankly one-sided consultation, I skipped my usual bath after yardwork—not out of rebellion but sheer momentum. I didn’t even take my shoes off, which, if Gran were still around, might’ve earned me a ghostly scolding and a mysterious cold draft in the hallway. “We do not track the outside in with us,” she used to say, as if mud had questionable intentions.

I walked straight down the short hallway of the cottage, past the kitchen where the ice tea pitcher still sat on the counter, and paused at the threshold of Gran’s room.

The door was open just a crack—the way she always left it, like she might slip back in one night and didn’t want to startle the dark. I hadn’t packed up anything in here yet. Hadn’t even snooped, which for me was saying something. I told myself it was out of respect, that I was giving the room time to breathe without her in it.

But the truth?

Part of me was afraid to find out just how much of her was still here.

The air inside held her. A mixture of chamomile and the sweet smell of her rose hand cream, along with something herbal I still couldn’t quite name. Rosemary, maybe. Or balm. Or just time, steeped into the walls and woven into the linens. It smelled the way comfort felt. And like all true Southern homes, the scent hadn’t changed in twenty years. I always suspected that house smells were hereditary—passed down like biscuit recipes and unresolved family drama.

I didn’t flip the light switch. The late afternoon sun was still doing its best to be poetic, and besides, I didn’t want to change anything about the way the room breathed.

I crossed the floor slowly, letting my hand brush the edge of her quilt as I passed. Her slippers still sat under the bed, slightly crooked, like she’d just stepped out of them for a second and would return after checking the mail. And there, in the far corner near the window that faced the old fig tree, sat her writing desk.

It was exactly where it had always been. Nestled under the window that caught the earliest sun. The curved legs still looked to me like something out of a storybook—elegant, a little worn, stubborn in their balance. The desktop bore the soft scarring of years—nicks from pens, impressions from paper clips, the faintest circle where a cup of tea had once rested too long. A blotter, darkened by ink and time, stretched across the surface, and the tiny drawers with their brass knobs looked ready to be opened.

I stepped closer, my breath catching the moment my fingers touched the wood.

This was where Gran sat every morning. Before breakfast. Before the cottage stirred. Before anyone needed anything from her. She’d sharpen one of those yellow pencils she kept in a chipped mug and open one of her spiral-bound notebooks—blue cover, pages curling at the edges. Two pages a day, she’d said. Sometimes three, if the words came easy. I asked her once why she didn’t just get a computer like everyone else, and she told me she didn’t trust anything that made more noise than she did.

I’d asked her once, when I was young enough to think everything should come with a neat answer, “What are you writing, Gran?”

She looked over the rim of her glasses and said, “Stories.”

“About what?”

“About what matters in my day.”

Which, at the time, I assumed meant casserole recipes and neighborhood gossip. Turns out, she was writing about legacy. In longhand. While wearing her good house shoes.

She never missed a morning—not even when her fingers ached or the weather made her knees creak like an old rocking chair. She believed writing meant something. She believed it remembered for us when we forgot how. And she wanted that for me too.

There was the poetry contest she entered me in when I was twelve—my first heartbreak immortalized in five stanzas and two similes too many. The copy of Bird by Bird she gave me, taped back together at the spine, with a sticky note on the front page: Your voice has weight. Use it. And the old typewriter she found at a church rummage sale when I turned sixteen—the keys so sticky I nearly dislocated a finger trying to type the word “reckless.”

She read every page of that mess like it was scripture.

We’d sat together one evening on the back porch, summer winding down and the blackberries just starting to turn sweet. She had cobbler on her plate, coffee in her cup, and that far-off look in her eye like she was reading a memory off the sky.

“Words are a form of remembering,” she said. “The things we don’t write down are the first things to disappear.”

Now I sat down in her chair. My mind drifting back to Gran and her encouragement.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the desk. My fingers found the ribbon again, tugging it loose, watching it fall open like something deliberate. The pages shifted in the breeze from the cracked window, one fluttering free.

It was the essay.

The one.

I was ten, right before Mama came and hauled me off from Savannah. My English teacher had assigned a report called “What Makes Our Town Special.” Most kids wrote about the river or the cobblestone streets or how their cousin once had Johnny Mercer show up at a backyard barbecue and sing “Moon River” with a mouthful of deviled eggs.

I wrote about a woman named Miss Nettie who ran a tiny shoe repair shop two blocks off Bay Street. She wore orthopedic sandals in all seasons and had a cat named Harold who hated everyone but me. I called the piece “The Sole of Savannah.” (Yes, s-o-l-e—I peaked early in puns.)

I remembered sitting at the kitchen table, chewing the end of a pencil like it might leak better ideas if I bit hard enough. I didn’t know how to write a “real” story. I just wrote what I saw. Miss Nettie humming hymns under her breath. The way she stitched old leather like she was mending a memory. How she never smiled with her mouth, but always with her eyes.

Gran had come in halfway through. She didn’t say a word, just set a fresh glass of sweet tea by my elbow and slid a stack of clean paper across the table like a blessing.

“You’re onto something,” she said.

“But it’s not important,” I’d replied. “It’s just about a lady and some shoes.”

Gran smiled like I’d just said the sky was boring. “Oh honey,” she said, “you write about what matters. And people matter. Especially the ones no one writes about.”

I stayed up past bedtime that night, writing by lamplight, my spelling shaky and my hand cramping. When I turned it in the next day, I expected a C and a polite nod.

Instead, the teacher read it aloud to the class. Then to the principal. Then to Miss Nettie herself, who showed up the next morning in a church hat and brought me a thank-you card that smelled like lavender and mothballs and maybe God.

That was the moment.

The first time I realized words could make someone feel seen.

The first time I thought, Maybe this matters.

The first time I understood I was a writer.

The cushion gave under my weight, familiar and just slightly firm, like it remembered her before me. I reached for the center drawer and eased it open, half-expecting it to be filled with old receipts or coupons clipped in 1994. Instead, I found a bundle of my old essays—neatly stacked and tied with a piece of faded ribbon that looked like it once belonged on a gift bag from a church ladies’ luncheon.

I stared at them for a moment, fingers hovering above the top page like touching it might break something open. Then I lifted the bundle and saw her notes.

Gran’s handwriting danced in the margins—looping cursive, strong and slanted, with underlines and stars, exclamation marks and questions. More of this! she’d written beside a line I barely remembered writing. Don’t soften this—let it hurt. It’s the truth.

She’d seen me. Even then. Even before I knew what my voice could be.

She had been preparing me all along. Quietly. Gently. Steadily. I didn’t realize it then, but sitting here now, I could feel it. She’d believed I’d be the one to carry something forward—something Delilah had started. Something Gran had held close but couldn’t finish herself. A story hidden in the bones of this place. A truth too dangerous to speak out loud, but too important to leave buried.

I leaned back in the chair and let the quiet fill the room. Outside, the fig tree danced in the breeze, its leaves fluttering like pages turned by the wind. Inside, everything held still. Waiting.

I made a promise, soft but certain.

I’ll finish it.

I’ll tell the truth.

I won’t let her disappear.

Not Gran.

Not Delilah.

Not the stories they left behind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE MAN WITH NO UMBRELLA

Friday p.m.

It rained all morning. Not a polite drizzle, but a full-on Southern tantrum—sheets of water falling sideways. The kind of rain that made even the most stubborn Savannah natives peek out their windows and say, “Well, not today, Lord.”

The clouds didn’t just hang heavy—they glared. Big, brooding thunderheads rolled in like they had unfinished business and no patience for umbrellas. Mine flipped inside out before I made it off the porch, bless its heart.

So, there I was, trapped in my little kitchen with a cold cup of coffee and the feeling that something was about to go sideways in more ways than just the weather.

As the rain settled into a steady rhythm, tapping against the windows like an impatient reminder, I sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a lukewarm cup of coffee, the morning's storm mirrored by the turmoil in my mind. Confronting Mason had felt like a step forward, but the unease lingered. Delilah's story was far from complete, and the fresh headstone at Bonaventure whispered questions I couldn't yet answer. Eva needed to know about the discovery at the marsh site—the box, the brooch, the secrets unearthed—but she hadn't returned my calls. I couldn't shake the feeling that Delilah's voice, whether from memory or something more, was urging me to dig deeper, to piece together the fragments she'd left behind. The path ahead was unclear, but I knew one thing: I couldn't let her story remain buried.

The rain had finally let up, leaving behind a city washed clean but still cloaked in a damp hush. The kind of quiet that made you feel like you were the only one awake. I stood by the window, watching the last droplets race each other down the glass, and felt a restlessness settle in my bones.

I told myself I needed fresh air, but that wasn’t the truth of it. I needed to move. To shake off the weight of unanswered questions and the lingering chill of dreams that felt too much like memories. A brisk walk through the city might help clear the fog in my mind, help me find a path forward. Walking had always been my way of thinking, of sorting through the tangled threads of thought

I grabbed my coat and stepped outside. The air was cool and clean, heavy with the scent of wet earth and blooming azaleas. I left Gran’s house without much of a plan—maybe I’d try my luck at The Grey, see if I could slip into a seat at the bar for something warm and familiar. The streets glistened under the streetlights, puddles catching the glow and tossing it back like half-formed thoughts. As I walked, the city unfolded around me—familiar, steady, but still humming with secrets just beneath the surface.

I walked up Barnard to the edge of Pulaski Square, where the live oaks rise like old protectors and the benches never seem fully dry. I could’ve cut straight through to the restaurant, but I took the long way—half out of habit, half out of defiance. The sky had started to mist, that half-hearted drizzle Savannah offers after a storm, before deciding whether to let loose or let go. This time of year, you didn’t ask for a forecast. You just waited and hoped your shoes were the right kind.

I tugged the hood of my parka over my head and kept walking, letting the path lead me. The cobblestones were damp, glistening faintly under the haze of gray light, slick in patches where wet leaves stuck stubbornly to the street—curled and golden, like they were scared to fall too far from where they'd grown. The air smelled of earth and stone, the kind of scent that lives in old cities during rain.

Tourists passed with wide eyes and umbrellas too small for the wind. A woman in a red poncho was laughing at her dog in a polka-dot raincoat. A couple posed beside one of the wrought-iron fences, cheeks pressed close, oblivious to everything but the camera flash.

And for a little while, I let myself drift. Let the city soften my edges. For a moment, I let myself believe it might be an ordinary walk, a little window shopping, a little mist on my cheeks before the world tilted again. But the sensation crept in—familiar, unwelcome. I was being watched. I lingered at the next shop window, letting my reflection blend with the glass, using the ruse of browsing to scan the street behind me.

Then I saw him.

Not his face. Not at first. Just a shape. A presence. A man a half block behind me.

He wasn’t doing anything. That was the thing. He wasn’t rushing, wasn’t dawdling. He didn’t have his phone out. No earbuds. No obvious destination. An umbrella closed and stuck under his armpit, even though it was raining.

Dark jacket. Ball cap pulled low. Steady gait. Eyes, I felt, though I hadn’t seen them yet.

I slowed near the square’s edge and crossed the street under the thin excuse of looking into an antique storefront with dusty porcelain and stacked books. I leaned in, pretending to examine a brass compass, and caught his faint reflection in the glass.

Still there.

Still walking.

Still just…there.

My stomach tightened. Not panic. Not yet. But something knotted up inside me, a quiet drumbeat that didn’t belong to my feet.

I turned again—past the statue, around the square, down the brick-lined sidewalk toward Jones Street, where the houses stood like old witnesses with shuttered eyes. I didn’t look back right away. I let the sound of my boots and the drizzle fill the space between thoughts.

Then I rounded the corner by the old Presbyterian church and gave myself permission to glance.

Gone.

Just like that.

No shape. No shadow. Just empty sidewalk and a single black umbrella leaning in the corner of a stairwell across the street.

That was worse somehow.

I ducked into the Paris Market, hands shaking as I reached for the door. Fumbled it. Laughed to myself—too loud, too brittle—and stepped inside.

The smell hit first. Espresso and sugar and something floral hung in the air, like freesia wrapped in old linen—soft, clean, and just a little haunting. Safe smells. Familiar ones. The kind that let you forget—if only for a moment—what you’d been running from when you walked through the door.

The lights were low and warm. People sipped lattes under globe lamps. A little girl tested perfumes on paper strips while her mother picked through a rack of scarves. I stood near the entrance, catching my breath, and then let the space pull me in.

I wandered through the shelves and bought a candle I didn’t need and a postcard I’d never send—one with a painting of a magnolia tree that reminded me of Gran’s backyard. I told myself to slow down. That it was probably nothing. That maybe he’d just been walking home, just a local with an umbrella he didn’t need.

But my instincts knew better.

When I stepped outside again, the drizzle had thickened into a mist that blurred the streetlights and made everything shimmer. I stayed beneath the awning, watching cars crawl by, windshield wipers working in slow rhythm.

And then—across the street, near a closed storefront—I saw him again.

Or maybe it wasn’t him. I couldn’t see his face.

But the shape was right. Still. Watching. Hands deep in his coat pockets. Not talking. Not walking.

Just there.

I felt the pull of my pulse in my ears. Reached into my bag and pulled out my phone, thumb brushing the screen like I was answering a call.

“Yeah, Graham—I see you,” I said out loud, voice just steady enough. “I’m coming now.”

Then I moved.

Calm. Measured. Each step a little more certain than the last.

I slipped down the next alley and cut through the back lot of the inn, picking up my pace once I was sure no one followed. I didn’t glance back. Didn’t give whoever it was the satisfaction of knowing I’d noticed.

Home was still a good two miles off, so I headed to Margaret’s instead.

When she opened the door, she didn’t ask why I hadn’t called or whether I was cold. She just looked at me—and that was enough.

“What happened?” she asked.

I stepped inside, peeled off my coat, the weight of it suddenly too much to carry another step, and gave her the only truth I had words for.

“They’re watching,” I said. “In town. Broad daylight. No more warnings. Just presence.”

She nodded once. Closed the door behind me with a soft click, then locked it.

Then she handed me a towel and, with not a trace of fear in her voice, said:

“Good. Let them watch. We’ll make it a show worth seeing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE ONES WHO WATCH

Friday p.m.

Margaret made tea the way some people prepare for surgery—deliberate, focused, precise. She didn’t ask what kind I wanted or how I took it. She didn’t need to. She knew. She always knew. Knew the exact water temperature I liked, knew how long to let it steep without turning it into something bitter and existential. She poured it into the same faded blue mug I’d used on every visit for thirty years.

“This one keeps it hotter than my mother’s bone china,” she said, just like a hundred times before. “Not that Mother’s china ever saw real use—unless you count chamomile and dramatic sighs from her fainting couch,” she added, moving to the fainting couch under the window. With one swift motion, she yanked the living room curtains shut like she was cutting off a scandalous conversation. The outside world disappeared with a whisper of fabric.

Margaret stood at the window a beat longer, hand still on the curtain as if waiting for the rain to confess something. Then she turned to me.

“Well,” she said, calm as Sunday. “That settles it. They’re not just circling anymore. They’re landing.”

I sat on the edge of her couch, hair damp and stuck to my neck like a clingy ex. Rain had soaked into the cuffs of my sleeves, the hem of my jeans, and—somehow—the inside of my left sock. But the tea warmed my hands. Bergamot and something faintly floral filled my lungs and made it slightly easier to believe I hadn’t lost my mind.

“It wasn’t subtle,” I said, fingers curled around the mug like it was the last biscuit at a church potluck. “Not anymore. This was deliberate.”

She nodded, moved to the sideboard, and retrieved her spiral notebook—the one with more tabs than a Southern family reunion has casseroles. She flipped it open to a page already blooming with names and arrows. A pen appeared from behind her ear like magic, or possibly muscle memory.

Graham arrived ten minutes later, the storm still clinging to his boots and eyebrows. He smelled faintly of sawdust, motor oil, and fresh pine—basically a Yankee candle marketed as “Handyman with Secrets.” Whatever project he’d been in the middle of when Margaret called, it had clearly been dramatic.

He didn’t waste time.

One glance at me. One at Margaret. Then back to me. His eyes settled on mine like a level finding center.

“You see him?” he asked, voice low and serious enough to require subtitles.

I nodded. “Twice. Same build. Same jacket. Baseball cap pulled low. Followed me through Pulaski, lingered across from the Paris Market. No hat. And no umbrella the last time I spotted him. I think he left it in a doorway. My point is that he made no attempt to blend in. Honestly, if subtlety were a sport, he’d be riding the bench.”

Graham exhaled through his nose and dropped into Margaret’s wingback chair. “They’re done pretending,” he said. “No more polite distance.”

“Were they ever polite?” Margaret muttered, scribbling something in her notebook.

We sat there in a kind of silent triangle: Graham, boots planted wide like he might build or dismantle a shed on command; Margaret, cross-legged on the floor with her notebook balanced on a throw pillow like sacred scripture; and me, still clutching my mug like it might sprout legs and defend us.

The room smelled like bergamot tea, old books, and determination lightly dusted with nutmeg. “It feels like we’re planning something between a séance and a hostile bake sale,” I said.

Graham didn’t laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched. Progress.

“So,” he said after a long beat, “what do we do with a watcher?”

“Follow him back,” Margaret said instantly, not even glancing up.

“Too risky,” I said. “I didn’t see anyone else, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. I wasn’t exactly armed—unless you count a sharp tongue and a travel-size umbrella with a broken spring.”

“Sarcasm’s a dangerous weapon,” Graham said. “You just have to aim it right.”

Margaret finally looked up. “If they’re watching you, it means they think we found something.”

“We did,” I said. “And they know it. That lockbox wasn’t just a piece of history to them—it’s a problem. But unless someone was hiding in the woods when we dug it up, how would they know we found it?”

“Could’ve been a motion sensor or a trail cam,” Graham said. “I thought about it while we were out there—scanned the trees—but didn’t see anything. Then again, those things are small. Easy to miss.”

“They might know we dug up a box,” I said. “And they might guess the contents, but they don’t know for sure.”

Margaret tapped her pen against her lip. “We don’t have a cold trail. What we have is a live wire.”

“Maybe we should shake it,” I said before I could talk myself out of it.

They both looked up. Margaret blinked once. Graham stilled.

“I mean it,” I said, heartbeat climbing. “They want us off balance. But what if we don’t play along? What if we turn into something they didn’t plan for? What if we make noise?”

Graham leaned back, the chair groaning like it disagreed. “You want to go public?”

“Not exactly. Not yet. But what if we stop acting like we’re scared? Ask the right people the wrong questions. Stir a few pots.”

Margaret flipped to a clean page like it was a battle map. “City archives. Zoning records. Coastal Land Review Board. Real estate offices with too many secrets and too few paper trails.”

“And the tape?” Graham asked.

I hesitated. It felt like holding a lit match over a box labeled Definitely Not Explosives. Wink. Wink.

“We digitize it,” I said, ignoring the voice in my head that politely asked if I’d lost my mind. “Make a copy. Then another. Then three more, and maybe one for the bank’s safety deposit box—just to keep things interesting.”

He nodded. “I’ve got an old deck with a USB converter in my workshop. I’ll back it up on two externals and burn a disc. Heck, I’ll burn two. I’m old enough to still trust DVDs.”

