Lizzy felt an immense curiosity. What were they doing here? Why had they come? Why had Bessie been crying? But all she asked was, “Where to now, Bessie?”

Bessie’s voice was shaky. “To the left. Follow the lane all the way around to the far right corner.” A few minutes later, she put her hand on Lizzy’s arm. “Stop, Liz. We’re here.”

Here, Lizzy saw, was the unoccupied back corner of the cemetery, where a barbed wire side fence right-angled into an old stone wall that was covered in kudzu vines. The rest of the graveyard was neatly mowed and trimmed, and there were bouquets of flowers tucked into Mason jars at the foot of many of the headstones. There was even a recent grave, a heap of wilted flowers from mourners’ gardens blanketing the freshly turned soil—Mrs. Turner’s grave, Lizzy guessed. The old woman had died the week before. But there were no headstones in the back corner, hidden behind a clump of trees. The area had been allowed to grow up in Johnson grass and weeds, and in contrast to the tended graveyard, it wore an air of unkempt neglect.

Lizzy and Bessie got out of the car. The sky overhead was darker now, and a moist breeze that smelled of rain lifted the kudzu leaves on the vines along the stone wall. Lizzy shivered, feeling somehow apprehensive, but not knowing why. She clasped her arms around herself and stood for a moment, glancing around.

“Okay, so we’re here. What are we looking for?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Bessie said bleakly. “Maybe a grave marker, or maybe a metal stake. Or maybe nothing at all.” She pointed toward the corner. “Let’s just walk around and look. Back there, along the wall.”

Lizzy followed her friend through the tall grass, the foliage catching at the hem of her dress. Not having any idea what they were looking for, she felt doubtful and hesitant. But following Bessie’s lead, she kept her eyes on the ground—or rather, on what she could see of it through the thick grass. The light seemed to be dimming as the clouds thickened over the noon sun, and in a nearby tree a crow squawked, protesting their intrusion.

A moment later, she stubbed her toe against something and looked down. At first she thought it was a rock, perhaps fallen from the wall. But when she reached down to push the grass aside, she saw that it was a small, irregularly shaped piece of rough-cut granite, sunk crookedly into the ground and almost covered with earth. There was only a corner sticking up an inch or so—the corner she had stumbled against. In the center, there were two crooked letters, shallowly and inexpertly cut with a chisel. HH.

“Bessie,” she called urgently. “Come and see.”

Bessie hurried over and looked where Lizzy was pointing. With a little moan, she dropped to her knees and touched the stone, then began to pull the grass away from it. As she did, Lizzy thought she could trace out the larger outline of a grave, its surface sunken a little.