No one visits the lower level of the Greenwood County Historical Society unless they have to.
The air is thick with age—dust clinging to every breath, the faint scent of old paper and metal, and a quiet so deep it almost hums. Fluorescent lights flicker above endless shelves packed with forgotten documents, abandoned heirlooms, and fragments of lives no one has asked about in decades.
James Mitchell had asked.
A professional genealogist with a reputation for solving family puzzles others gave up on, James was used to spending his days in places like this. Basements. Storage rooms. Forgotten corners of history. He believed that if something existed, it left a trail.
That Thursday afternoon, he knelt beside a dented metal shelf, sorting through a cardboard box marked:
Personal Items — Unsorted — 1915–1925