Margaret smiled. “Old school meets new school. Like a mixtape and a podcast had a baby.”

I looked at them—at the two people who made space for both my silence and my sarcasm—and felt something shift. Not quite a plan. But the bones of one.

“They want us afraid,” I said quietly. “Want us to scatter. But that’s not what we’re going to do.”

“No,” Margaret agreed, closing her notebook with the finality of a good sermon. “Let’s make them uncomfortable for a change.”

The room settled around us. Not calm. But focused. Like the moment before a pie comes out of the oven and you know it’s going to be just right.

Outside, the rain had softened to a drizzle. Somewhere nearby, a car door slammed. An engine coughed to life.

But this time, I didn’t flinch.

Let them watch.

Let them wonder.

We weren’t the kind of people who vanished.

We were the kind who wrote things down—alphabetically, cross-referenced, and underlined in red.

And we were just getting started.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE JUDGE’S SIGNATURE

Monday a.m.

We made sure everything in the lockbox was protected.

Graham finished backing up the tape. Three copies, just like we’d planned. One on a thumb drive he wrapped in electrical tape and slid beneath the drawer of Margaret’s antique writing desk—hidden in plain sight, nestled beside a broken fountain pen and a receipt from a used bookstore that had the audacity to close before I ever got around to using my loyalty points.

One copy uploaded to a private cloud folder with a name so mind-numbingly dull even I, a professional ghostwriter trained in the art of clicking on questionable file names, wouldn’t have opened it: “Tax_Docs_2017_v4_FINAL.” And one burned to a CD, because Graham—God bless him—still believed floppy disks were only mostly obsolete.

“It’s not paranoia,” he said, slipping the disc into a plain paper sleeve, which he’d labeled in pencil. “It’s preservation.”

Margaret sniffed. “It’s eccentric. There’s a difference.”

“And yet,” Graham said, tapping the sleeve twice like it was some kind of ritual, “if the grid goes down tomorrow, I’ll be the one hosting movie night.”

With the tape secured, we turned our attention back to the papers.

Most of them had survived better than expected. The box had been sealed well—Delilah had wrapped the contents in not one, but two waterproof bags. The woman clearly trusted Visqueen more than she trusted the judicial system. Time had still left its signature, though. The pages were soft around the edges, browned like old newspaper, ink faded to the color of a three-day bruise. Some were plat maps—detailed surveys of land parcels, boundary lines so precise they made my teeth itch. Others were carbon forms, thin as communion wafers and dusted with graphite smudges. They crackled when we touched them, like they weren’t sure they approved of our curiosity.

To confirm what we’d found—and maybe fill in the gaps beyond the pages Delilah had managed to save, not to mention stir the pot for anyone bold enough to keep tabs on us—Margaret insisted we dig through the county records. That meant a trip to the county storage building on the edge of town, the place where files older than thirty years went to be forgotten.

The building itself looked like it had been repurposed from something else—maybe an old feed supply warehouse or a short-lived roller rink. Cinderblock walls painted the color of old gum, a sagging awning over the front door, and a buzzing fluorescent light that made your skin look jaundiced.

Inside, the air was stale with a faint whiff of mildew and toner, and the only sound came from a clunky desktop fan rotating in slow motion.

There was a reception area, technically. A half-moon desk with a plastic sign-in sheet, a jar of dried-out pens, and a woman named Doris who looked like she’d been stationed there since records were kept in triplicate. She didn’t ask why we were there—just slid the clipboard toward us and pointed down a narrow hallway lined with metal shelves and flickering overhead lights. No ID check, no questions. If you knew what you were looking for, you were welcome to it. If you didn’t, well, Doris wasn’t about to help you figure it out.

We sifted through digital copies of deed transfers, tax records, and letters clacked out on typewriters—most scanned from aging microfiche reels that flickered across dusty library monitors like ghost stories told in numbers and names. You could almost picture the originals still tucked away in metal filing cabinets, wedged between yellowing folders and brittle rubber bands that gave up years ago. The kind of quiet bureaucratic clutter no one questioned… unless they knew what questions to ask. Unless they were willing to see what others had learned to overlook.

The thing about old records is that once they’re turned into microfiche and scanned into digital files, no one stops to read them. If the paper was in the folder or scribbled in the margin of a ledger, it got copied. All of it. You just had to be curious—or suspicious—enough to go digging in the right corner of the mess.

Margaret skimmed through a ledger and stopped on the last page.

A letter.

Appeared to be neatly typed on stationery—based on the heading, the kind that takes itself very seriously. Office of the Honorable Judge William R. Calloway, Chatham County—embossed with an official seal that looked like it could double as a medieval weapon. The date at the top snagged my eye first: October 18, 1971.

A lifetime ago. And yet somehow, still reaching out like a cold hand from under the bed.

The body of the letter wasn’t long. No more than five lines, maybe six. Formal language. Bureaucratic tone. But it was the signature at the bottom that made Margaret go still.

It wasn’t Delilah’s handwriting we were examining this time.

It was his.

Judge Calloway’s.

Margaret turned from the screen as if it might burst into flames and singe her eyebrows. “He signed off,” she said, voice clipped. “On the zoning transfer for the Blake parcel. The one that included Delilah’s share. October 9, 1971.”

“She disappeared in the summer of ’71,” I said, the date catching like a burr in my mind. I was nine that year—old enough to remember the cicadas buzzing through the heat and the box fan rattling in Gran’s front window. But mostly, I remembered the day Delilah’s sister came by, eyes red, clutching a crumpled tissue, and speaking in hushed tones on the porch. I crept to the screen door and listened, catching the gist of their conversation. Delilah had vanished. “He signed this transfer after she vanished.”

Graham leaned in, squinting. “Wait—that says the transfer was approved under standard administrative procedures. No hearing. No notice. No board review.”

“That’s not standard,” Margaret said. “That’s shifty. There's a difference.”

“But look at this,” I said, pointing to the next document. My hands trembled a little—maybe from nerves, maybe from the caffeine crash of my third cup of tea. “Prior to the judge signing off, there was a formal protest filed in June 1971. By Delilah.”

Margaret narrowed her eyes.

“Not just a protest,” Margaret corrected. “A full statement of objection. Signed. Dated. She refused to approve any subdivision of that land. Cited a pending legal review. Even disclosed a personal conflict of interest.”

Margaret pursed her lips like she was mentally writing someone a stern letter.

Graham gave a low whistle. “She dotted every i. Even used Oxford commas. That woman meant business.”

“She did,” I said, my throat tight. “And it’s all here. On record.”

Graham’s jaw tensed. “And ignored.”

The letter flashed on the screen like a loaded weapon. Official approval from the judge. The protest conveniently left out. A deliberate omission, wrapped in polite language and filed like it was no more than a dry-cleaning receipt.

“He signed it anyway,” Margaret said, voice quieter now. “Pushed it through like it was just another stamp on a stack of papers.”

“Filed it under the radar,” Graham muttered. “Which means they didn’t even log Delilah’s protest in the county minutes. No hearing. No review. No witnesses.”

I looked between them. “Do you think someone paid him off?”

Graham didn’t miss a beat. “Not someone. Blake.”

Margaret tapped the envelope corner that had been scanned into the record with one perfectly manicured nail. “It was marked PRIVATE in red ink. That’s the paper equivalent of whispering ‘This will destroy lives’ into a filing cabinet.”

I leaned back, heart knocking a little harder. “She knew this letter could get her killed.”

Then another thought crept in—sharp and cold.

“The man who followed me,” I said slowly. “The one outside Paris Market. There was something about the way he moved. Posture straight. No wasted motion. Military, maybe. Or law enforcement. But clean-cut. Professional. Not the kind of guy you find lurking in alleys unless it’s in a training manual.”

Graham looked up, frowning. “You think he’s connected to Blake?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s just it. He didn’t feel like Blake’s kind of guy. He felt…official. Like someone trained to disappear in plain sight. Someone who’d blend in at a city council meeting and vanish before the minutes were posted.”

Margaret’s pen froze midair. “Are you saying…”

“I think he’s not with Blake at all,” I said. “I think he’s with the Calloways.”

The air thickened.

Graham sat back. “The judge’s family?”

“Judge Calloway retired in the late nineties,” Margaret said. “No scandal. No headlines. Just slipped out of public life like a man who knew exactly when to quit. But his grandson, Alan?” The glow of the screen lit Margaret’s face, casting shadows that didn’t quite belong. “He’s still in town. Estate law. Keeps a low profile, nice and tidy—reputation polished like my grandma’s silver.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard of her phone. “Owns three properties in Savannah, too. One of them’s a condo just four blocks from where you spotted Mr. No-Umbrella.”

A crease formed between Graham’s brows. “You think that’s the man—the watcher—works for?”

I hesitated. “I think he is him. Or he’s protecting him.”

Graham’s expression shifted—somewhere between concern and admiration. “You know, I heard something a few months back. Alan Calloway’s being vetted for an appellate court seat.”

Margaret’s head snapped up so fast her glasses slid down her nose. “That’s a lifetime appointment.”

“He’s on the governor’s shortlist,” Graham said. “No red flags. No press. The kind of record that makes background checks purr.”

“But if this got out…,” I whispered.

“He’d never make it,” Graham said, settling back with that certain tone he reserved for lost causes. “Not with zoning fraud hanging off the family tree like bad fruit. Not with a paper trail that’s long enough to trip over—and definitely not if this leaks to the press. The governor doesn’t have the backbone to hand out a lifetime appointment to someone with even a smudge on their shine.”

The pieces fell into place like they’d been waiting for us to catch up. The forged documents. The sealed letter. The man with too-clean shoes and no umbrella watching from the street.

This wasn’t just about what happened in 1971.

This was about what came next.

“No wonder he’s watching you,” Margaret said. “He’s not just keeping tabs. He’s keeping a lid on it. Trying to stop the boil before the pot overflows.”

I stared at the screen again, at the letter—the final piece of our puzzle—and felt the full weight of what it all meant settling in.

What if we weren’t just unearthing the past?

What if we were standing directly in the way of someone’s carefully planned future?

And what if—somewhere out there—we weren’t the only ones digging?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ABOVE THE FOLD

Tuesday a.m.

It was Margaret who spotted it first.

She texted me at 6:45 the following morning with nothing but a photo.

A folded copy of the Savannah Times snapped from the newsstand just outside the Sentient Bean.

Front page. Bottom right corner.

Local Activists Question 1970s Zoning Deals: Calloway, Blake Linked to Old Savannah Land Dispute

I was still blinking sleep from my eyes when my phone rang.

Graham.

“You see it?” he asked without preamble.

“I’m looking at it now.”

He let out a long, low exhale. “It’s not everything. But it’s enough.”

I skimmed the headline again, then the opening lines beneath it.

“A quietly unearthed set of documents appears to show that a series of zoning approvals made during the early 1970s—including several tied to real estate titan Victor Blake—may have bypassed standard protocol and ignored formal protests from co-owners of the land involved. One of those objecting, Delilah Hart, disappeared shortly after the approvals were finalized.”

It didn’t mention the letter.

Nor the forged deed.

But it mentioned the judge.

“William R. Calloway, now retired, was the presiding authority who signed off on the disputed expansion. His son, Alan Calloway, declined to comment.”

Margaret called next.

“Damage control,” she said. “Someone wanted to beat us to the punch.”

“You think it was Blake?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “This doesn’t read like Blake. It’s careful. Surgical. This came from someone who wanted the match lit, but not the house burned.”

My heart ticked faster.

“You think it was Alan Calloway?”

“I think someone close to him,” she said. “Someone who knows what happens when you carry a family name like a shield for too long. Someone tired of the weight.”

Graham joined us at Margaret’s place within the hour, holding two coffees and a stack of newsprint like it might catch fire.

He tossed it on the table. “It’s already getting picked up. Three blogs, two regional outlets, and a guy on Twitter who claims to have Delilah’s high school yearbook.”

Margaret flipped through the paper. “They’re framing it as history. No direct accusations. But they’re planting seeds.”

I sat back, trying to ignore the sudden buzz in my blood.

“Why now?” I asked. “Why leak it before we were ready?”

“Maybe to stir us up,” Graham offered. “Force us to move faster. Make a mistake.”

“Or maybe,” Margaret said, “someone wants the truth out…but only their version.”

I looked again at the photo.

It wasn’t the truth.

But it was no longer a secret.

And once Savannah starts whispering, the stories never stay quiet for long.

By nine-thirty, I was standing in the lobby of the Savannah Times building.

It smelled like burnt coffee, fluorescent lighting, and ink that hadn’t dried properly on the morning run—newsprint and nerves. The front desk clerk barely looked up from her crossword puzzle when I asked for Nolan Strickland.

“You on the schedule?”

“No,” I said. “But he’ll want to see me.”

I didn’t give her time to argue. Just walked past the plastic fern and the water cooler, down the narrow hallway lined with framed headlines from decades past. The corridor curved slightly at the end, opening into the bullpen.

It looked exactly like I remembered: cubicles too close together, whiteboards covered in deadlines and question marks, and the hurried scuttle of stories being hunted in real time.

The summer before my senior year of college, I did an apprenticeship here, which is a generous way of saying I worked for free and answered to Nolan’s father.

Nolan was a cub reporter at the time, but now he sat behind his desk, his sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened like it had given up hours ago, and his glasses shoved to the top of his head. They’d likely landed there at sunrise and never left. He was multitasking the way only Nolan could—typing with one hand, balancing a phone between his shoulder and ear, and drinking what I was pretty sure was at least his fifth cup of coffee.

He looked up as I approached, completely unsurprised—like he’d been expecting me all along.

“Emma Lynn,” he said, hanging up. “Figured you’d show up after your call last week.”

I’d called Nolan to see if he had anything about Delilah’s disappearance in his Dad’s files. Back then, his Dad was still pounding pavement, covering county commission meetings and chasing down zoning scandals. Nolan’s memory was sharp as ever, but he hadn’t come up with anything in the old files. Or so he claimed. Now, I had a feeling he’d gone digging on his own.

He motioned to the empty chair beside his desk. “Your interest in Ms. Hart didn’t seem like casual curiosity. Now I see why.”

I sat. “Who gave you the documents?”

Nolan leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and gave me the look he used to give city council members when they danced around ethics questions. “Off the record?”

"That depends on your answers," I said, giving him my best stink-eye—the kind I reserve for folks at Piggly Wiggly who steal the last parking spot even though my blinker’s been flashing longer than a church sermon in July.

He sighed. “What I got was a packet—neatly compiled, labeled, timestamped documents—copies only. Scanned. Sent from a private email with a Savannah IP.”

“And you just ran with it?”

“No,” he said. “I verified what I could. Zoning minutes. Property filings. Blake Holdings ownership transfers. The fact that Delilah Hart filed a formal protest—that checked out. It’s buried in the county archive under ‘Miscellaneous Correspondence.’ Someone had to dig for it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So they wanted it found…but not the rest.”

He nodded. “The story’s controlled. Framed as a ‘look back’ at murky development history. Not a murder mystery. Not a takedown.”

“Why now?”

Nolan’s gaze sharpened. “Because someone’s scared. Someone wants to tell just enough of the truth to avoid having the rest told for them.”

I folded my arms. “Alan Calloway?”

Nolan didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.

I leaned in. “Tell me something, Nolan. Do you think the rest of Savannah gives a damn about the truth? Or just the parts that fit neatly into two columns and don’t ruin their brunch?”

He looked away, jaw tight. “People care when it costs them something. Until then, it’s just background noise.”

I stood, slow and deliberate. “Then maybe it’s time to turn up the volume.”

He gave me a long look. “You planning to write it yourself?”

“I already am.”

“Send it my way, and I’ll publish it. But I suggest you do it fast.”

“Why?”

He hesitated briefly, “Because you’re not the only one gathering evidence. And the people you’re poking at? They’re starting to bleed.”

I got the email just after noon.

The subject line was blank. No sender name. Just a string of numbers and a Gmail domain. The kind of address that felt like it had been created five minutes before it landed in my inbox.

There was no greeting.

No signature.

Just one sentence.

Did you ever wonder why your grandmother stopped visiting Bonaventure after 1971?

I read it once.

Then again.

My finger hovered over the delete key—but I didn’t press it.

I stared at the screen, pulse ticking just behind my ears.

It wasn’t a threat in the traditional sense. No warnings. No demands. Just...implication.

The kind of sentence that didn’t require context to be dangerous.

I leaned back in my chair, phone buzzing quietly on the desk beside me. I didn’t check it. My gaze stayed on the screen, that sentence seared into the space behind my eyes.

It was true, by the time I got back from my California sprint with Mama, Gran had stopped visiting the cemetery. She’d told me once, when I was young and curious and still in love with ghost stories, that Bonaventure was “too full of people who deserved better.” I thought she meant regret. Grief. Maybe shame.

But now?

Now I wasn’t so sure.

The front door creaked open.

“Emma?” Margaret’s voice drifted in. “You up for dinner at The Grey?”

I didn’t look away from the screen. “Check this out.”

She stepped in slowly, set down her satchel, then leaned over my shoulder.

Read the line.

Paused.

Then exhaled. “Subtle.”

“Too subtle,” I said. “Someone’s testing how closely I’m paying attention.”

“Or how far you’re willing to dig.”

I looked at her. “Why mention Gran?”

Margaret’s voice dropped. “Because they know your curiosity is your softest spot—but it’s also your sharpest weapon.”

I sat back, the room narrowing around me.

“They’re watching,” I said. “Still.”

She nodded. “And they just got personal.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

NOT THE WHOLE STORY

Monday p.m.

I politely turned down Margaret’s offer of dinner at The Grey—just wasn’t in the mood for company. But reading the room has never been Margaret’s strong suit. She poked around in my pantry like she paid rent, found a dusty can of tomato soup, and had it bubbling on the stove before I could protest. A box of saltines appeared on the counter like a finishing touch.

Fifteen minutes later, three raps on the door. I sighed. More company?

No call. No text. Just a firm knock and that unmistakable energy of someone who doesn’t bother with formalities. The screen door creaked open before I even made it to the hallway.

Margaret peeked through the lace curtain, her expression tightening. “It must be Eva, she looks the spitting image of Delilah, except for her hair, and her chin..”

I didn’t think Eva looked anything like Delilah, but I didn’t hesitate. My hand was already on the knob.

When I opened the door, Eva stepped in like she was crossing a line she’d already drawn—and dared the world to stop her. She had on that same worn denim jacket, the one I’d come to recognize as her version of armor. Her hair was pulled back, neat and no-nonsense, and her eyes were sharp, stormy, and all business. She didn’t bother with pleasantries or even a glance around. She planted herself in the entryway, one arm crossed tight, the other clutching the morning paper like it might be the only weapon she had if things went wrong.

“You read it?” I asked.

Her gaze locked on mine. “You leaked it?”

“No,” I said, careful with the edges of my voice. “But I know who did.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

I didn’t answer right away. What could I say? That the leak was intentional, but not cruel? That it was meant to start a fire, not burn her down with it?

She exhaled hard and unrolled the paper with a sharp flick of her wrist, slapping it flat on the kitchen table.

Margaret carried our half-empty soup bowls to the sink.

