Emily read the letter again.
The sentence about not letting the Mercer family take her alone did not mean Gideon was necessarily dangerous.
It meant Nora had once believed someone bearing that name might be.
That difference mattered.
Emily refused to surrender it in the excitement of a powerful stranger taking an interest in her life.
“I’m going to that cemetery tomorrow,” she told Rosa.
“Then I’m driving,” Rosa replied.
“Your tire makes a sound like a washing machine full of rocks.”
Emily laughed unexpectedly.
It was a small sound, but it reminded her that the world had not become entirely unfamiliar.
Chapter Six: The Grave Without a Name
The cemetery stood behind a closed textile mill on a hillside above Briar Hollow Creek.
Its gates were open, though the office had not been staffed in years.
Emily and Rosa walked past weathered stones while damp leaves stuck to their shoes.
The February memorial Danny described stood beside a maple tree with a hollow trunk.
It was a square block of granite without a name on its front face.
On the back, beneath a faded carving of a paper star, someone had etched a single date.
The date matched the night of the evacuation.
Emily touched the carving.
Her mind offered a sudden image of Peter Vale lifting a green lunchbox like a trophy.
He had been a year older than she was and never stopped talking about the planets.
She remembered that he called the paper star a comet and insisted it needed a tail.
The next memory was of Nora pushing both children beneath a row of folding tables while men argued near the gymnasium door.
Emily withdrew her hand from the stone.
“Are you okay?” Rosa asked.
“I remember hiding.”
“From the water?”
“I don’t think so.”
They heard tires on gravel before seeing the pickup approaching through the trees.
It was an older truck with a dented tailgate.
A man in a gray work jacket climbed out carrying a bouquet of white carnations.
He stopped when he saw them.
“You shouldn’t be here for photographs,” he said.
“We’re not taking photographs,” Emily answered.
The man looked at the paper star on the stone.
“Then who are you?”
“My name is Emily Carter.”
The flowers slipped slightly in his grip.
“Nora’s girl?”
Emily nodded.
He introduced himself as Walter Vale, Peter’s uncle.
Walter was sixty-eight and had worked as the school maintenance supervisor before the flood.
He came to the cemetery each February because Peter’s mother had believed her son died that night.
