I had seen it before.
Not at Westbridge.
On Claire’s silver bracelet.
She wore it on Sundays, and Emma remembered it clearly.
“What does it mean?” Chen asked.
“I don’t know.”
I called Rachel.
She answered after one ring.
“The tree on Claire’s bracelet,” I said. “Where did she get it?”
There was a pause.
“Our grandmother gave it to her.”
“What did it represent?”
“A family organization.”
“What kind of organization?”
“I’m not sure. Grandmother called it the Seven Branches Society. I thought it was some old scholarship club.”
“Did Westbridge have a connection to it?”
“I don’t know.”
Chen searched public records while we spoke.
The Seven Branches Society had been established nearly seventy years earlier as a charitable trust supporting music education, widowed parents, and children of military families.
Its current listed partner organizations included Westbridge Academy.
One of its trustees was Principal Halloway.
Another was a name I recognized immediately.