“This makes it sound like a clerical oversight,” Eva said. “Like Aunt Delilah just got brushed off at a zoning meeting. No context. No consequences. No mention of what she uncovered. No mention of what they did to her. No mention of the fact that she called my mother crying the night before she vanished.”

“Now, they wouldn’t have known about the phone call unless you told them.” Margaret’s voice was calm but firm. “And we didn’t write or approve this. It didn’t come from us.”

Eva turned to her, eyes narrowed. “Mason Blake? This has his fingerprints all over it—quiet, calculated, just enough truth to stir the ashes without starting a real fire.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. It’s a controlled leak. Purposeful. Could be Mason. Could be the Calloways.”

Margaret frowned. “The judge? He’s dead.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But his family isn’t. Some of them have ties, and more than a few have things to lose. If they’re trying to manage the fallout, this is how they’d start—by setting the narrative before we can.”

Eva let out a bitter laugh, short and tight. “Well, mission accomplished. My supervisor flagged me at lunch. Wanted to know why my family name was printed in an article about land fraud and missing persons from over fifty years ago.”

My stomach dropped. “Eva, I didn’t mean for it to⁠—”

“No,” she cut in. “You meant to help. And I know that. I do. But this isn’t just about exposing the truth. Not for me. You get to drop into town with a box of ghosts and shake the branches until bones fall out. Then you walk away when it gets messy. But I live here. I still have to answer for those names.”

She stepped forward, her voice quieter now but full of strain.

“I’ve got a kid with epilepsy and prescriptions I’m already late filling. A landlord who reads the headlines. And a job I might not keep if my name shows up in another byline I didn’t ask for.”

The room fell still.

I held back from saying what I knew to be legally true—that her boss couldn’t fire her for something her aunt did. But this was Savannah, where gossip carried more weight than any court ruling. And even if she had a case, legal rights didn’t mean much if you couldn’t afford the fight. Winning still cost something.

I didn’t know what to say that didn’t sound like an excuse or an apology, and neither felt right.

So I told her the truth.

“I’m trying to finish what Delilah started.”

Eva studied me for a long moment. Then, almost reluctantly, she nodded. “Then finish it. But don’t let it get twisted into headlines and soundbites. Do it right. Tell the whole story. Not the version someone else hands you.”

Margaret stepped closer, voice gentle. “You have anything else that might help the cause?”

“No. You have everything I found. I didn’t think it mattered if we knew what happened to Aunt Delilah,” she said. “But now?” Her eyes met mine, steady and direct. “Now I want the whole story told. Every inch of it.”

“Eva,” I said, hesitating. “Who buried Delilah in Bonaventure?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Her headstone,” I said. “I went to the Hart family plot. Her headstone reads, Delilah Hart -1937–1971. Who confirmed the year of her death? Did your mother put a headstone at Bonaventure recently as a remembrance?”

Eva pulled back, confusion clouding her face. “My mother never put a headstone in our family plot.” Her voice wavered. “Aunt Delilah not having a gravesite haunted Mama. She grieved over not having a place to honor her sister.” She shook her head slowly. “Mama didn’t put one in…and neither did I.”

“There’s one now.” My brows lifted. “When’s the last time you visited Bonaventure?”

“Not since Mama died. I don’t go to cemeteries,” she said with a shrug. “Especially not Bonaventure. It’s too spooky. All that moss and marble angels. I don’t need any ghosts following me home.”

Her attempt at levity didn’t land.

I leaned forward. “Who do you think paid for a headstone and added the year she died, 1971.”

She shook her head slowly. “I have no idea.”

“Someone wanted it to look like Delilah was laid to rest,” Margaret said. “Like there was nothing left to question.”

“But there is,” I said. “There always has been. And someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make sure we don’t go looking for what’s missing.”

Eva picked up the paper, scanned the article, and inhaled a deep breath. “Aunt Delilah is not buried at Bonaventure. . .”

Her voice trailed off, but the implication filled the room like smoke.

If she wasn’t in Bonaventure, why did someone want the world to believe she was?

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WHAT’S MISSING MATTERS

Monday p.m.

Margaret and I headed straight to her place as soon as Eva pulled out of the driveway. She had the records, the stronger Wi-Fi, and a computer that didn’t sound like squirrels powered it on a wheel. If we were hosting a midnight search party for hidden land deeds, her living room—with its alphabetized file boxes and color-coded tabs—was the place to do it.

We were sitting at her kitchen table, the room dim around us like an old noir film waiting for a confession. The box and the key rested beside my elbow like a dare I hadn’t worked up the nerve to take. The weight of everything we’d uncovered didn’t settle—it hovered, taut and heavy, like the sky before a coastal storm or Margaret’s judgment before a poorly steeped cup of tea.

Then my phone lit up.

Graham.

I answered on the first ring. “You okay?”

His voice came low and clipped—not quite urgent, but tight enough to make my pulse skip. “I’m fine. But I need you to listen.”

I straightened in my chair. Margaret’s eyebrows rose slightly, as if she already suspected whoever was on the line wasn’t calling to discuss casserole recipes.

“I was followed today,” he said.

Everything in me went still. “Where?”

“Left City Hall just after lunch. Took Abercorn up to Henry. There was a white sedan behind me—dark tint, out-of-county plates. Stayed way too close. I made three random turns just to test the tail. They mirrored every one.”

I stood and began pacing, phone pressed to my ear. My fingers itched. My stomach turned slow, like it was thinking things over before deciding whether or not to panic.

“Did you get a look at the driver?” I put the phone on speaker so Margaret wouldn’t strain her neck trying to eavesdrop.

“Not clearly,” he said. “Glass was too dark. They didn’t roll down the window. Didn’t try to engage. Just followed. Like they were hoping I’d lead them somewhere interesting.”

“Did you go home?”

“Nope. Took them toward River Street. Thought the crowds might help me lose ’em. Pulled into the parking deck behind the old cotton exchange. Waited a minute, then slipped into the foot traffic near the antique mall. Bought a ceramic flamingo for cover.”

I stopped pacing. “You what?”

“Margaret likes yard ornaments,” he said. “And it gave me a reason to double back.”

Margaret shot me a look like she was torn between charmed and offended.

“Graham—”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, this time with something gentler in his voice. “But they’re tightening the net. And it’s not just you anymore.”

The silence that followed carried more weight than the words. I eased back into the chair, heart pounding like it had a reason. Eva’s envelope now glowed with the quiet intensity of something that could either solve everything or light it on fire.

“What were you doing at City Hall?”

“Meeting someone—Cal Harris. He used to be a deputy in the Zoning Office. Retired now. Still sharp. Doesn’t trust online calendars, which is how you know he’s legit.”

I waited, already sensing where this was headed, and already not liking it.

“There was a second file,” Graham continued. “Same year Delilah filed her objection. Not in the digital records. Cal said it was a follow-up. Marked as supplemental parcel notes. A physical file only. No scan. No copy.”

My breath caught. “Delilah filed it?”

“She did,” he said. “And she didn’t just file it—she annotated it. Cal remembered because she made notations in the margins. On the actual map. Used red ink, no less. Woman wasn’t playing around.”

“What kind of notations?” I asked, already bracing.

“Names,” he said. “Specific allegations. She circled a cluster of easement approvals—said they were falsified. Marked one in red. Called out Blake directly. And Judge Calloway by name.”

The chill that ran down my spine could’ve iced a pitcher of sweet tea.

“She had proof,” I whispered. “She was putting it together.”

“She was,” Graham said. “Wasn’t just waving red flags—she was building a bonfire.”

I leaned forward, both hands wrapped tight around the phone. “So where’s the file now?”

He hesitated. I could hear movement—keys clinking, maybe the creak of a floorboard or the squeak of whatever antique rocker he refused to replace.

“That’s the problem. Cal went looking for it. And it’s gone.”

“Gone?” My voice jumped a few octaves. Margaret’s teacup rattled in its saucer.

“Checked out,” Graham said. “Six weeks ago.”

“That’s before I returned to Savannah.” I said, my brain scurrying with the news and what it meant.

“Exactly,” he said. “Someone’s been one step ahead since before we even knew there was something to look for.”

“Who signed it out?”

He took a breath. “According to the log? A man named James Conway.”

I felt the air leave the room. Even Margaret stopped mid-sip.

“You think that’s real?”

“It’s not,” he said. “No record in the county system. No tax ID, no employee record, no permit filings. No digital footprint at all. Might as well have signed it out as ‘John Doe, Esq.’”

I closed my eyes. The implications wrapped around my ribs like barbed wire.

“They knew,” I said quietly. “Before we asked the first question, someone already had the answers—and a plan to bury them.”

Graham was silent for a beat, then added, “We’re not just chasing a cover-up. We’re inside it. And the people scrubbing the past? They’re still scrubbing.”

“This changes the timeline,” I said.

“Yeah,” Graham replied. “And it means we’re not leading the chase anymore.”

I stood again, slower this time, phone still pressed to my ear. My voice came quiet but sure.

“This means we’re the next target.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

PAPER TRAILS AND GHOST NAMES

Tuesday a.m.

Margaret wore her “librarian on a mission” expression—the one that could freeze a freshman in place at twenty paces or persuade an archivist to unlock a door marked STAFF ONLY with just a glance. It was the look that said she was here for facts, not feelings, and heaven help the bureaucrat who underestimated her.

Her curls were pinned into a twist so precise the National Archives could’ve issued it, her Savannah Historical Society name tag was clipped dead-center on her blouse like a badge of honor, and her large leather tote swung at her side with the weight and authority of a small courtroom.

I trailed behind her like a crumpled page from an entirely different book—a less capable assistant and a more haunted intern. My shirt was wrinkled, my bag was threatening to unravel, and I had the unmistakable under-eye circles of someone who hadn’t slept properly in over two weeks and who might snap if offered decaf. But next to Margaret, I was camouflaged by sheer competence. It was like traveling with a one-woman restoration committee.

The Chatham County Records Office was hushed and too bright, the kind of sterile where the ghosts of bureaucratic decisions past still whispered from the tile. The lights buzzed overhead with fluorescent determination, casting everything in the tone of a permanent dental exam.

At the front desk sat a man with a mustache who looked like someone who still used the phrase “word processor.”

We’d called ahead—as soon as the office opened at eight-thirty–and asked about access to zoning files. The woman on the phone had said yes, technically the files were available. But it was the kind of yes that sounded more like why are you bothering me during my first cup of coffee?

Now, standing here in person? Let’s just say the vibe wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy—more like polite frost with a chance of side-eye.

Margaret stepped up to the desk like it owed her back pay with interest. She slid a slip of paper across the counter, parcel number written in her graceful, looping script. “We’re trying to locate a file—zoning document from 1972.”

The clerk barely glanced up. “1972? That stuff’s long gone from the system. You’d need a microfiche reference number or a hard copy…if it even survived the fire.”

Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “What fire?”

He shrugged like it wasn’t worth the breath. “The one in ’74. Took out three years’ worth of microfiche. So unless someone tucked your file in a drawer and forgot about it, good luck.”

He said it like we’d asked for buried treasure—and all he had was a plastic spoon.

Margaret smiled the way only women over fifty with degrees, retirement accounts, and unshakeable authority can smile. It wasn’t warm. It was weaponized. “We’re looking for a file labeled Supplemental Parcel Notes, checked out six weeks ago by someone named James Conway. Could you check the logbook?”

The clerk sighed dramatically—clearly the unsung lead in his own procedural drama—and began typing with two fingers, determined not to let muscle memory interfere.

After a few seconds, he frowned. “Yeah. I see the name.”

Margaret’s eyes sharpened like she’d just spotted a misfiled index card. “Do you have a copy of the signature?”

“Not scanned. Just the old written log. Records from that far back aren’t digitized.”

“I’d like to see the log, please,” she said, her tone all Southern sweetness—just barely masking the don’t test me simmer underneath.

The clerk muttered something—possibly in English—and shuffled through a side door.

I leaned in. “Why bother, we know it’ll be a fake name and a fake signature?”

Margaret didn’t even blink. “Fake names still come from real hands. That’s the part people forget.”

He returned with a battered clipboard and slid it across the desk like it had personally offended him. A yellowed sign-out sheet was clipped to the front, ink faded, edges curled.

I scanned the list, my finger trailing the page until it landed on the name:

James Conway.

Checked out early February, on the 21st. I checked my calendar, a Monday of course.

The signature was blocky. I guess male.

“No phone number,” I said, frowning.

The clerk shrugged. “Said he was from a legal archive. Had the right ID code, knew the forms, acted like he belonged. People like that check things out all the time—lawyers, researchers, real estate types. You learn not to ask too many questions. Makes the days go faster.”

I raised a brow. “Convenient. You remember him then?”

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Why?”

Margaret pinned him with a look.

He shrugged, clearly unbothered. “Guy wasn’t suspicious. Wore a suit.” He added as if that alone gave him access.

Margaret’s voice stayed level. “Would it be possible for me to take a photo of that signature?”

He opened his mouth—probably to say no in some deeply bureaucratic dialect—but was interrupted by a shout from down the hall.

“Mike? We’ve got a retrieval issue back here!”

He sighed the sigh of a man who just realized he had to walk twenty feet again. “Hold on,” he grumbled, and disappeared through the side door without another glance.

Margaret waited exactly one second. Then, without a word, snapped a photo of the log sheet, and started forwarding it to Graham before the clerks had cleared the doorway. Surgical. Efficient. Illegal? Possibly. Regretful? Absolutely not.

We exited through the front doors, the air outside heavy with coming rain and the quiet hum of unease. Moss swayed in the breeze like it had read the file too and wasn’t impressed.

I paused on the sidewalk, the weight behind my ribs unfamiliar—not fear, exactly. More like dread that had studied abroad in urgency and come back fluent.

This trip had been useless, a photo of a fake signature hardly worth the trip. “They’re working faster than we are,” I said quietly.

Margaret adjusted her bag like she was preparing for a duel. “But they’re leaving footprints. That’s the mistake they always make.”

We stood beneath the oaks, sunlight filtering through the moss. I turned toward her. Then past her. To something farther off than the Records Office, but just as official.

I knew where I had to go next.

To the place Gran never returned to.

To the name carved in stone.

To the resting place of the woman who’d tried to warn us—and who the world had politely filed under inconvenient.

Bonaventure.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

BENEATH THE ROSE LOTION

Tuesday a.m.

I hadn’t planned to go back to the house. Not yet.

But after the visit to the county records office—after staring at that forged signature scrawled in someone’s blocky letters—I found myself turning onto Whitmore Lane without thinking. My hands guided the Jeep like they’d done it a thousand times, long before GPS, long before I needed a reason to come home.

Gran’s house stood in the middle of the block like it always had, watching, waiting. The porch railings still wore their peeling coat of white paint like a tired smile trying to stay polite. The window boxes were clean but empty, as if someone meant to plant something but got sidetracked by a weather warning, a neighbor’s gossip, or a rerun of Murder, She Wrote.

I parked and climbed the front steps, key already in hand. I owned the house now—slept in the same room I did as a girl—but crossing that threshold still felt like stepping into memory.

The brass bird-shaped wind chimes swayed by the door, tangled just the way they’d always been, like they’d had an argument with the breeze and never made up. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, the air familiar in that soft, settled way that only old houses and old truths ever manage.

It still smelled faintly of lemon oil, soap, and the faint comfort of coffee. The kind of scent you can’t buy, only earn—layer by layer, with decades of stories, letters, and furniture polish. I half-expected to see Gran seated at the kitchen table with a crossword puzzle and a chipped teacup in her hand, nodding at me over the rim like I’d just gotten home from school and needed reminding that the Oxford comma still mattered.

Oh, how I wished it were true. Gran and the reminder.

But the air inside didn’t feel stale. It didn’t feel empty. It felt…waiting.

I walked upstairs slowly, the old banister smooth beneath my palm, familiar in the way a good book’s spine is after the tenth read. I hadn’t changed anything since she passed. I’d unpacked in the guest room and moved a few essentials into the downstairs study so I wouldn’t have to climb the stairs each night. But her bedroom closet? That, I’d left untouched.

A kind of reverence, maybe. Or maybe fear. Also, her closet was a known avalanche zone, and I wasn’t emotionally prepared for flying shoes.

I went into Gran’s room, not to clean. Or sort. Or say goodbye.

I was looking for something.

Not an object, exactly. It’s more like a thread. A sign. A breath of memory, left behind like a message in a bottle. Something to remind me that she’d never feared the truth—and wouldn’t want me to fear it either.

The sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains in golden ribbons, soft and warm across the floorboards. I stepped carefully, like my presence might wake something. Possibly her old perfume bottle, which had a tendency to spritz at random if startled.

She had always kept her most personal things in the tall dresser—the one she told me had belonged to her mother. I moved toward it slowly and opened the top drawer.

Scarves, folded with care, and a navy velvet pouch that I knew held her locket. A glass bottle of rose lotion so faintly scented you couldn’t smell it unless you’d spent enough time in her orbit to know it was her signature scent.

And beneath it all—tucked just out of sight like a secret biding its time—was a small cloth-bound journal.

I didn’t know how I knew it would matter. I just did.

No label. No date. No title. Just a simple, timeworn book with soft, fraying edges and a faded blue cover—the kind that had clearly spent years jostling around in someone’s handbag alongside tissues, loose change, and a half-melted roll of peppermint Life Savers.

I picked it up gently, half-expecting the pages to crumble in protest.

They didn’t.

Inside the front cover, in Gran’s soft, familiar script, was her name: Clara Simmons.

The second page held a quote I knew by heart. Gran never spoke of Delilah, but she had once tucked a postcard into one of my high school notebooks, back when I’d scribbled song lyrics in the margins and thought punctuation was optional:

“There’s more truth in silence than in speeches.” — Delilah

I never forgot that postcard, had it stored somewhere in my attic in Atlanta.

My throat tightened.

But this journal was different. Not one of Gran’s meticulous daily logs—those were labeled by year and month, shelved like a private archive, the spines color-coded in her exacting hand. She never called them diaries. She called them “reference books,” as if she expected someone to eventually cite them in a legal dispute or memoir.

I’d always known they were there, stacked neatly and quietly on the shelf. But they weren’t meant for reading—at least not by me. They were hers. Pages filled with observations, weather notes, shopping lists, and questionable Jell-O recipes. But mostly, they were stories—pieces of her life told one day at a time. Or so she claimed.

One day, I hoped I’d be strong enough to open them.

But this journal—this was something else.

This wasn’t for documentation.

The pages weren’t in order. Some were half-filled, others held only a single phrase or a clipped article, circled or starred or underlined in her characteristic style of organized urgency. Her writing here was looser, faster—like she was scribbling thoughts mid-conversation with herself. Some pages were crammed. Others held only a date and a feeling. One margin contained what I’m 90 percent sure was a grocery list and a theory about zoning fraud. Gran multitasked.

And near the back—tucked between two pages like an afterthought—I found it.

A letter.

Written, but never sent.

Emma Lynn,

If you’re reading this, I didn’t get the story written in time. Or maybe I just didn’t finish it the way I hoped to.

Maybe I was waiting for you to help me with your eyes wide open and your questions sharpened. Delilah knew they would silence her first, then steal her family’s land. But I couldn’t stand up and tell the truth back then because I had you to protect you and Eleanor had Eva.  These people are dangerous, they have no boundaries, no scruples. Now, years later, maybe it’s time to bring it all out in the open. You’ve always had a way of noticing what others ignore. Use that. Trust it.

