Or had someone been obsessing over her in secret? The next morning at 5:00 AM, Daniel was back at Oakridge Cemetery. The air was bitterly cold for July, a heavy ground fog swirling around the grey tombstones. Daniel walked through the main gate, which Sylvia had agreed to leave unlocked for him, and navigated the foggy pathways toward Section C.
As he rounded the bend near Emma’s plot, he saw the grass was drenched again. Water glistened on the headstone in the dim predawn light. Beside the granite base lay a new object. Daniel rushed forward and dropped to his knees. Pressed into the mud beneath a fresh chevron footprint was a folded piece of white lined notebook paper, secured by a small gray stone.