The night before the Keeper meeting, none of them had planned it.
That was what I understood only afterward—three separate people arrived at the same decision by three separate routes, none knowing the others were coming, and the last night before everything changed felt less like a coincidence and more like the evening had arranged it.
Evan came first.
Late afternoon, before dinner. He set a folded piece of paper on the table. My fingers found the texture—heavy paper, thin cloth, old, lines worn in the folds.
“The settlement,” he said. “Block seven, lower district. The well marker on the corner, the alley behind the major row.” He paused at the door frame. “It’s gone now. The settlement was cleared fifteen years ago. But this is the map of what it was.”
I smoothed the map f
