Chapter 3: A Bare Patch Beside The Garden Gate Matched The Leaf On My Screen
I reached the garden before dawn, when the streetlights were still burning and the sky had only begun to thin at the edges. I kept the device in my coat pocket, wrapped in the shirt I had worn beneath my dark one. Its screen was black now, but the message remained open in my mind: the warning, the question, the answer about my daughter, and the final direction.
In the weak light, the garden gate looked less like an entrance than a boundary someone had tried to forget. Its metal bars were damp with mist. Beyond them, the paths disappeared into dark beds and low, shapeless growth. I stopped outside and checked the device. One bar of signal. A notification from work waited beneath the message, repeating the suspension notice I had already seen. I did not open it. I had chosen the garden over the account, at least for the next few minutes.
The leaf lay near the gatepost.
It was small, torn along one side, and pressed flat against the wet ground. A pale vein crossed its center in the same crooked angle I had seen reflected in the warm screen light beside the device. I crouched and lifted it carefully. Damp soil clung to the underside.
There was a matching trace on the gatepost: a dark smear at knee height, as if someone had brushed against it while climbing over or kneeling beside it. I ran my thumb near the mark without touching it. The soil was fresh enough to hold the shape of a fingerprint, though the print itself had been broken by rain.
I looked through the bars. No movement. No voice. Nothing waiting in the paths.
The gate was locked, but the latch had been bent outward. I pressed against it, and the metal gave with a quiet scrape. I stepped inside.
The patch beside the gate was easy to find. Grass had been flattened in a narrow oval between the post and the first flower bed. The earth there was darker than the surrounding ground, and a shallow depression ran across it. Someone had dug with their hands or with a narrow tool, then pushed the soil back without smoothing it.
I knelt and studied the edges. The first disturbance had happened earlier. A second set of marks cut through it, sharper and newer. My own shoe had not made either one. Whoever had searched the patch before me had not found what they wanted, or had found something and left the rest behind.
I set the leaf on the gatepost and used the edge of my device to loosen the soil. Beneath the top layer, my metal edge struck something with a dull, contained knock.
I stopped breathing for a moment.
The object was wrapped in a clear, stiff covering sealed along every side. Mud clouded the surface, but underneath it I could see only a dark shape and a strip of pale material folded tightly against it. No label. No name. No way to tell whether it had been placed there for me or simply overlooked.
I dug around it with two fingers, widening the hole until I could lift it free. The soil beneath was compact and dry. Someone had buried the object carefully, but the disturbed earth above it showed that another person had searched in the wrong place or stopped before reaching this depth.
My device vibrated once.
The screen lit my hands, displaying the incoming connection from the sender. I held it close, my thumb hovering over the answer button. Then the signal bars vanished. The connection failed before I could touch anything. The screen dimmed, brightened, and showed the battery warning.
I tried again. No service.
A second later, the device shut down.
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The garden became completely quiet around me. I held the sealed object in both hands, aware of the damp soil under my nails and the open gate behind me. Whoever had searched here had left no message, no footsteps I could follow, and no reason to believe they were finished.
I did not open the seal. I put the object inside my coat and stood, alone among the dark paths, with the sender cut off and the first answer still trapped inside.
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