And if the world tries to bury the truth—dig.

My breath caught. The ache in my chest settled somewhere deep, quiet, and old.

Gran had known.

She hadn’t just believed I’d come back—she’d trusted that I’d dig deeper. That I’d keep going. Even when it hurt. Especially then. This wasn’t a warning; it was a handoff. A quiet passing of the baton in a story she hadn’t dared to finish herself.

Or maybe that’s just what I needed to believe—that there was purpose in all this. That being part of something, chasing down truth with friends who held space for my grief, could make me feel useful again. Help me laugh. Help me feel. And that was enough. I would no longer dread the mornings. Now, when I opened my eyes, there was direction. And sometimes, purpose is all we really need to matter. To leave a mark.

I pressed my hand to the page, blinking against the sting in my eyes.

Then, without thinking, I reached back into the drawer and picked up one of her scarves. A pale green one, embroidered with ivy leaves that curled like vines around the hem. I remembered her wearing it in early spring, walking the neighborhood, waving at every dog as if they were the ones paying HOA fees.

I looped it around my neck.

It didn’t warm me. Not exactly.

But it steadied me.

My spine straightened. My breath slowed. My feet, somehow, already knew where to go next.

To the stone with Delilah’s name.

To the gravesite that, if Gran had ever known about, she’d never spoken of—not out of forgetfulness, but because some heartaches are too deep to put into words.

To Bonaventure, where silence waited with the weight of stories never told.

I was ready to listen.

And ready to speak.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE STONE THAT LIED

Tuesday p.m.

I found myself in Bonaventure again, though something about it felt off, like the whole cemetery had been dipped in twilight and held there too long. The air hung heavy with the scent of damp earth and old magnolia blossoms. Nothing moved, not even the moss.

Delilah stood at the corner of the Hart plot in a faded blue dress, the same one from the photograph Eva had shown me. Her hands were folded, her head bowed, like she was waiting for someone to speak her name. She didn’t look at me, but I knew she knew I was there.

Then I saw him.

A man stood near the far wall where the ivy climbed thick and wild. Shadow clung to him like fog. I couldn’t see his face, just the sharp lines of a suit—creased, dark, formal. One hand dangled at his side, and in it, he held a shovel.

Still. Silent.

The ivy behind him seemed to pulse, like it was breathing.

Delilah raised one hand slightly, not toward him, but toward me—like she was warning me, or maybe telling me not to run.

I couldn’t move anyway. My feet were rooted. My voice gone.

The man didn’t step forward, but somehow I felt the weight of his gaze, even if I couldn’t see his eyes.

I woke with the sheets tangled around my legs, my chest tight, and the feel of dirt under my fingernails.

The dream clung to me like humidity, thick and impossible to shake. By midmorning, I couldn’t sit still. I kept seeing Delilah’s raised hand, the man in the shadows with the shovel, and how the ivy seemed to breathe. It didn’t feel like a dream—it felt like a summons. So I packed a thermos of coffee, texted Graham in case he stopped by, which was his usual habit after his morning three-mile walk, and pointed my car toward Bonaventure. I needed to see that corner for myself. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was everything. Either way, something in me knew—I wouldn’t sleep again until I stood where she had.

Bonaventure was quieter than I remembered.

Not just still—but the kind of quiet that wraps around your ankles and climbs upward, pressing against your chest until your breath feels borrowed. It wasn’t silence. Not really. It was a hush made of moss and humidity and secrets nobody dared speak out loud. The kind of quiet that feels like it’s listening—and taking notes.

The gates, cast iron arched in elaborate scrollwork, their rusted black leaning more toward gothic mystery than quaint Southern charm. I used to think they belonged in a fairy tale. Today, they looked like they had strong feelings about uninvited guests. And I was definitely one of those. And they looked taller than I remembered. Or maybe I’d just gotten smaller since Gran’s funeral. Grief will do that to a person—shrink you from the inside out until you feel like the version of yourself who once cried over a lost mitten.

I parked just beyond the entrance and walked in on foot. No map. No guide. Didn’t need one.

The Hart family plot was halfway down the east drive, just past the curve where the trees leaned in like gossiping aunts. The cypress branches hung low as if they’d grown tired of holding the aunts’ secrets.

The gravel crunched under my boots until it gave way to that soft, springy moss Bonaventure is famous for—the kind that swallows sound and makes you question if your phone’s on silent or if the world just muted itself.

I passed rows of timeworn stones—angels with weathered faces and wings chipped at the edges, names faded to soft blurs. One marble column had cracked clean down the center. I offered it a sympathetic nod and continued on.

I feel the same, friend. 

And then, there it was.

The stone that bore her name.

Delilah Grace Hart

1937–1971.

The second date gleamed with a confidence it hadn’t earned. Same font. Same spacing. But wrong. All of it. The headstone was too clean, too new, too certain—like someone had rewritten the truth in stone and dared us to question it.

I’d known it didn’t belong, even before Eva told me she and her mother hadn’t put it there. I’d felt it in my gut the moment I saw it—everything about this grave was lying.

I stood there for a long while. The wind moving through the trees, Gran’s scarf warm at my throat, the soft weight grounding me in a place that felt like it belonged to someone else’s story. Which, technically, it did.

The ground around the headstone had no sunken earth like Eleanors, no sign of settling. No raised lip of disturbed soil. Just dry grass trimmed with a precision that screamed, Nothing to see here, folks.

It didn’t feel like a grave.

It felt like a very expensive lie.

A monument designed to look like grief had done its job and gone home for the day. A place for closure without the inconvenience of actual remains.

I crouched low and brushed my fingers along the base of the stone. I pressed my palm flat against the granite and then drew it back, slowly.

“You’re not here,” I whispered. “But where are you?”

My voice sounded smaller in that hush. The trees didn’t echo it. The ground didn’t flinch. The wind stirred again—cooler this time.

“They put this stone here for quiet,” I said aloud. “For appearances. For the illusion that your story ended on schedule and everyone moved on. But this isn’t grief. This is erasure with landscaping.”

I rose slowly, eyes drifting across the nearby stones. All Hart family. Some weathered, the script curling in elegant cursive like whispers from another century. Others gleamed with modern polish, fonts sharp and confident, the kind you’d find on a law firm’s letterhead. But Delilah’s marker didn’t match any of them. It sat slightly apart—close enough to feign belonging, but far enough to remind you she didn’t. Not laid beside her sister Eleanor, not even in the same line. Clear across the plot, like an afterthought.

Why?

It felt staged. As if someone wanted her to seem remembered—but not too remembered.

“They buried your name,” I murmured. “Not your body.”

And just like that, it snapped into focus—sharp and cold, like a slap of winter wind.

The crumbling house on Graham’s marshland. The one hidden behind the veil of cedar trees.

“First things first,” I said aloud, voice steadying. “We prove you’re not buried here. Then we head to the marsh and look again.”

I pulled my phone from my coat pocket and started snapping pictures—one of the headstone, , and one wide shot to show how deliberately misplaced it all was. I’d learned the hard way that sometimes the cleanest cover-ups don’t involve shovels. Just a few well-placed stones and the right amount of silence.

Because now I was certain:

This wasn’t Delilah’s grave.

It was just the decoy someone hoped we'd never question.

I hit the call button before I could second-guess myself.

Margaret picked up on the second ring, crisp as always. Probably standing near a filing cabinet and judging someone’s lack of alphabetical order.

“Tell Graham I’m coming to meet you both,” I said. “We need to talk about exhumation law.”

There was a beat of silence. “Where are you?”

“Bonaventure. Visiting Delilah’s headstone.”

“You want to prove she’s not buried there.”

“Yes,” I said, glancing once more at the carefully placed stone. “Because I think she’s waiting to be found.”

Another pause.

Then Margaret’s voice, drier than toast left under a heat lamp: “Well. I suppose we’ll need gloves.”

I smiled despite the chill in my chest and started back toward the path.

This time, I was determined to find her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

EYES IN THE IVY

Tuesday p.m.

I was turning to leave when I heard it.

Not footsteps—not exactly. More like the grass let out a sigh. A hush disturbed. The delicate crackle of brittle leaves giving way under the weight of something (or someone) that knew how to move like they belonged here.

Spoiler alert: I did not.

I halted mid-step.

Bonaventure had always played tricks with sound. It carried strangely here, filtered through layers of moss, stone, and melodrama. Words didn’t echo—they got swallowed whole. Even the wind had mastered the art of slipping in unnoticed. So when the silence broke, it didn’t feel like an accident. It felt like a choice.

I turned my head slowly, scanning the dense tangle of trees just beyond Delilah’s marker.

Nothing.

No shape. No shadow flinching out of place. Just a tapestry of ivy and gloom. The light here was greenish and dim, as if someone turned down the saturation. The moss-draped limbs overhead looked like they’d been weeping since Reconstruction.

But the air had changed.

Thicker now. Closer.

I told myself to walk away. That I was imagining things. That the graveyard was just doing what graveyards do—bending space and time and nerves into little pretzels.

But it wasn’t fear that held me in place.

It was something colder. Sharper.

Proximity.

That creeping, spine-tingling certainty that someone had heard what I stage-whispered to Delilah’s stone—and might still be standing close enough to critique my delivery.

I took one step back.

Then another.

Then the sound came again.

A rustle—not above, not wind—but low. Ground level. Intentional. The kind of sound that says, Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

I turned toward it before my common sense had time to file a formal objection.

The row of graves behind the Hart plot dipped into a shallow hollow—half-swallowed by ivy, time, and the kind of shade that comes with folklore. I’d passed it earlier without noticing, which in hindsight felt suspiciously convenient.

A broken iron gate marked another entrance into a family plot. A gate I’d walked through to get to the Hart family burial plot.

Immediately, the temperature dropped a full degree. Maybe two. My coat sleeves weren’t ready.

The world outside—the birds, the breeze, the faint buzz of life—vanished like someone had closed a theater curtain. My footsteps made no sound. Even my breath seemed to hesitate. The deeper I moved into the hollow, the more the cemetery felt like it was eavesdropping.

And that’s when I saw it.

Not a person.

A bouquet.

Fresh.

White roses, arranged with care and tied at the base with a thin black ribbon. Elegant, understated. Too perfect for Bonaventure’s usual crumbling flair.

They’d been placed at the foot of a small stone I hadn’t noticed before—worn, half-buried in ivy.

William Randolph Calloway

My stomach dropped like a bad subplot.

I stepped closer. The ivy around the stone shifted as I crouched, and the initials clicked into place.

Judge Calloway.

My pulse jumped.

The flowers were flawless. No wilt. No browning. No pollen dusting the leaves. And most importantly, they hadn’t been there earlier. I would have noticed. I mean, I notice font choices for a living. A surprise bouquet doesn’t go unclocked.

Someone had been here.

Very recently.

I scanned the ground. No visible footprints, but the moss was forgiving. Too forgiving. Probably would’ve erased a marching band within minutes.

I turned in a slow circle, heart climbing somewhere just north of my throat. The ivy rustled on a nearby tree—too low for wind. Unless we were now classifying breezes as ankle-height.

Then—

A sharp crack.

A branch.

Somewhere off to the right. Beyond the hedgerow. Deeper into the trees.

I spun, eyes combing the shadows like I knew what I was looking for. I didn’t. But whatever was out there? It knew me. Or at least, it was interested.

The feeling bloomed hot and fast in my chest. Not panic. Just the cold, bracing certainty that I was being watched. That the story I’d walked into had just looked up and noticed me.

I backed out of the hollow, breath clipped, legs suddenly aware that I hadn’t stretched in three days. I didn’t run. That would’ve felt too dramatic. But I quickened my pace the second I cleared the gate and hit the path.

And then, as if someone had flipped the “normal” switch⁠—

Birds chirped. Sunlight broke through the trees. Bonaventure returned to its default setting: picturesque and mildly unsettling.

But I knew better.

The stillness wasn’t peace.

It was surveillance.

Whatever I had stirred up wasn’t content to stay buried anymore. It had followed me in. It had heard what I said. And now, it was waiting to see what I’d do next.

The stone behind me had gone quiet.

But the ivy?

The ivy was still gently moving.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

GROUNDS FOR DISRUPTION

Tuesday p.m.

It felt like Gran had followed me out of the cemetery and slipped into the car beside me.

Not literally—no flickering lights, no ghostly chill tracing my spine—but her presence clung to me all the same. It was like I’d slipped on her ivy-print scarf, the one that still held her scent. Faint, familiar, and impossible to ignore. Quiet. Steady. Unseen, but undeniably there.

I felt her behind me as I drove. Watching. Pressing lightly between my shoulder blades with that subtle, impossible-to-ignore insistence she always carried when she thought I’d overlooked something important. The same pressure I used to get when I tried to pass off canned cranberry sauce as homemade at Thanksgiving.

By the time I pulled up to Margaret’s house, dusk had settled over the street like a fog with thorns. The kind that crept into your collar, chilled your thoughts, and made every window seem a little too dark from the outside. The porch light was on, but the kitchen windows glowed low and golden—more suggestion than beacon.

I didn’t wait for the usual welcome. No wave from the screen door. No offered mug of tea. I stepped inside with dirt still clinging to my boots, Delilah’s headstone still etched in my mind, and the weight of questions I couldn’t un-ask pressing on my chest.

Graham was already there, hunched over Margaret’s table with zoning plats and copies of old property maps spread out like a second dinner. Margaret was scribbling notes in her spiral-bound legal pad, glasses halfway down her nose like she was auditioning for a role in CSI: Coastal Georgia.

Neither of them looked up when I walked in, but the room shifted all the same. The air felt different—charged, expectant. Did they sense it too? That quiet ripple trailing in behind me, the presence I couldn't shake, clinging like mist to my skin. They had to feel it. Didn’t they?

I closed the door behind me and stood for a moment, letting the stillness settle before I spoke. “Gran followed me home,” I said quietly, my voice thinner than usual. “I felt it as soon as I left Bonaventure, like she’d woven herself into the air around me.” I looked at them both, searching their faces. “Can’t you feel it? She’s here. I don’t know how, but she is.”

Margaret set down her mug with a soft clink. “Could be nerves, Emma Lynn. You’ve been through a lot lately. Bonaventure’s got a way of stirring things up—memory, emotion, old ghosts. Doesn’t mean they followed you home.”

Graham, still staring at the window like he half-expected to see Gran in the garden, nodded slowly. “I don’t think she ever really left you. She always shows up when you need her. Some people just…linger longer than others. My Uncle Joe still visits me.”

I dropped into the chair across from Margaret and spoke my mind before I could talk myself out of it. “Delilah’s not buried there.”

Margaret paused, looked up slowly. “You sound positive. Did you have another dream?”

“Yes, but it’s more. It’s a premonition, an itch down my spine. I’m sure enough to risk the paperwork,” I leaned forward, elbows on the table, voice low. “Everything about that headstone feels staged. Like someone carefully built a version of closure and planted it beneath that stone. Too clean. Too precise. Like they were saying: Look, it’s over. You can stop asking.”

Graham gave a slow nod. “Simple enough to move a headstone into place.”

“At Bonaventure?” Margaret asked.

He shrugged. “Just a matter of knowing the right people.”

“I wasn’t alone today,” I said.

That got their full attention.

“Someone was watching. I never saw them. But I felt it.”

They raised a single brow in unison.

I huffed a breath. “You don’t grow up around Southern graveyards and not know when you’re being watched.”

Margaret set her pen down carefully. “Same person who followed you before?”

“Maybe. Or someone else entirely. But they left something—a bouquet. White roses. Fresh. No card. Laid right at the base of William Randolph Calloway’s grave. We need to look up where the judge is buried, but I’m betting it’s within a stone’s throw of the Hart burial plot.”

Graham’s jaw tightened. “Might’ve been a coincidence, but I trust your instincts.”

“No coincidence,” I said. “More like a warning. Or a reminder. Someone wants us to know they’re still ahead of us.”

Margaret closed her notebook and reached for a slim manila folder. “I’ve been digging into Georgia’s exhumation laws. It’s not impossible, but it isn’t simple either. To get approval, we’d need one of three things: documented criminal suspicion, a signed court order, or consent from a legal next of kin.”

“Eva,” I said.

Margaret nodded. “She’s the only one left. If she agrees in writing, we can file the petition. It’ll still be a process, but it gets us in the door.”

Graham rubbed his jaw. “The city might push back. Especially if the burial paperwork was doctored. If there’s a chance the body was never there, they’ll do whatever they can to slow us down.”

“They’d have to explain why,” I said. “And that means light in places they’ve kept dark for fifty years.”

Margaret’s voice sharpened slightly. “We don’t need to prove murder. Not yet. Just reasonable cause for doubt. That’s all it takes to trigger the review process.”

“She disappeared,” I said. “No autopsy. No certified coroner’s report. Just a burial date and a new stone. And now we’ve got the judge who signed off on her interment also rubber-stamping the land transfer. It’s too clean.”

Graham sat back, folding his arms. “Stacking the deck.”

“Exactly,” I said. “If we can tie the forged deed to her burial—or the lack of it—we’ve got enough to move the needle.”

Margaret opened the folder, revealing a printed list of steps: timelines, documentation, affidavits. “We’ll need Eva’s signature, an affidavit swearing doubt in the burial’s legitimacy, and a formal petition filed with the county. And we’d better be ready for the fallout.”

My fingers curled around the edge of the table. I could feel Gran’s weight behind me again—not heavy, just present.

“I don’t want a name on a stone,” I said quietly. “I don’t want a ghost story. I want a body. I want proof. I want whoever buried her truth under dirt and signatures to answer for it.”

Graham gave me a long look. “Then we’ll find her. All the way this time.”

Margaret looked between us. “And if someone tries to shut us down?”

I met their eyes.

“Then we bring every receipt we’ve got,” I said. “We bring it loud. We bring it public.”

Graham gave a grim little nod. “You know, for a retired man, I sure do spend a lot of time pissing off city officials.”

“And I’m supposed to be writing a cookbook on Southern condiments,” Margaret muttered, flipping her legal pad closed with a snap. “Guess we all picked the wrong hobby.”

And deep in my chest, I could almost feel Gran’s nod.

Not approval.

Permission.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE COST OF PERMISSION

Wednesday p.m.

Eva didn’t sit right away.

She paced the edge of Margaret’s porch like she was circling something invisible—something heavy and fragile that couldn’t be looked at directly without it cracking in half. Her boots clicked softly against the old wooden planks, each step measured, restless, resisting the gravity of the chair waiting behind her.

The late sun spilled honeyed light across everything it touched. Cicadas buzzed in the trees like they were revving up for a concert no one wanted to attend but everyone showed up for anyway—like a neighborhood HOA meeting with wings.

On any other evening, this could’ve been just another summer night in Savannah. But everything in the air said otherwise. The porch fan creaked overhead in its lazy rhythm, sounding like it had opinions about everything but no energy to share them. No one reached for sweet tea. No one made conversation. None of us pretended this was normal.

“I need to show you something,” I told Eva, pulling the folded document from my bag and smoothing it across the table. “Margaret found this buried in the city’s records—a request to set Delilah’s headstone. It’s signed with your name.”

