One involved a boy called Peter Vale.
Another was a girl named Anna Serrano.
The remaining entries carried no complete names.
“And you want me to identify them?” Emily asked.
“No,” Gideon said.
“Miriam believed you knew what happened in the transfer room, but she never wanted anyone to force you to remember it.”
Emily stared at her mother’s handwriting.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Your mother tried to tell someone once,” Julian said.
“The person she contacted came to her house the next morning.”
“Who?”
Julian hesitated.
“We believe it was someone working for Eastward.”
Emily recalled the way Nora checked every visitor through a gap in the curtains.
“She moved us two weeks after the flood,” she said.
“We left most of our things behind.”
Gideon looked at her with grief that seemed worn rather than performed.
“Miriam was trying to find you when she died last year.”
“Why are you only here now?”
“Because three days ago a box of her papers arrived from a storage unit I didn’t know she kept.”
Julian slid over a storage receipt.
The latest payment had been made one month after Miriam’s death.
It was not made by Gideon.
“Someone else knew where the papers were,” Emily said.
“And someone else wanted them preserved,” Gideon replied.
Chapter Five: The Brother Who Stayed
When the Mercer cars finally left, Emily remained in Rosa’s kitchen until the windows stopped rattling.
The storm had shifted north, but the city still sounded restless.
Rosa placed Nora’s letter inside a plastic sleeve and set it beside Emily’s purse.
“You should make a copy before anybody asks for the original,” she said.
Emily nodded without looking away from the handwriting.
Her mother had written the letter in a hurry, pressing so hard that the pen left grooves in the paper.
There were no declarations of love at the bottom, only instructions about refusing unescorted meetings and keeping a record of every contact.
That practical fear was familiar.
Nora had taught Emily to memorize emergency numbers, never leave identification in a coat pocket, and call from a public phone if a stranger followed her.
Emily once believed her mother had been overly cautious because she had lost someone in a flood.
Now the same habits looked like preparations for a danger that had never ended.
Rosa asked whether Emily wanted to call her brother.
Danny Carter was twenty-three, lived in Columbus, and repaired refrigeration units for a grocery chain.
He was too young to remember Briar Hollow, but he remembered their mother’s rules as clearly as Emily did.
