Were Miranda’s death thirty years ago and Prescott’s murder two days ago related? I didn’t think so, at least not right now, but it seemed to me there was some link connecting the two of them. I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

The Avery family had its own gated memorial in the middle of what was a historic burial ground that had been established in the mid eighteen hundreds a few years before the Civil War. Although anyone might have thought differently, its name—Union Cemetery—didn’t imply that it was a burial site for Union soldiers. Instead the name came from the united decision of a group of local churches to create a cemetery open to all denominations and faiths on land that, in those days, was on the far outskirts of Leesburg. Now the town had grown up around it.

It was a peaceful, pretty place surrounded by pre–Civil War trees and lanes that wound past rows and rows of weathered granite gravestones. A Confederate War Memorial, where Confederate and Union flags were set out on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, stood at one end. A thirty-foot-tall granite column, which had been designed for a public building in Washington, D.C., had been installed in the 1890s after the builders rejected it when they discovered that it was imperfectly cut. A few years later, a sweet little sandstone chapel was also built on the cemetery grounds.

The Avery obelisk, one of the tallest with a distinctive Celtic cross on top, wasn’t difficult to find. I drove through the main entrance and immediately saw it on a bluff practically in the middle of the cemetery. Jock Avery, it was said, had used the Italian stonemasons who worked on his home to carve the four-sided obelisk’s intricate design and the cross. The family name, which had been embellished with gold, glittered in the bleached-out light on this blustery December afternoon.

The wrought-iron gate to the Avery graveyard unlatched with a complaining creak and I let myself inside. At least half a dozen headstones surrounded the obelisk and there was space for more members of the family when their time came. I found Tommy’s and Miranda’s markers next to their mother’s and wondered if Prescott would be laid to rest beside Rose or whether he and Rose had decided they would be on either side of their beloved children. So far it looked as if there were no plans to prepare for Prescott’s casket to be interred here. But if it snowed and the ground froze, the family would have to wait anyway. Plus the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office still had to release Prescott’s body. The funeral would take place after that.