I carefully unfolded the first one.

It was a signed agreement on thick parchment.

The document was dated November twelve, nineteen hundred and eight.

It was a deed of perpetual easement and burial rights.

The Mercer family had granted these rights to the workers who built the estate.

According to the document, the north ridge was legally set aside for them and their heirs.

“Caroline, look at this,” I said, holding the paper near the phone’s light.

She squinted, her pale face tightening as she read the words.

“This can’t be real,” she murmured. “My father never mentioned this.”

“Because he wanted to forget it,” I said.

The agreement explicitly stated that the land could never be sold or developed.

If the burials were disturbed, the title of the entire north ridge would revert.

It would legally go to the surviving descendants of the listed workers.

“The descendants,” I whispered.

The names on the list were familiar.

Many of their families still lived in the valley just outside the estate gates.

The Turners still ran the local hardware store.

The Paynes owned the farm down by the state highway.