Eva leaned in, her eyes narrowing as they scanned the paper. After a long beat, she sat back, jaw tight. “That’s not my signature,” she said flatly. “Not even close.”

From her rocking chair, Margaret didn’t look up from her cup of tea. “I know,” she said. “I already compared it to your library card. Whoever forged it didn’t bother getting the loops right.”

Eva paced the porch. “I’m not sure I can do this,” she said finally, stopping at the far end. Her arms folded tightly across her chest like she was holding herself together by force. “This isn’t just a form you’ve asked me to sign. It’s opening a grave. A grave with her name on it. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to place the headstone on my family’s plot and forge my name on the paperwork. Which means, they know me and they had to be connected and powerful. . .”

Her voice stayed level, but her eyes told the truth—glassy, distant, with a flicker of something too quick to hide. Fear, maybe. The kind you keep tucked behind your ribs, unspoken, unless someone else dares to say it first.

I watched her carefully. “A grave that might be empty.”

She whipped in my direction like my words had touched a nerve she’d been trying to keep buried under emotional duct tape and denial.

“That’s exactly what scares me,” she said, her voice tight. “Because if that grave’s empty…then the whole story explodes. It stops being whispers and questions and becomes something loud. Dangerous. And let’s just be honest—I’m scared. I live alone with my son. I’m all he has. If this goes wrong, if someone decides I’ve pushed too far…”

She shook her head, a breath catching in her throat.

“This is a massive risk for me. And nobody gets to pretend it isn’t.”

No one answered right away.

I didn’t argue. I let the silence carry the weight of what she’d just said. Let it settle between us like the truth often does—quietly, painfully, and with all the grace of a porch swing coming loose mid-sway.

Graham leaned against the railing, arms crossed, gaze steady. “You have every right to say no,” he said. “But you’re also the only one who can say yes.”

Margaret, seated beside me, nodded slowly. Her voice came softer than usual. “This isn’t just about Delilah anymore. If there’s a body in that grave, it needs a name. And if there’s not, that means her story was buried without her. Either way, she deserves the truth. So do you.”

Eva let out a slow, tight breath. The kind that starts in the ribs and doesn’t quite make it all the way out.

“You all say that like the truth doesn’t come with a cost.”

“It does,” I said. “But so does silence.”

That landed. I could see it in the way she blinked, in the way her jaw shifted like she wanted to argue but couldn’t find a way around the point.

She looked down at the boards beneath her feet. Took another step toward the table. And then another.

“I filled it out,” she said, almost too softly to hear.

“What?” Margaret asked gently.

Eva slipped her bag off her shoulder and placed it on the table like it weighed more than it should. She reached inside and pulled out a folded piece of paper—creased at the corners, edges soft from being handled over and over.

“I already filled it out,” she said again, softer this time. “Took me three tries. Filled in a blank one, then tore it up. Then did it all over again. Spent the last hour just sitting in the car down the block, trying to work up the nerve to bring it here.”

She held it out to Margaret with a hand that didn’t quite tremble but wasn’t steady either.

Margaret took it with reverence, unfolding it like it might crumble in her hands or bite. She read silently, her brow furrowing, then looked up and gave a small nod.

A formal notarized statement.

Consent to exhume.

Signed and dated.

“I’m doing this because I think she wanted to be found,” Eva’s voice had lost its edge now. What remained was quieter. Sadder. “Not mourned. Not mythologized. Found. You said she left that marker out in the marsh with evidence of what she had tried to expose. I think she knew someday someone would come looking. I think she counted on it.”

“I believe that, too,” I whispered.

Eva looked at me hard. “I want one thing. One promise. If you open that grave and it’s empty…you find out where she is. You don’t stop at a hole in the ground and call it closure. You keep digging.”

I didn’t hesitate. “That’s our intent.”

The porch went still.

It wasn’t dramatic. No lightning strike. No sudden wind. Just a quiet pause in time where we all sat with the magnitude of what had just changed.

Four people, bound not by blood, but by truth. And grief. And the certainty that something had been broken a long time ago—and we were the ones who’d decided to pick up the pieces.

Eva turned to go, lifting her bag back onto her shoulder.

She paused at the top of the porch steps.

“If they come after me because of this…”

“If they do, they’ll get a fight from me,” Graham said, firm. The kind of firm that didn’t leave room for argument—like he’d already decided, and nothing short of a tornado could shake it.

She raised an eyebrow. Not disbelief, exactly. Just the kind of weary expectation that comes from watching too many good things go bad.

Margaret smiled faintly. “And if they try having you fired or besmirching your good name, we’ll give them a battle they won’t soon forget.”

Eva didn’t smile. But something in her shoulders eased. Her stance softened, like a thread had loosened that she hadn’t realized was pulling her tight.

She didn’t say goodbye. Just nodded once and disappeared down the steps.

We sat there for a long while after. Listening to the cicadas. Watching the sky darken. Wondering if we should drink our sweet tea after all, but no one dared break the moment by standing up.

And when Margaret finally folded the consent form and placed it carefully in a folder labeled in code Grit, Trouble & Miscellaneous, we all knew what it meant.

We weren’t asking questions anymore.

We had permission.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

BEFORE THE DUST SETTLES

Wednesday p.m.

It started again. That feeling.

Not the loud kind that comes with panic—no gasps or racing heart this time. This was subtler—a low, creeping hum in the background of my thoughts. A prickling at the base of my neck, like I’d forgotten to close a cabinet or left the oven on...except I hadn’t cooked in two weeks, and the only thing I kept in Gran’s oven was extra Tupperware.

It moved like a shadow across the skin. A weight between my shoulder blades that didn’t come from the canvas bag slung over one arm, but from something harder to define.

Like being watched by someone who already knew your next move and was waiting to see if you’d blow it.

At first, I chalked it up to nerves, adrenaline, or the fact that we’d just left the courthouse less than an hour earlier with Eva’s formal consent to exhume Delilah’s grave—a sentence that felt like it belonged in a Southern Gothic Mad Libs.

But the feeling didn’t fade.

It followed me on the walk home.

At first, it was a shape—still and too upright—on the far side of a near-empty parking lot. Then it was a dark sedan parked across from a dry cleaner that had gone out of business three months ago but still had a cheery “See Y’all Soon!” sign taped in the window.

I passed a shopfront and caught the faintest movement in the glass—just as I turned the corner, someone behind me stepped forward like they’d missed their cue.

Always a block behind.

Never beside me.

And never entirely gone.

At every turn, there was space—just enough to doubt my instincts, just close enough to confirm them.

He wasn’t following like someone trying to catch me.

He was following like someone waiting for me to catch on.

Margaret once told me that some people protect secrets the way others protect antique china—locked behind glass, only dusted off when company comes, and God help you if you touch it.

But this man?

He wasn’t just protecting a secret.

He was raising it like a second family.

And I had just gone down to the courthouse and asked the state for permission to dig it up.

I circled the block, then the square, taking my time with each turn. Strolled back to River Street, bought an ice cream cone I didn’t want, and lingered by the water just long enough to look casual. Then, finally, I headed for home—still not sure if I’d lost my silent stalker.

By the time I reached Gran’s cottage, night had properly settled in. The kind of warm Southern dark that hums with frogs, crickets, and the occasional neighbor arguing about baseball at full volume two porches over.

I didn’t turn on the lights.

Just stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and let the dark wrap around my shoulders like a cardigan from the crypt.

Then I moved to the front window, parted the curtain with two fingers, and waited.

The street was still.

A few porch lights flickered across the way. On my front porch, wind chimes tapped out a tune that might’ve been “Twinkle, Twinkle” or just a very anxious squirrel.

But the weight didn’t lift.

I couldn’t see him. But I knew he was out there.

Not charging. Not creeping.

Just…waiting.

And that was the part that got under my skin. Not the threat of confrontation—oh no. It was the patience. The deliberateness. Like he was letting me set the tempo and deciding whether I was worth the dance.

He wasn’t trying to stop me.

Not yet.

He was trying to figure out how far I’d go.

Trying to decide if he’d need to intervene—or just let me trip over myself.

I stayed at the window longer than I meant to. Long enough for the shadows to stretch across the pavement like they were getting comfortable. Long enough for me to start naming every creak in the cottage after distant relatives.

Eventually, I turned away and dropped my bag on the table with a thump loud enough to startle the silence.

I ran a hand through my hair, debated whether it was too late for coffee or too early for bourbon, and settled for neither. I thought about Eva.

Thought about the way her voice caught when she handed Margaret the signed consent form. The way she’d stood on the edge of the porch like someone balancing on a decision.

“I’m doing this because I think she wanted to be found,” she’d said.

I hadn’t known what to say then. Still didn’t.

But I understood.

Because I could feel it, too.

Delilah wasn’t resting.

She was waiting.

And someone out there—someone who’d spent a very long time keeping her memory buried under layers of signatures and Southern politeness—knew we were close to the truth.

I crossed the room and sat down on the couch, hands loose in my lap, the hush of the house pressing in like cotton batting.

But I didn’t relax.

Couldn’t.

Not when it felt like the walls had ears and my windows might blink.

This wasn’t just about a grave anymore.

It wasn’t even just about Delilah.

It was about what had been hidden with her. And what someone had gone to great lengths to keep buried—preferably under a layer of good manners, mossy stone, and absolutely no follow-up questions. It was about what it meant for the future.

And now that we had permission to dig?

The clock had started ticking.

The man outside—whoever he was—wasn’t waiting for me to stop.

He was waiting to see what I’d do once I saw what we’d uncovered.

And that’s what chilled me most.

He wasn’t afraid of being caught.

He was afraid of being named.

And for the first time since I came back to Savannah, I realized something important.

We weren’t chasing ghosts anymore.

We were chasing someone who still had a pulse.

And they were starting to sweat.

We weren’t behind anymore.

We were catching up.

And maybe—just maybe—we were closer than they could afford for us to be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A KNOCK, A CLIPBOARD, AND TWO CUPS OF TROUBLE

Wednesday p.m.

I was still on the couch, trying to decide if it was acceptable to sleep in jeans when the knock came. Three short raps, one harder, and then an impatient sigh that I could feel through the wood.

Only one person knocked like that.

I opened the door to find Margaret standing on my porch in house slippers, carrying a clipboard under one arm and a thermos under the other, wearing what I could only describe as “retired spy chic”—pajama pants, a zip-up fleece, and lipstick so precisely applied it had to be muscle memory.

“I brought coffee,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“It’s nine-thirty at night.”

“It’s decaf. I’m not reckless.” She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, glancing around like she expected to catch me mid-secret. “I figured you weren’t sleeping anyway.”

She was right. I wasn’t. But I hadn’t expected a porch-light interrogation from Margaret in plaid slippers and full war-room energy.

She walked straight to the kitchen table, set the thermos down with ceremony, and pulled a notebook from the pocket of her fleece. She flipped to a page already filled with color-coded tabs.

“We need to talk about suspects.”

“Can I at least put on socks first?”

“You had all day for socks.”

I muttered something about boundaries and padded barefoot into the kitchen to grab two mismatched mugs. One read Don’t annoy the author or she might write you into a story and murder you! The other—Classy, Sassy, & A Bit Smart-Assy—had been a Christmas gift from my daughter, Carrie Rose, to Gran years ago. Gran had laughed for a full hour when she opened it. I handed Margaret Carrie’s mug.

Margaret poured. “You feel it too, don’t you? The shift. Things are moving.”

“I also feel like I’m being watched.”

She nodded, like I’d just confirmed her weather forecast. “Good. That means we’re getting close.”

“Close to what? Getting chased off a cliff by a man in a Buick?”

Margaret sipped calmly. “If it comes to that, I have pepper spray and two years of Pilates under my belt.”

I blinked. “You’re the most intimidating person I know in pajama pants.”

“I accept that as a compliment.”

She adjusted her glasses and held up the clipboard like it was the Holy Grail. “Look. I’ve made a list of everyone who had something to gain from Delilah staying buried. Or something to lose if she were found. Also, there’s a separate list for people I just plain don’t trust. That one’s alphabetical.”

I took the clipboard, scanning the first page. “You put a star next to the deputy mayor?”

“He owes me money from a silent auction.”

“That seems unrelated.”

“Is it?” she asked, raising a single, suspiciously arched eyebrow.

I gave her back the clipboard before she could accuse the city clerk of insider trading.

We sat there for a while in the soft hush of the kitchen, steam rising from our mugs, the air buzzing just slightly with nerves and too much caffeine pretending to be decaf.

“You really think someone’s going to come after us?” I asked.

Margaret looked out the window. “I think someone already is. But they won’t come barging in. Not yet. People like this—they play chess. Long game. Smiles on Sunday, poison on Monday. We’ve already moved our pawn. Now we wait to see what piece they sacrifice first.”

I stared at her. “You know you terrify me, right?”

She smiled faintly. “As long as I don’t bore you.”

Outside, the wind picked up just enough to stir the chimes on the porch. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked like it had opinions about city corruption.

Margaret stood, clipped the notebook back under her arm, and adjusted her slippers with queenly precision. “Don’t forget,” she said, heading to the door, “suspicion is like mildew—it grows best in the dark. Keep the porch light on tonight.”

I watched her disappear into the shadows like a woman on a mission, one hand tucked in her fleece, the other gripping that clipboard like it held the nuclear codes.

I closed the door behind her and leaned against it, blinking at the cozy chaos she’d just left behind.

She wasn’t wrong.

Something was shifting.

But I didn’t feel alone.

I had a team.

Margaret—a clipboard-wielding, decaf-drinking, pajama-wearing force to be reckoned with.

And Graham—armed with Crocs, trivia, and the kind of steady loyalty that never needed fanfare.

And in this town?

That just might be enough to shake the dirt off the truth—and finally drag it into the light where it belonged.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DINNER WITH THE DEAD WATCHING

Thursday p.m.

It had taken Margaret and Graham the better part of the day to work out the final details for the dig. Not because they weren’t organized—they were. Ruthlessly so. Margaret carried two clipboards and a color-coded binder. Graham had three sets of blueprints, a backup permit envelope, and what appeared to be an emergency whistle. For ambiance, I guess.

The real delay came from what Margaret referred to as “calling in favors,” which in practice meant speed-dialing half of Savannah’s retired civil servants, one not-so-retired funeral director, and a woman named Loretta who once personally paid to reroute a drainage ditch through city land and still insists it was an improvement.

They knew the right people. The kind of people who didn't advertise their services, but answered the phone on the second ring and said things like, "This about the judge or the grave?" without needing clarification.

“I’m not saying I’m owed a favor,” Margaret had muttered at one point, stabbing at her phone like it had personally wronged her, “but I did organize the zoning board’s Christmas party three years in a row, and someone walked away with a full pie each time.”

Graham, meanwhile, spent the afternoon securing last-minute site markers and triple-checking county access codes like he was planning a heist instead of an exhumation. I offered to help, but was politely told my strengths were more in the “don’t panic and keep breathing” category.

By sunset, everything was in place.

Permits filed. Equipment arranged.

Secrets trembling slightly under the surface.

That’s when Margaret declared it was time for dinner. “Something warm,” she said as she stirred the pot. “Before everything gets cold.”

She meant it as comfort. I heard it as a warning.

So we gathered around her kitchen table just after dark when Savannah slipped into that gray twilight that makes the city look older than it already is. The windows caught the last threads of light, but inside, it was warm and quiet and smelled like thyme, garlic, and something unspoken.

The stew was thick and rich—Margaret called it “her grandmother’s recipe,” which probably meant she made it up during a particularly inspired grocery run. A loaf of sourdough sat in the center of the table, still warm, allegedly from a bakery run by “a retired opera singer and her ex-husband’s cousin.” I didn’t ask questions. You don’t ask Margaret questions when the food is that good.

The radio played low—something jazzy and nostalgic, like it had wandered in from 1952 and wasn’t sure if it could stay.

For a while, we didn’t talk about permits or graves or the fact that we were all about to commit an act of sanctioned grave-disturbing with nothing but a notary stamp and moral high ground to protect us.

We just ate. Passed butter. Shared weather complaints. Pretended we weren’t dining with the dead watching from the walls.

Graham reached for the bread like it was a weekly ritual. He spread butter slowly—carefully, as if he’d finally learned his lesson from Margaret’s previous bread-policing—and glanced up. “I double-checked the permits this afternoon,” he said. “Everything’s signed, sealed, filed. We’re cleared to begin at eight sharp.”

I nodded, not quite tasting the bite of stew I’d just taken. “Is the funeral director still on board?”

Margaret didn’t look up. “He’s discreet. He also owes me three favors and a bottle of Glenfiddich 18-year.”

“You’re calling in all of it?” I asked.

“Every drop,” she said, taking a slow, victorious sip of tea like she was sipping from the actual eighteen-year-old scotch bottle.

I smiled because I was supposed to. So did they. But none of us fooled each other. Not tonight.

The weight of what we were about to do settled around us like a fourth guest—uninvited, but definitely planning to stay for dessert.

“I keep thinking about Gran,” I said. “How she used to pause before telling a story. Just for a second. Like she was checking with someone invisible to see if it was okay to go on.”

“Maybe she was,” Graham said.

Margaret set down her spoon. “Clara knew more than she ever said. Which, considering how much she did say, is frankly impressive.”

What Margaret didn’t say was that I’d inherited that particular gene in spades—and probably with interest.

“She protected it,” I said. “All of it. She carried the truth like a fragile thing that couldn’t afford to be dropped.”

Graham nodded. “And now it’s ours to carry.”

The words weren’t heavy, but they landed with weight.

We sat in silence for a moment. Not the awkward kind—just the respectful kind that follows truth too big for small talk.

Outside, the wind stirred through the trees. A train groaned in the distance. Savannah had that way of letting the past creep in just when you thought it had settled down.

Margaret reached into her bottomless leather tote and pulled out a sealed manila folder, laying it in front of me like a sacred offering.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The contingency file,” she said. “Everything’s in there. Signed intent, our timeline, summary of findings, digital backups, Eva’s consent. And yes,” she added dryly, “color-coded tabs.”

“For…if something happens?” I asked, my voice catching a little.

Margaret nodded. “If I don’t check in within forty-eight hours after the dig, that’s the signal for my contact at the Savannah Journal to send someone to my porch. They’ll know to check behind the begonia—there’s a note with everything they’ll need.…just in case we end up in jail. Or worse. I even included a press-ready headline.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “‘Woman in sensible shoes uncovers scandal and won’t shut up about it’?”

“Close. But mine has alliteration.”

Graham cleared his throat. “We’re not being dramatic. Just careful. This isn’t fiction—it’s a record. And the more truth we uncover, the more reason someone has to keep it buried.”

I reached out, placed my hand over the folder. I didn’t open it. I didn’t need to. Just holding it was enough.

“You’re right,” I said. “We’re past the point of assuming this ends quietly.”

Graham raised his glass. “To the truth.”

Margaret raised hers next. “To the ones who didn’t stay silent.”

I picked up mine—still warm—and nodded. “And to the ones who finally get to be heard.”

We clinked gently. Not in fear. Just in respect.

The wind sighed through the eaves. The stew cooled. The radio faded out completely.

Tomorrow, we would dig.

And whatever we found⁠—

We’d be ready.

Probably.

