Noah flinched.
Anna regretted the sharpness immediately.
She exhaled.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“I do.”
She looked at him.
“You inherited your father’s guilt.”
“I inherited my mother’s silence.”
“Neither of us created this.”
Noah stared at the old photograph.
“But we still have to live with it.”
Colter spoke quietly.
“That’s the trouble with things people bury.”
“They don’t always stay with the person who buried them.”
Noah looked at him.
Colter shrugged.
“I’ve lived long enough to learn one or two inconvenient things.”
Harriet approached again.
“There’s writing inside the lunch tin.”
A folded scrap had been protected behind the photograph.
The pencil marks were faint but readable.
Caleb, if you reach daylight, tell Ruth I am coming home first.
Then I will come back.
Anna read it twice.
Her eyes filled.
“He planned it.”
Noah nodded.
“He knew he was going back before he ever escaped.”
“Why?”
“For Eli.”
Anna looked at Noah.
“Tell me about him.”
“My uncle?”
“Yes.”
Noah sat beside the canvas shelter.
“Eli Reed was twenty-two.”
“Dad was ten years older.”
“Eli could fix almost anything mechanical, but he hated mines.”
“After our grandfather died, Eli took odd jobs instead.”
“Then that summer he became obsessed with these woods.”
“Why?”
“He believed there was an old survey chamber underground.”
“What was in it?”
“No one knew.”
“Old records, maybe.”
“Equipment.”
“Eli liked forgotten places.”
Noah rubbed his hands together.
“The day he disappeared, he left a note saying he was going to Cedar Hollow.”
“Dad found it that evening.”
“So Caleb brought my father here.”
“Yes.”
“And they got trapped.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to Eli?”
“We never knew.”
Anna frowned.
“But your father said Eli might be inside.”
“He thought so.”
“Then after he and Thomas escaped, my father went back to search for him.”
Noah nodded.
“With Caleb.”
“Only Caleb came out.”
“Yes.”
Anna looked toward the workers.
“Then there may be two people down there.”