If not, at least we had a solid file, a decent last meal, and Margaret’s threat list color-coded by motive.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE DAY THE GRAVE WENT QUIET

Friday a.m.

Of course it was Friday the 13th.

Because why wouldn’t we plan an exhumation on the unluckiest day of the calendar, in a city where the moss hangs low, the ghosts hang closer, and people still leave offerings on cemetery gates like it’s a group project?

I didn’t mention it when we piled into the car. Margaret would’ve waved it off with a comment about logic. Graham would’ve checked the tires. I just sipped my coffee and told myself not to count crows.

When we arrived at Bonaventure, it was quiet.

Too quiet for my taste. And not the peaceful kind of quiet, either—not the kind people write poetry about. No, this was the kind of quiet that makes you want to check your phone to make sure time hadn’t stopped entirely. The kind of quiet that makes you whisper even though no one else is talking.

No birds. No breeze. Not even a squirrel with opinions. Even the moss hung still and damp. Bonaventure didn’t feel like a cemetery that morning. It felt like a courtroom.

And we were about to submit evidence.

The crew was already setting up when we pulled in. Eva had arrived ahead of us, standing off to the side with her arms crossed, eyes fixed on the plot like she’d been preparing for this moment her whole life.

Margaret, being Margaret, had made sure the crew wasn’t from the city. No sense inviting bureaucracy to the crime scene.

“They’re private,” she’d said. “Licensed, insured, and too well-paid to ask questions. Like a spa technician with a shovel,” she added.

Graham mumbled something I didn’t catch.

The men moved with quiet professionalism—clipboards tucked under arms, sleeves rolled, boots already dusted with soil. They weren’t chatty, which Margaret considered a virtue.

Graham gave them a nod as we passed. He looked calm. Collected. The man could’ve been walking into a board meeting. But I noticed the way his hand hovered behind my arm, just close enough to catch me if I stumbled.

Subtle.

Steady.

Like a seatbelt in khakis.

The grave looked smaller in the morning light.

Delilah’s headstone—still too clean, too upright, too certain—seemed more like a prop than a marker. Like someone had planted it there to say, See? Case closed.

But the name didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like a question.

The foreman approached, clipboard in hand, voice low and businesslike. “Who’s the family representative?”

“I am.” Eva stepped forward. Her eyes were hollow, shadows carved deep from what looked like a sleepless night. But beneath the exhaustion, there was a steadiness to her—a quiet fire banked low, like she’d braced herself for this moment and wasn’t about to flinch.

“If there’s anything you don’t want to see,” he said gently, “now’s the time to step back.”

She didn’t move.

None of us did.

So they started.

The first scoop of earth came with a sound I’ll never forget—metal through soil, loud in the hush. It didn’t echo. It absorbed.

The air changed. Not the temperature—though it suddenly felt cooler—but the pressure. Like something old and tight-lipped had just looked up from the dirt.

This ground didn’t give itself up easily. The soil was dry, compacted, and uncooperative. Margaret called it “Southern stubborn.” Graham called it “a red clay tantrum.” I just called it suspicious.

Margaret stood beneath a low oak, scribbling notes in a slim journal like a field researcher documenting an extinct species. Occasionally, she checked her watch as if something on the schedule might run late.

Graham circled the perimeter, arms crossed, scanning the path like he expected someone to crash through the azaleas yelling “Stop! You’re disturbing the comfortable lie we spent fifty years curating!”

And me?

I just watched.

I watched every layer peeled back. Every clump of dirt tossed aside. It felt like we were unspooling time. This wasn’t just about bones. This was about silence. About who gets to be remembered—and who gets written out.

After ten minutes, something changed.

The digging slowed. Voices hushed.

The foreman crouched low, brushing at something with his gloved hand. He paused, then looked up.

“We should’ve hit the top of the casket by now,” he said. “There’s nothing here.”

Graham stepped in. “You’re sure?”

The foreman stood, brushing soil from his knee. “Positive. No vault. No liner. No disturbance. This ground’s never been opened.”

Margaret approached, calm as ever. “Then what’s under there?”

He looked at the hole, then back to her. “Just soil.”

Eva inhaled a deep breath—loud in the stillness.

I stepped forward, heart heavy, but steady. “Delilah’s not here.”

The foreman looked at Eva. “We can keep going. Carefully. Look for anomalies.”

She gave her permission with a single nod.

They dug again.

Slower this time.

Inches at a time.

Searching not for what was there, but for proof of what wasn’t.

No bones. No casket. No marker of a life once lived and lost.

Just earth.

Layer after layer of clean, undisturbed earth.

I could feel it—the shape of the lie settling around us like a low fog.

This grave had never been meant to hold anyone. It was a set piece. A performance. A whispered suggestion of closure. A decoy, meant to satisfy curiosity just enough to keep anyone from digging deeper.

Margaret’s voice reached me from somewhere just over my shoulder. “It was never about resting in peace,” she said softly. “It was about keeping her quiet.”

Eva turned away, eyes watery, but when she spoke, her voice was steady.

“She wasn’t buried,” she said. “She was erased.”

And there it was.

The truth.

No longer buried.

No longer deniable.

Standing there, ankle-deep in silence and soil, I realized something: We hadn’t disturbed a grave. We’d cracked open a cover story. And now, the real story wanted out.

I glanced up at the sky. It was wide and gray and expectant. A breeze kicked up at last, rustling the moss and tugging at the hem of my shirt like even the air wanted to say something.

Bonaventure remained still.

But not indifferent.

It was listening.

And now that the lie had been exhumed, there was no putting it back. What the earth keeps, it keeps with purpose. But today, it let the truth breathe.

And someone—someone alive—was about to learn that no matter how long you keep a secret buried…

…you can’t stop the roots from growing toward the light.

CHAPTER FORTY

STOP DIGGING, Y’ALL

Monday p.m.

Graham had been called out of town at the last minute—a cousin’s funeral in Charleston, someone he hadn’t seen in years but couldn’t ignore. Which meant our trip to the marshland to search for Delilah would have to wait until Tuesday. I tried to be patient, to remind myself the dead weren’t going anywhere. But on Monday night, just as I was settling in with a cup of tea and half a mind to ignore the world, Graham called. And just like that, he introduced the next chapter of the week’s drama—because clearly, the universe thought we didn’t have enough already.

It started with Graham’s truck.

Then Margaret’s mailbox.

Then me.

Because, of course, if you're going to threaten three people involved in uncovering a decades-old secret, you might as well go for the full trifecta.

I hadn’t seen my shadow, a man I’d come to think of as The Watcher, that day. But I’d felt him.

Not the cartoon villain kind of feeling—no trench coat flapping in the wind, no music swelling dramatically in the background. Just that low-level awareness that settles behind your ribs and whispers, Something’s off.

The kind of presence you feel before thunder cracks—before the storm rolls in.

That’s how I knew.

The Watcher was close. Even if I couldn’t see him.

The exhumation had been legal, quiet, and buried deep in the kind of municipal paperwork that would make a librarian cry. No one was supposed to know yet.

But someone did.

My phone rang just as I was finishing a second cup of chamomile tea, a losing attempt at lowering my blood pressure, and trying not to overanalyze Margaret’s latest spreadsheet,

“Suspicious Tax Exemptions and Other Shenanigans.”

“Emma Lynn,” Graham said, in his calm-as-grit tone. “It’s my truck.”

I straightened. “What happened?”

“It got keyed.”

“Random or weird?”

“Weird. Deliberate. From the side mirror to the tailgate.” He paused.“Two words. Scratched into the paint.”

Let me guess… “Stop digging?”

“Exactly.”

I rubbed my forehead. “That tosses out the possibility of an angry teenager with a vendetta against F-150s.”

“It was deliberate,” he said. “No glass broken. Nothing stolen. They just wanted to send a message.”

“Okay. Well, I guess we’ve moved into the formal intimidation portion of the investigation. That’s…progress?”

Before he could respond, my phone buzzed again.

Margaret.

I clicked over. “Hey, you’re on speaker—Graham’s on the other line. We’ve just entered the ‘menacing truck graffiti’ phase of our week.”

Margaret’s voice came through, sharp and brisk. “Good. That’ll pair nicely with the unsolicited mail I received.”

“What kind of mail?” I asked.

“A glued note. Typewritten. On a page ripped out of one of the zoning books.”

Graham broke in. “Please tell me it didn’t say ‘stop digging.’”

“Oh, it did,” Margaret snapped. “In bold, underlined typed font. Times New Roman. Absolutely tasteless. And if that wasn’t enough, just in case I’m half-blind and missed the underlying message, they added a sticky note. Same message. This one in handwriting I’d describe as ‘threatening but emotionally repressed.’”

“Was it in your mailbox?” I asked.

“In it. Neatly folded. No stamp. It was placed there by hand. He was close enough to touch my porch—and brave enough to think I wouldn’t notice.”

There was a pause.

Graham said, “You think it’s the same person?”

“I think someone’s feeling the heat,” Margaret replied. “And frankly, I’m insulted they didn’t take more creative risks. If you’re going to threaten me, at least use black ink and a fountain pen.”

While they were talking, I walked out to my Jeep. Just to check.

And there it was—a single envelope tucked beneath the driver’s side wiper.

I pulled it loose with a sigh and walked back inside.

“Hold on,” I said. “Adding myself to the threat-of-the-day club.”

Margaret said, “Oh good. He’s going for uniformity. Some lucky spreadsheet’s about to feel deeply validated.”

Margaret liked to believe everyone ran their world in tidy columns and color-coded tabs.

I opened the envelope. “Black-and-white photo. Delilah. Courthouse steps. It looks like it was taken just before she disappeared. Same hairstyle, same pensive expression.”

“Was the photo in an envelope?” Margaret asked.

“Yes.”

“Please tell me you didn’t open it with your bare hands.” Margaret’s voice sharpened through the phone.

I hesitated. Big mistake.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Emma Lynn! With your bare hands?” she snapped. “Have you learned nothing from late-night crime TV? You probably smudged fingerprints, destroyed DNA, or triggered some bizarre Savannah curse—who knows! Next time, gloves. Or tweezers. Or better yet, call me before you touch anything that looks remotely suspicious. Honestly, I need a hotline just for you.”

“Anything on the back?” Graham asked.

I flipped the photo over. “Yep. Six words. She asked the wrong questions, too.”

Margaret let out a low breath. “I bet it’s the same handwriting.”

I glanced at it. “Careful. Masculine. Possibly someone with a deep commitment to blue ink ballpoint pens.”

There was a long silence.

Then Graham said, “He’s escalating.”

Margaret said, “He’s sloppy. Or emotional. Possibly both.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the photo. “He’s trying to scare us.”

“No,” Margaret said. “He’s trying to regain control. But we already have it. Because now we know something got to him. And once a person like that breaks routine, they start making mistakes.”

Graham’s voice stayed level. “We document everything. I’ll call my contact in the sheriff’s office. Quietly.”

“I’ve already started a timeline,” Margaret said. “And yes, there are labels.”

“Of course there are,” I murmured.

“I’m also going to bake something,” she added. “Stress requires structure and pastry.”

There was a soft chuckle on the line—Graham, probably. I didn’t laugh. But I did feel steadier.

He’d come for all three of us. But instead of scattering us, he’d just kicked the hive.

We weren’t backing off.

We were locking in.

And if this mysterious messenger thought a few cryptic notes would undo us, he really, really should’ve read Margaret’s Yelp reviews.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

FINGERPRINTS AND FURY

Monday p.m.

Margaret arrived with her note five minutes after we ended our three-way call.

She said she would’ve been here faster, but she’d stood in her pantry for a full sixty seconds debating whether I had enough chocolate in the house to deal with this level of psychological gamesmanship.

I didn’t.

I had half a protein bar, a questionably old sleeve of saltines, and a box of herbal tea labeled Calm that had never once delivered on the promise.

“Not to worry,” she said, crossing the threshold with the easy confidence of someone who’d been running the place in her head for years. “I brought provisions.”

She set a candy dish on the counter with the dramatic flair of someone presenting sacred artifacts. Inside: four pounds of Hershey’s Kisses. The dark chocolate kind.

“For antioxidants,” she added. “At our age, we have to consider our health.”

“I thought you were bringing supper,” I said.

She pointed to the dish. “I am. Protein, antioxidants, and happiness—all wrapped in foil.”

She removed the lid from the candy dish, reached for a Kiss, and then, without missing a beat, wandered toward the porch with a dishtowel tossed over one arm like she was about to serve a three-course meal to a ghost.

“What’s this?” she called.

I heard the crisp tear of paper. Then silence.

“Emma Lynn.”

And just like that, I was twelve again and had forgotten to put the ice cream back in the freezer. I was the proud recipient of two messages, just in case the first one didn’t scare the bejeesus out of me. This one a photo of me by the koi pond, sitting on the bench, communing. The message on the back, written with a ballpoint pen in blue ink, I’m always watching.

I stepped outside, hands in my pockets like a teenager caught sneaking in past curfew.

“I already saw it.”

Margaret turned slowly, holding the envelope between two fingers like it was leaking arsenic. She had that look in her eye—the one that meant someone was in trouble. Possibly legally. Possibly cosmically.

“You opened it,” she said, her voice flat as cast iron.

“I did.”

“You touched it,” she said.

“I was curious.”

“You touched it with your bare hands?”

“…Possibly.”

Margaret closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose like she was summoning strength from the spirits of investigative librarians past. Then, she marched back to the kitchen, reached into her tote bag and pulled out a Ziploc pouch of fingerprint powder and a mini brush.

“Wait,” I said. “You carry that with you?”

She didn’t look up. “You carry Tums. I carry forensic supplies. Everyone has their coping mechanisms.”

“I don’t regularly need Tums⁠—”

“You live in Savannah,” she said, dabbing powder expertly on the edge of the envelope. “You inhale butter and secrets.”

She was already working the brush like a woman auditioning for a PBS special called Southern Sleuths with Stationery.

“I don’t expect a clean lift,” she muttered. “But the ink’s interesting. This one is fountain pen, I think.”

“Really?” I peered over her shoulder. “I just assumed it was the same as the first one.”

She held the envelope up to the light. “We’re looking for someone with too much time, good penmanship, and an unhealthy relationship with vellum stationery.”

I leaned against the counter, watching her work. “Do you practice this stuff?”

“There’s a YouTube channel,” she said, not even pausing.

“Does it involve fingerless gloves and jazz music?”

“Yes. It’s excellent.”

She was so calm. So precise. I realized, not for the first time, how very little rattled Margaret.

“It doesn’t scare you?” I asked.

She finally looked up. Her eyes were sharp. “It angers me.”

That stopped me.

Margaret’s voice softened—just slightly. “He thinks he’s playing chess. He thinks we’re pawns. But the thing about pawns is, we get underestimated. Until we’re not.”

She slid the envelope into a clean plastic sleeve—produced, of course, from her tote like a magician pulling scarves from a hat. At this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pulled out a barcode scanner and a tracking tag.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“We log it. We cross-reference the handwriting with anything public. We don’t panic. And,” she added, fishing a Sharpie from somewhere, “we leave him a note.”

She opened a kitchen drawer, peeled a sticky note from a pad I didn’t know I owned, and wrote in bold, slanted strokes:

We see you. Keep walking.

Then she signed it. In all caps: MARGARET.

She marched to the storm door and stuck it front and center.

“I’m sorry,” I said, nearly choking. “Did you just sign the warning note?”

“It’s not a threat,” she said crisply. “It’s a warning. That’s different. And polite.”

She stepped back, admired her work like it was going on display at city hall, and nodded with satisfaction.

I looked at my photo in sealed plastic, then the photo of Delilah. Her eyes seemed to follow mine—focused, alert. Like she knew exactly what she’d started.

I didn’t feel alone anymore. Not with Margaret’s brand of furious competence standing between me and whatever was out there in the dark.

“Come on,” she said, brushing her hands off as she walked back inside. “You’re eating chocolate and printing copies of those photos. I’m going to teach you how to spot handwriting tells. It’s fun. And if he sends another note, we’re baking something threatening in return. Like peanut brittle.”

“You don’t bake peanut brittle, you cook it.” I followed her back inside, the porch quiet again, the envelope sealed in plastic and the photo safe in her folder. “I haven’t made peanut brittle in ages.

He wanted to rattle us.

Instead, he got Margaret.

Which, frankly, was his biggest mistake.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

THE WEIGHT OF AN EMPTY GRAVE

Tuesday p.m.

Margaret poured the wine without asking.

It was red—deep, rich, unlabeled—and poured from a reused bottle that once held something from Trader Joe’s but now housed something she referred to only as “better.” She poured with the kind of confidence reserved for women who know where the skeletons are buried and also how to pair them with cheese.

She handed me a full glass with a look that didn’t ask questions, just dared me not to drink it.

I took it.

Graham sat on the couch, one boot bouncing like it had its own agenda, the other flat on the floor. His posture said calm; his leg said absolutely not.

The envelope from my windshield now sat on the coffee table, right between the photo of me—sealed in plastic—and Margaret’s handwritten threat, also carefully encased like evidence in a true crime documentary.

Margaret leaned over, re-read the words aloud like they were etched on granite.

“She asked the wrong questions, too.”

“And look where that got her,” I said.

The room stilled. Not the fragile kind of quiet—this was the heavy kind.

The we’ve-crossed-the-point-of-no-return-but-didn’t-pack-snacks kind.

“She’s not buried at Bonaventure,” Graham said, finally. “We all knew it. We said it out loud. But standing over that empty plot Friday morning…”

“It felt final,” I whispered.

Margaret shook her head. “No. It felt like a beginning.” She set her glass down with more conviction than necessary. The wine sloshed close to the rim like it was bracing for whatever came next.

“We’ve got Eva’s signed consent,” she said, ticking it off with one finger. “The forged deeds. The protest letter. The judge’s signature. The missing survey file. The tailing. The threats. And now…a grave with nobody in it.”

I took a sip of wine that tasted more expensive than I could afford and nodded. “That’s the part that keeps catching in my throat.”

Graham leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped tight. “This isn’t just a murder. Not anymore. It’s a disappearance someone had the power to dress up like a burial. Stone by stone. Line by line.”

“And keep it buried,” I said.

“Until now.”

For a few moments, we just sat with that truth, like it had pulled up a chair and made itself at home.

It reminded me of those long afternoons back in high school, when the three of us would camp out in Margaret’s parents’ den with thrift store notebooks, cold pizza, and one flickering candle that smelled vaguely like cinnamon and opportunity. We weren’t cool. We weren’t loud. But we were the kids who knew things. Who noticed things.

Margaret had been a walking library since middle school—part historian, part heat-seeking missile when it came to the truth. Graham was the quiet one, sharp as ever, always leaning against something with his arms crossed and his thoughts five moves ahead. And me? I was the connector. The one who asked the right questions, noticed the cracks, filled in the blanks. I could read a room like a headline and spot a lie before it landed.

Together, we didn’t look like much. But we paid attention. And in a town like Savannah, that made us dangerous.

Apparently still did.

We all scattered for college—me to NC State, Graham to Georgia Tech, and Margaret all the way up to Sarah Lawrence—but the moment those diplomas landed in our hands, we came home to Savannah faster than you can say “humidity and hushpuppies.” Real life has a way of tugging you back to where your roots run deep...and your mama still does your laundry and cooks you dinner if you ask nicely.

Margaret stood and walked to her bookshelf—the one that looked like it could survive a hurricane, a flood, and maybe a light civil war. She pulled down a thick leather binder and started flipping through laminated pages like they were spell components.

“What is that?” I asked.

“An index of unrecorded burial sites across Chatham County,” she said, still flipping. “Survey errors. Abandoned family plots. Floodplain relocations. You know, bedtime reading.”

Graham straightened. “Margaret, are you thinking⁠—?”

She stopped, looked up, and arched one eyebrow like a full thesis was about to follow.

“I agree, Delilah’s buried somewhere,” I said slowly, watching the words take shape in the space between us. “Somewhere out of the way. Quiet. Intentional. A place they figured no one would think to look.”

My pulse kicked up as the thought settled. “I think we should go back to the marshland parcel.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Margaret’s brow furrowed. “The one Graham owns now?” She paused, her voice sharpening. “If Victor buried her there that took guts…and a stunning lack of common sense.”

Graham leaned forward, nodding. “I can bring the GPR unit.”

Margaret tilted her head. “Ground-penetrating radar?”

He smiled faintly. “Helps you see what’s buried without digging.”

I hesitated. “I should’ve told you both sooner…you know I dream of Delilah.” My voice dropped. “And in the last one, she was there. At the marshland. And someone else was, too—a man in a suit holding a shovel. The same one that was in my Bonaventure dream I told you about.” I looked down at my hands. “I didn’t say anything because it sounded crazy, and maybe it still does. But I can’t shake the feeling she’s there. That she’s waiting to be found.”

Graham crossed the room, pulled a field notebook from his bag, and flipped it open like he’d just been waiting for someone to ask.

“Using GPR isn’t as dramatic as it sounds,” he said, “but it’s accurate. If there’s a void in the soil, if something’s been disturbed or buried, we’ll see it. We won’t know what it is, but we’ll know something’s there.”

Margaret narrowed her eyes. “Is it as satisfying as it sounds?”

“Not really. But it does beep.”

She seemed content with that.

I wrapped both hands around my wine glass—not to drink, but to anchor myself.

To something solid. To something warm.

“And if we find her?” I asked.

“Then we stop guessing,” Margaret said. She closed the binder with a soft but definitive thump. The kind that made you want to straighten your posture and take notes.

“The threats. The truck. The photos. The notes. That’s not noise anymore. It’s escalation.”

“They’re running out of time,” Graham added. “And I think they know it.”

I looked at the photo again. Delilah in grayscale, halfway through a step, halfway through a thought. Her eyes steady. Watching something. Now she seemed to be watching us. She knew what might happen. And she’d left a trail anyway.

“Tomorrow,” I said, surprised by the strength in my voice. “We go to the marsh.”

Margaret lifted her glass again and smiled—just barely, just enough. “Well then. Let’s get some sleep,” she said. “We’ve got a ghost to find.”

And as the night folded itself around the house, I realized we weren’t chasing shadows anymore. We were walking in the same steps Delilah had taken—one careful footfall at a time.

And whatever was waiting in that marsh?

We’d be ready.

Flashlights, field notebooks, fingerprint powder—and four pounds of chocolate.

Because this wasn’t just a mystery anymore.

It was a reckoning.

And we’d pack snacks.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

WHERE THE GROUND WATCHES

Wednesday a.m.

We were back on the marshland by midmorning.

The sky overhead was damp and a low-hanging gray. The wind whipping over the marsh wrapped around your bones and was cold enough to make me question my life choices, my sock thickness, and whether I should have packed a second thermos of coffee.

This wasn’t just a patch of land. It was a threshold. And if this threshold had a welcome mat, it probably read: Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Graham had come prepared. Of course he had. His truck bed looked like a hardware store and a geology museum had decided to co-parent. Ground-penetrating radar, metal probes, a satchel filled with tools that wouldn’t look out of place in an Indiana Jones sequel.

Cables. Stakes. Small shovels. A mallet. Probably a backup mallet. Everything worn but carefully packed, as if each item had its own bedtime routine.

Margaret, naturally, wore her windbreaker—the one with reinforced seams and a collar that made her look faintly like she worked for the Department of Secrets. Her silver hair was twisted into a no-nonsense braid, and she clutched a clipboard full of survey overlays with the kind of intensity most people reserved for Grandmaster chess matches or low-sodium cooking.

And me? I stood at the rock.

The one with D. H. carved into it.

It looked different today. Not mysterious. Not symbolic. Just…annoyed.

The first time I saw it, it felt like a clue. A breadcrumb. Today, it felt like a setup.

“We found the box here,” I said. “The key. The letters. Her brooch. But not her.”

Margaret looked up from the flapping map in her hand, adjusting her glasses with a sigh. “It could’ve been symbolic. You know how people are with metaphors. Especially when they’re trying to hide something.”

“They might have left the rock in place to throw anyone off of the real burial site,” Graham added.

I looked away from the stone and toward the clearing. To the slab.

That too-perfect rectangle of poured cement we’d found months ago—cracked slightly at the corners, edged with rusted nails and forgotten wire. Back then, Graham had guessed it might’ve been a small cottage.

Back then, I still believed people only buried bodies in actual graves.

I walked toward it now, boots crunching across brittle grass. I knelt beside it and placed my hand on the cold concrete.

It hadn’t shifted. Not cracked. Not sunk. Not even flinched at the indignity of Southern humidity.

“It looks too clean,” I murmured. “Everything around it’s falling apart—trees, fences, the chimney—and this slab hasn’t shifted or cracked in decades.”

Graham didn’t answer right away. He was busy hooking up his scanner with the same solemn precision Margaret used to organize her spice rack.

“Foundations settle,” Graham said after a long pause, crouching to run his hand along a jagged seam. “This one cracked at the edges, like the ground prep didn’t reach far enough. Like it wasn’t meant to last.”

Margaret stepped up beside me, her map flapping in the wind like a warning trying to get our attention. “You’re saying someone poured this not to build something—but to cover it?”

I stood, brushing grit and marsh dust off my jeans. “Not to build,” I said. “To bury.”

The wind surged again. Margaret’s map made a bid for freedom. She caught it one-handed and muttered a curse under her breath as she tucked it under her arm.

“So this is a fake falling-down house?” She scanned the cement slab, then narrowed her eyes at the rusted stove pipe jutting from what was left of the kitchen wall. “They even built a half-wall and added a chimney, just to sell the illusion.”

Graham nodded slowly. “A rusted shell to suggest something real. But the age of that pipe doesn’t match the foundation. Someone wanted it to look abandoned for decades.”

I took a step back, chills crawling up my arms. “Because if it looked real, no one would question what was buried underneath.”

Graham powered on the scanner. It gave a high-pitched beep, then settled into a steady hum that felt scientific and a little threatening.

He moved slowly over the slab. Once.

Twice.

A third pass.

He stopped.

His face shifted—not shock, but something sharper. Recognition.

“What is it?” I asked, already bracing myself.

He turned the monitor toward us. Shapes took form. Faint. Long. Narrow.

“Anomalies,” he said. “About six feet by two. Directly beneath the slab.”

Margaret leaned in, glasses sliding down her nose. “Anything else?”

Graham shook his head. “No utilities. No tree roots. No natural voids. Just…this.”

Her voice went quiet. “That’s not a foundation.”

“No,” I said. “It’s a lid.”

We all stilled.

Even the marsh held its breath.

Graham crouched at the edge of the slab and gave it a careful tap with the back of his axe—once, then again—each knock echoing just enough to make my skin prickle.

The sound echoed—not hollow, but not solid either. Like something below it was holding tension.

“This wasn’t meant to support weight. Too thin,” he said.

I took a step back. “It was poured to keep something down.” My chest tightened. “Or someone.”

Nobody spoke.

It felt like standing on the comma in a sentence the earth hadn’t finished writing.

I turned and looked at the rock again—D. H. carved into it like a distraction with good handwriting. It had never been the answer. Just the beginning of the trail. And now, beneath our feet, the ending waited. Or what was left of it.

Graham powered down the scanner with a soft click. “I need different tools. This isn’t coming up easy.”

Margaret nodded. “If we find something, we must have a sanctioned crew. I already drafted a ‘hypothetical site disturbance request last night. Just in case.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?”

“I organized my emergency flash drive instead. It was soothing.”

I just stood there, hands in my coat pockets, the air around me shifting in slow, cold waves.

Delilah wasn’t in Bonaventure. She was here. And someone had poured concrete silence over her. But silence doesn’t last forever.. And next time, we bring shovels, permits, Margaret’s flash drive…and maybe a thermos of courage.

Because the ground was watching.

And it was ready to speak.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CONCRETE FOR A COFFIN

Wednesday p.m.

Graham had to make a quick run to Home Depot for supplies. Once his truck was reloaded, we headed back to the marsh. Margaret insisted we suit up like extras on CSI—gloves, booties, the whole nine yards.

The moment the scan reconfirmed what we already knew—what we feared—we stood for a full minute staring at the monitor like it had personally delivered the bad news.

Then Graham rolled up his sleeves in one smooth motion, the kind that should’ve come with theme music, and said, “We break it. Today.”

No questions. No second-guessing.

Just Graham being Graham—straight to the point, preferably with tools.

Margaret didn’t argue. She just scanned the marsh with narrowed eyes, the way some people scan a room to check for exes. The reeds swayed with the wind, the tide shifted lazily in the background, and everything out there seemed to breathe in slow, suspicious rhythm.

“We need to hurry. It feels like someone is watching,” she said, her voice low, “someone might come to stop us.”

“No one’s watching from here,” I offered.

But even as I said it, I winced a little because I didn’t believe it. Not entirely. Not with the way the trees stood still, and the whole marsh felt like it was eavesdropping.

Graham headed to his truck without a word. He returned with a crowbar and a short-handled sledgehammer—neither of which were what you’d call marsh casual, but of course, he’d brought them. Because Graham always planned for the worst.

We stood in a loose triangle around the slab. Three bodies. One truth.

From a distance, it still looked ordinary. Just a cracked rectangle, slightly sunken around the edges, surrounded by weeds, a rusted stove pipe and the kind of quiet you don't trust.

But we knew better.

This wasn’t poured to support a structure. It was poured to keep something down.

Graham planted his boots, wedged the crowbar into the deepest crack, and raised the sledgehammer like someone who’s had just enough of being lied to.

The first strike rang out like a shot across the marsh. Metallic. Sharp. Way too loud for the stillness around us.

A crow flapped from the trees with a squawk that sounded exactly like rude.

He hit it again. And again.

The slab didn’t shatter—it peeled.

Flaked like old wallpaper in a haunted guest room.

Graham sat back on his heels, breathing steady. “Concrete doesn’t usually do that,” he said, studying the crack. “Unless it’s too thin. Rushed. Poured with too much water and not enough care. Like someone wanted it done fast, not well.”

“Like every group project in high school,” I muttered, watching him pry off a chunk the size of a dinner plate and set it carefully aside.

Underneath wood, not stone.

Graham crouched beside the old slab and tested a warped board near the edge. It gave with a dry groan, splintering as he carefully pried it loose with his gloved hands. Years of rain and rot had done the hard work—now all it took was a little pressure.

What waited beneath made my throat tighten.

I dropped to my knees beside the opening, holding my breath the way you do when you're not sure if you're about to find something—or lose your nerve.

At first, it was just compacted earth. Dry. Undisturbed. But then I saw it—something darker.

And then a corner of cloth.

I reached down, gloved fingers trembling as I brushed it clear. Part of me screamed to stop. But the other part—the one that had followed every thread of Delilah’s story to this moment—had to know.

The fabric was worn, faintly patterned. Faded so much it almost blended in with the earth.

Margaret’s voice cracked behind me. “Is that…?”

I didn’t answer.

I cleared away another inch, fingers trembling, and there it was.

A button.

Metal. Faded. Still holding onto a fold of what might’ve once been the edge of a blouse.

My gloved hand froze mid-brush. Just beneath the cloth, something pale caught the light. I leaned closer, heart thudding. It wasn’t stone—it had a smooth, curved shape, almost delicate. I cleared more dirt, and there it was: a forearm bone, still partially connected at the joint. Radius and ulna, side by side like they’d once carried weight and motion and life.

My stomach turned. Whoever had buried Delilah here hadn’t expected her to be found. But we were here now, and the truth was rising, bone by bone.

There was a shape now. A form, too long and narrow to be anything but human.

Graham crouched beside me. His breath caught on the way out.

He moved carefully, brushing more of the outline, the curve of the shoulder, the suggestion of another arm.

“She was laid down,” he said quietly. “Not dumped. Whoever did this—they didn’t just toss her. They placed her.”

Margaret knelt too, clipboard forgotten in the grass. “Someone cared,” she whispered.

I nodded, throat tight. “And it looks as if that someone didn’t want her found.”

The wind swept past us then—soft, steady, like it had been holding its breath and finally let go.

I stood slowly. The weight of it pressed into my chest—not grief, not just that.

It was the truth. Raw. Real. Heavy in a way no metaphor could soften.

Under our feet, Delilah had waited.

Not just a memory.

A body.

A secret buried in fabric and buttons and silence.

“Call the coroner,” I said. “We don’t touch anything else.”

Graham was already on his feet, pulling out his phone like he’d known this moment was coming since Friday and had a call sheet ready.

Margaret stood next to me, arms crossed, her face the same calm fury she used when someone rearranged the nonfiction section at the library.

I looked down at the shape we’d uncovered.

Delilah wasn’t just a whisper anymore.

She was evidence.

And someone out there—someone who thought a little concrete and a fake house would be enough—was about to learn that some stories don’t stay buried.

Not when the trail leads straight to your door.

And definitely not when Margaret has your handwriting on file and a full thermos of righteous indignation.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

WHERE THE SILENCE ENDS

Wednesday a.m.

The sirens—and the coroner—were still ten minutes out by Graham’s estimation. Maybe more. Unless they got stuck behind a tractor or the world’s slowest parade of golf carts, which, in this part of Georgia, was an actual possibility.

In the meantime, we stood in that particular kind of quiet that always comes after a truth you can’t unknow.

No one said much. There was too much to say, and no right way to say it. Not yet. Not here. Not with the wind whispering like it had given up a secret, and the marsh humming like it didn’t want to be left out of the story.

Graham paced near the edge of the clearing, phone pressed tight to his ear, answering the coroner’s questions in that steady, no-nonsense voice he used when things got bad but hadn’t hit bottom yet. I recognized that tone. It was his “we have a situation, but I’ve already made a list” voice.

Margaret sat on a downed log like it was a throne made of damp regret, her back straight, hands folded over her notebook. Her eyes didn’t stray from the grave—just the exposed edge of earth and burlap. She was staring like if she blinked, the story she’d been chasing for the past three weeks might disappear back into the dirt.

I stayed where I was. A few steps from the slab. I couldn’t bring myself to move.

Didn’t want to leave her. Not again. I owed it to Delilah. To Gran. To Eva. To stay with her now—even if that meant freezing in place like a very determined scarecrow with trust issues.

The marsh murmured behind us, soft and rhythmic. Could’ve been a breeze. Could’ve been a heron muttering to itself about boundary disputes. But then—there was a shift.

It wasn’t loud.

Wasn’t obvious.

It was like the air leaned in. Like the world had turned its head to look.

My shoulders straightened before I even registered the movement. I scanned the tree line. And that’s when I saw him.

He didn’t burst out. Didn’t sneak. Didn’t stumble dramatically like someone in a mystery movie who forgot how feet work.

He stepped.

Like this was his land. Like we were the guests overstaying our welcome.

Black jacket zipped to the collar. Boots far too clean for marsh work—unless he hovered here via drone. Hands in his pockets, face carved from tired stone. He looked like a man who could pass for forty or sixty depending on the light and how many regrets he was actively managing.

Still. Still in the way that made you nervous.

Recognition stirred in my chest—uninvited but insistent.

The man from the street corner. I could tell by the way he held himself.

Likely the same man from Bonaventure. Now, standing six feet away from me. Close enough to be real. Far enough not to be entirely stupid.

“I figured it was you,” he said, voice low, almost soft. “You’re your grandmother’s girl.”

Graham turned fast—mid-call—his eyes sharp, his phone still clutched like a weapon of polite justice.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned.

The man lifted both hands in a slow, open gesture—part surrender, part reassurance. “No intention,” he said quietly.

Margaret rose from her log with the quiet precision of someone who could both deconstruct a zoning ordinance and a man’s alibi. Her notebook was clutched to her chest like it might spontaneously deputize her. Honestly, it might’ve.

But he didn’t look at her. Or Graham. He looked only at me.

“I didn’t think you’d find her,” he said.

I didn’t flinch. “But I did.”

His eyes didn’t narrow. No dramatics. Just a nod—like he’d already had this conversation in his head a dozen times, and I’d just stuck to the script.

“She didn’t belong in the ground like that,” he said, glancing toward the grave. “But that’s how this place works. Always has.”

“You helped cover it up?” I asked, my voice sharper than intended and unapproved by my inner etiquette coach.

“No, I was just a boy when it happened. I helped keep it buried," he said, “but that’s not the same thing."

“Oh, well then. My mistake,” I muttered, deadpan.

His mouth thinned. Not a smile. Maybe regret’s less talkative cousin.

“My Dad tried to stop the worst of it,” he said. “Back then, he thought he could change things from the inside. If he played their game, maybe he could break the rules later. But then they asked him, then me, to carry the silence instead.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

He hesitated just long enough to make it feel like a confession.

“Alan Calloway,” he said finally. “My grandfather signed the order. My Dad ensured it stayed buried, and asked me to do the same.”

“He’s here. In the flesh,” Margaret whispered.

Graham was already dialing again. Probably the sheriff. Possibly the governor. Maybe Margaret’s cousin Ruth who once tackled a man at the Rotary Club.

Alan didn’t flinch. Didn’t run. Didn’t twitch. Just stood there like shame and justice were old friends who’d finally caught up to him.

“Nothing stays hidden forever,” I told him.

He tilted his head slightly. “Some things should.”

I held his gaze. “Then why are you here?”

He looked past me to the body.

The fabric.

The shape we’d uncovered with too much effort and too little peace.

“Because I wanted to see her one last time,” he said quietly. “She was always kind to me. Made me feel like I mattered, back when most people barely noticed I was there.”

“And now?”

He exhaled. “Now I wait. For the knock on the door. For the headline. For the moment everything I’ve protected comes undone.”

“It’s coming,” I said.

“I know.”

For a second, something moved behind his eyes. Not tears. Not quite. But the kind of weight a man carries when he knows it’s finally his turn to pay the tab.

He nodded once. Turned, and walked back into the trees.

He didn’t run.

He didn’t look back.

But I did.

Because this wasn’t over.

The slab was broken.

The name had been spoken.

And somewhere deep in the silence he’d helped build, the reckoning had started knocking.

And this time, we were going to answer.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

THE COST OF TELLING

Wednesday p.m.

We met at the diner again. Same cracked linoleum floor, worn down by decades of tired feet and one extremely aggressive mop. Same chipped ceramic mugs with half-faded red logos from a soda company that probably went bankrupt somewhere around 1996.

Same waitress behind the counter—shoulders hunched, apron crooked, hair in a bun held up by what looked suspiciously like a pen. She never used a notepad, called everyone “sugar,” and moved like she’d seen some things and decided she was unimpressed by all of them.

Everything looked the same.

But nothing felt familiar.

Not to me.

Not to Eva.

She sat across from me in our usual corner booth, back to the window, the morning light filtering in weak and gray, like even the sun was avoiding eye contact. Her hands were wrapped tightly around a mug of coffee that had clearly given up on being warm. She hadn’t taken a sip. I doubted she ever would. Frankly, I wasn’t convinced it was safe for human consumption at this point.

There was no makeup today. No scarf. No jewelry. No armor. Just a woman stripped bare by truth—holding herself together with silence and caffeine she didn’t actually want.

Her face had that look people get when they finally get the answer they’ve been chasing…and realize it doesn’t come with peace. Just more questions. And maybe a stomachache.

I didn’t rush her. Didn’t fill the space with nervous chatter or gentle deflections.

She’d earned the right to sit in the quiet.

So I waited, watching the steam rise from my cup.

She spoke at last. “This morning, I asked my son if he knew who his great-aunt Delilah was.”Her voice barely cleared the distance between us. She didn’t look up. It was like she was talking to the table. Or maybe the ghost of every question she’d never asked.

I sat up straighter, something in my chest tugging like it knew the weight of what was coming.

“He said no,” she went on. “He’s twelve. He likes building things. Takes them apart just to see how they work—radios, clocks, old drones. He’s never asked about the name. Never wondered why I skip certain stories in the family photo albums. Or why our family tree looks like it hit a dead patch and gave up.”

I let out a slow breath. “You didn’t have to tell him.”

Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine. “Didn’t I?”

I held her gaze. “That was never your job, Eva.”

She gave a small nod, but it looked like something inside her resisted the motion. Like maybe she wanted to believe me but her guilt had been squatting in her chest so long it was now charging rent.

Her thumb started tracing the edge of the napkin in front of her. Slow. Steady. Like she could stitch herself shut with the motion if she just kept going.

“When you emailed me,” she said, “I thought you were looking for a headline. Another story to file and forget.”

“I might have been,” I admitted. “At first.”

She looked up again, eyebrows raised. “And now?”

“Now I’m trying to finish one. Or maybe start the one Delilah never got to write.”

The silence that followed didn’t feel like absence. It felt full—like a pause between chapters, not the end of the book.

Then she reached into her coat pocket and slid something across the table like it was made of glass.

White paper. Ordinary. Unfolded. No coffee rings, but it did smell faintly like gum wrappers and determination.

I picked it up gently, half expecting it to crumble.

There, written in her careful, no-nonsense script:

“I give full permission for the findings at the marshland parcel to be made public.”

Signed and notarized.

My throat tightened. I looked up.

She was already watching me. The waitress clanked a plate down at the next table. Eva didn’t blink.

“Tell them everything,” she said. “Don’t hold back. Don’t round off the edges or soften it just because it makes people uncomfortable.”

“You sure?” I asked.

She gave a wobbly nod. “No,” she said. “But do it anyway.”

I swallowed hard and folded the paper like it was parchment from a founding document. Then slid it carefully into my purse.

She reached for her coffee and finally took a sip.

Her face twisted. “This is awful,” she muttered.

I snorted. “Technically, I think it’s classified as a hazmat situation.”

That earned the barest flicker of a smile. The kind you get when the weight’s still there, but you remember how to breathe through it.

Then she looked at me again. Really looked. And for the first time that morning, her voice cracked.

“Do you think it’ll matter?” she asked. “All of it? Finding her. Naming them. Shining a light on every lie they cemented into the ground. Do you think it’ll actually change anything?”

I didn’t answer right away. Just watched her—saw the exhaustion under her eyes, the years of being told to smile and hush and move on. The years of carrying someone else’s silence like it was hers to keep.

And I said, “It matters because they tried so hard to keep her quiet.”

She looked down. Not quite smiling, but almost. “And you refused to shut up.”

“That,” I said, “runs in the family.”

We didn’t say much after that.

The waitress refilled someone’s cup at the counter. A man two booths over sighed loudly over the sports page like it had personally betrayed him. The jukebox blinked in the corner—still broken, still full of songs no one ever played.

But the silence between us?

It wasn’t heavy anymore.

It felt earned.

Like the last page of a story that had waited too long to be told.

And now, finally, someone had picked up the pen.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

IN HER OWN WORDS

Saturday p.m.

The library was closed.

Technically.

But Margaret had never let something as flimsy as “hours of operation” get in the way of a good cause—or a well-timed reckoning.

The back door, the one tucked down the alley where the ironwork curled like question marks and one of the bricks perpetually wobbled underfoot, was locked—but the key had come in a manila envelope hand-delivered earlier that afternoon, with my name written in all-caps, no-nonsense Margaret script. Inside, one note:

“Leave the lights off. Let the quiet do the heavy lifting.” Very Margaret. Also, slightly threatening if you didn’t know her.

I slipped in a few minutes past five in the afternoon, the way I used to sneak into my Gran’s kitchen for buttermilk pie before breakfast.

The Savannah Room welcomed me with its usual hush. Even in darkness, it felt like a place that remembered everything. The air smelled of lemon oil, old paper, pine, and the faintest trace of peppermint—the scent Margaret left behind like a signature.

I flicked on the green glass banker’s lamp in the corner. It cast a soft golden pool across the table, but I didn’t sit down. Not yet. I ran my hand along the back of my favorite chair by the window—the one I used to sneak to in high school when I needed to feel invisible and mildly superior. It still creaked in the same spot. The same pane of glass still fogged up first.

I had already turned in the newspaper story—just the facts: how we found Delilah’s body, a brief account of who she was, and the quiet vanishing of her family’s land decades ago. It was enough to make the evening edition, to stir curiosity, maybe even open a few long-closed files.

But it wasn’t the whole story. Not by a long shot.

For that, I’d need more than a column inch and a deadline. I’d need a book—and a publisher willing to take a chance on the kind of truth that didn’t always come with proof. I planned to write it. All of it. If someone would give the story a home.

Everything here at the library was waiting.

But I wasn’t ready to write that story. Not here.

This room didn’t feel right.

So I turned the light back off, locked the door behind me, and drove home.

Because if I was going to tell Delilah’s story, I needed to do it somewhere that saw her. Somewhere her memory wouldn’t echo—it would settle. I needed Gran’s garden.

The koi pond was still, its surface dappled with shade from the overgrown umbrella palms. It looked like a place untouched by the world’s noise, content in its hush. The fish slipped beneath the lily pads with an air of practiced indifference. Bogie, Bacall, Rita, Cary, and Gable moved like they had nowhere better to be. Our shared bond.

I brought out my tote bag of supplies, an old quilt, and the notebook with my original storylines––one I’d been too scared to write in for years––and a mug of tea that was more emotional support than beverage.

The bench creaked as I sat. Gran’s wind chimes tinkled in the breeze, as if offering moral support from the umbrella palms.

I opened the notebook. The first page stared up at me.

Blank.

Heavy.

Waiting.

I sat with it for a while. Let the quiet seep in. Let my heart stop clenching. Let the story breathe.

Then I began to write.

Delilah Grace Hart was never meant to be forgotten.

They buried her voice before they buried her name. They gave her a stone and a date and called it closure. But what they left out—the protest, the fight, the choice to speak—was the part that mattered most.

She wasn’t silent.

She was silenced.

I paused, my pen hovering, breath hitching like it was trying to catch up.

The next lines came slower.

But truth doesn’t rot the way they think it does. Truth lingers. In boxes. In letters. In initials carved into stone beneath moss and rain and years of forgetfulness.

It waits in corners. In attics. In the backs of drawers you’re too afraid to open. In the hands of women who know how to keep a story safe until someone finally comes along with the courage—or the sheer stubbornness—to finish it.

And when someone finally listens—really listens—it doesn’t stay buried.

This is Delilah Hart’s story.

Not the one written in boardrooms and backrooms and neat, notarized lines.

But the one she left behind.

And then I wrote her story, tracing it from the timeline we’d pieced together. I wrote for three steady hours, letting the truth take shape on the page—layer by layer, memory by memory—until I had the bones of an outline of the book I’d been carrying in my heart. The one I knew I had to write.

When I finally set the pen down, my fingers throbbed, but my heart felt steadier—like something had clicked back into place.

The first step was the outline. Not every chapter. Not yet. But the bones were there—solid enough to carry the weight of what was coming.

Before closing the notebook, I signed it—a silent promise to finish.

—Emma Lynn Whitmore, for Delilah

I rested my hand on the cover for a moment, the hush of the garden folding around me like approval.

The book may not be finished, but what was written so far was true. And for the first time that day, I felt Gran beside me. Not as a ghost. Not as grief. Just there. Calm. Steady. Like she’d always known I’d get to this page eventually.

She never told me the whole story. But she left the breadcrumbs. The storage unit. The ledger notes. The receipts with names scribbled in the margins and passive-aggressive underlining. She hadn’t spoken the truth. But her hands had written it. And now, mine had too.

I pulled the padded envelope from my bag. Margaret had labeled it herself—typed label, naturally—and it was already addressed to a journalist in Atlanta she described as “honest, smart, and terrifying in hearings.”

I slid my handwritten pages inside. Along with Eva’s notarized permission. And the photographs from the marsh.

No bow.

No flourish.

Just the truth.

Wrapped in silence. Finally ready to speak.

I sealed the envelope and set it beside me on the bench. The koi gave no comment—just swirled lazily beneath the surface, their orange and white scales catching bits of filtered light like living punctuation.

I stared at the envelope, wondering if what I’d written was enough. The outline was solid, the story real. But would a publisher see it the way I did? Would they feel the weight behind the names, the land, the silence that had stretched across decades like a held breath?

Maybe it was a long shot. But it was honest. And sometimes, that had to be the place you started.

The koi still didn’t care. But I did.

The wind stirred the trees. A frog croaked in distant disapproval. Somewhere, Margaret was probably sitting in her kitchen, sipping black tea, and pretending she wasn’t refreshing her inbox every five minutes.

And me?

I just sat there.

In the hush Gran left behind.

In the peace Delilah deserved.

And in the knowing that some stories may start in shadows—but they always find their way into the light.

Especially when two strong-willed women and one equally determined man are involved.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

I’M LISTENING

Saturday p.m.

I didn’t stay at home after writing the outline.

I could have. The gate was fixed, the locks changed, and Graham had made it clear he was more than happy to do slow, protective drive-bys if I so much as hinted.

But I wasn’t ready to be alone with the quiet.

Not after looking into Mason Blake’s eyes and seeing the careful way he skirted the truth. Not after hearing Alan Calloway try to explain away his silence. That kind of quiet didn’t feel peaceful. It felt like the hush before a glass tips off the edge of a table and shatters.

So I ended up at Margaret’s instead.

Her townhouse sat neatly between two magnolia trees and a camellia bush that looked like it might lodge a formal complaint if you showed up with muddy shoes. Inside, everything was just as it had always been—flawlessly arranged, gleaming, and suspiciously free of dust. Margaret didn’t merely decorate—she orchestrated. Her coasters matched her tea tray. Her throw pillows rotated with the seasons. Her books stood in precise alphabetical order. And naturally, her napkins were monogrammed.

She’d been expecting me. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Two mugs of Earl Grey steamed on the coffee table—no lemon. Just how I liked it.

Her cardigan sleeves were pushed up, librarian mode fully engaged, her expression saying plainly: I have tissues, a notepad, and possibly access to court records. Start talking.

So I did.

“I need to go through it one more time,” I told Margaret as I sank into the armchair by the window. “Just to make sure we didn’t leave anything out. I owe it to Eva to tell everything honestly and completely.”

Margaret folded her hands on her lap and gave me that steady look she always saved for serious matters. “All right, then. Start from the beginning.”

So I did. Again. As if she hadn’t been right there beside me through every twist and turn, every sleepless night. “I pried the truth out of Mason Blake one guarded sentence at a time,” I said. “He never confessed outright, but he didn’t deny a thing either.”

“He didn’t have to,” Margaret said, voice dry. “His silence did the talking.”

“Exactly. It was like he thought if he kept his answers vague enough, the cracks in that perfect Blake image wouldn’t show. As if saying it all out loud would somehow tarnish what his family spent generations buffing to a shine.”

Margaret leaned back with a little sigh, thoughtful. “Well, their shine’s dulled now, whether they like it or not.”

I nodded slowly, twisting the ring on my finger. “I just want to make sure we didn’t miss a thread. Every name, every hint, every half-truth—if we’re going to write that story, it has to be airtight.”

“It will be,” she said, lifting her chin. “I already spoke with that attorney—Wells, the one I trust. He agrees a strongly worded letter to Mason, along with the proof we’ve uncovered, should be enough to secure Eva’s rightful share—of both the original marshland and the developed acreage. Not what it was worth then. What it’s worth now.”

My heart thumped hard. “You really think so?”

“He does. And I do, too,” she said. “With what it’s worth now, Eva won’t need to worry about rent, or college tuition for her son, or keeping up with his epilepsy meds. It’s more than enough for her to live comfortably in a house she owns in a nice neighborhood.”

I stared at her, relieved to know that we’d told Delilah’s story and secured Eva’s future in the bargain. No more scrambling. No more sacrificing and worrying if her boss thinks she’s a liability.

“I just want to be sure we’ve done it right,” I said, quieter now. “That we didn’t miss anything that could give them an excuse to wriggle out of it.”

“Then tell it again,” Margaret said, with a small smile. “Just one more time.”

And I did—one last time. Not just to relive it, but to claim it.

Margaret listened the way only Margaret could—quietly, patiently, occasionally narrowing her eyes at the very idea of patriarchy.

When I finished, I pulled the flash drive from my bag. It was a tiny thing, unassuming. But it carried the weight of everything we’d uncovered. I set it on the tray beside the tea.

Then came the photograph—Delilah and Clara on the dock, all sunlit smiles and wind-tousled hair. I placed it down gently, as if touching it too hard might erase them.

Margaret studied it for a moment, then reached for a padded envelope already labeled in her careful block handwriting. Of course it was ready. She tucked my envelope and the photo inside with the reverence of someone filing a first edition.

“We’ll get it to the right people,” she said. “Just as soon as you finish the story. Until then, I’ll hold on to Delilah’s proof.”

She studied my face. “So what now? Are you heading back to Atlanta?” She didn’t press me for an answer. Just refilled my tea cup and let the silence make the decision feel mine.

“I’m going to sell the condo in Atlanta,” I said, voice low but sure.

Margaret’s expression didn’t change. She reached for her tea again.

“This is home,” I said. “Always has been. And I can ghostwrite other people’s stories from Savannah just fine—maybe even better, with a porch swing, decent biscuits, and no I-285 in sight.”

“Savannah has always been your home.” Her smile was small and certain. “It was just waiting for you to agree.”

We lingered over a second cup, the kind of quiet between old friends that doesn’t feel empty. And when I finally stood to leave, I hugged her a little too tightly, promising to call in the morning.

Back at Gran’s, I didn’t go inside right away. The night had taken on that dreamy, jasmine-sweet stillness Savannah does so well—streetlights soft as candle flames, moss swaying above like slow-moving ghosts.

I made a cup of tea, sat in the garden with my old quilt, opened my notebook and let the koi pond whisper its lullabies. The lily pads shifted gently under the moonlight, like they were nodding to some secret rhythm I wasn’t meant to hear.

As I sipped my lukewarm tea, my fingers found the key I’d taken to carrying in my pocket—just in case I stumbled across a lock that felt like it might belong to it. I’d found it in the attic that first day, tucked into the wooden box with Delilah’s secrets like it had been waiting to be found. Old-school brass. I ran my fingers over the edge. It hadn’t fit a single box, cabinet, drawer, or storage unit I’d tried. But I wasn’t ready to give up on it. Not yet.

So I carried it with me, like a riddle waiting patiently to be solved.

I turned it over in my palm, feeling the weight of it—memory, maybe—before I began to write, but this time not for a client. Not for anyone but myself.

It was a story about two girls and a boy who met in grammar school—back when promises felt unbreakable and summers seemed endless. Their bond bent over the years, but it never broke. The kind of friendship that lingers, like the echo of laughter in an old house. And how, years later in high school, they solved a murder no one else cared enough to notice.

I called it Buried Beneath the Ivy. A fitting title for a true-crime Savannah mystery.

When I finished the outline, I decided to send it to an editor who once urged me to write my own stories instead of everyone else’s. No note. No pitch. Just the tale—quietly delivered to someone I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. A story about friendship. About what we remember and what we imagine—and how sometimes, the heart can’t tell the difference.

I lingered a moment longer, letting the stillness wrap around me, trying to picture what life would be now—with Henry and Gran gone, and me back in Savannah, living in the house I’d loved with all my heart but never imagined I’d come back to.

That’s when I saw her—a plump calico, expression flat and unimpressed, slipping out from behind a pot of mint like she’d been there all along, staking her claim.

She stared at me, then jumped up on the bench with the confidence of someone who’d already read the lease agreement.

“Hello,” I murmured. “Do I know you?”

She blinked slowly. Classic cat ambiguity. Could’ve meant yes. Could’ve meant hurry up with the tuna.

When I stood, she followed—across the lawn, through the screen door, and right into the kitchen like she’d been doing it her whole life.

“No formal introductions, then?”

She made herself comfortable on the rug with the kind of satisfied sigh that said she planned to stay.

I opened a can of tuna and poured a splash of milk into a chipped teacup. She dug in like the food critic for Southern Living.

Later, she curled up at the foot of my bed, purring softly. I stretched out beside her, the weight of the day settling over me like a quilt stitched from memory and moonlight.

I finally let myself rest.

Until the phone rang.

I sat up, heart racing ahead of thought. The room was quiet but for the steady tap of rain at the window and the cat’s soft breathing.

Unknown number. No name. Just a pulse of dread.

I answered. Too late.

Voicemail.

One message. No transcription.

I pressed play.

A young voice. Shaky but steady. “You don’t know me,” she said. “But I think my sister was murdered.”

A pause.

“She vanished two months ago. No investigation. They said she ran off. But I know she didn’t. I know.”

I held my breath.

“I don’t have money. I don’t have connections. But I saw what you wrote. I know what you did for that woman named Delilah. And I was wondering…”

Another pause. Longer.

“Can you help me?”

The message ended.

Rain tapped harder against the glass. The calico shifted closer, warm against my hip. The whole world held still.

I looked down at the key on the bedside table. Waiting.

And I whispered into the dark⁠—

“I’m listening.”

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Beneath the Buried Ivy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Veronica is am Amazon chart-topping Florida girl living in a Georgia world––specifically the scenic Low Country––where she has realized her lifelong dream of writing fiction. Known for her gripping tales navigating the shadowy depths of Savannah’s haunting allure, Veronica pulls her readers into a labyrinth of mystery and suspense, making it impossible to put down her books until the last twist is revealed.

In her downtime, Veronica enjoys a fulfilling life with her husband, her steadfast partner in love and adventure, and their lively Australian Labradoodle, Fiddler.

You can find a catalog of Veronica’s work on her Amazon author page or her website at: https://veronicamixon.com/