The names faced downward. Carpenter Noor discovered them when she lifted a damaged board from the raised walk. They belonged to workers who rebuilt the route after a storm, including her grandfather.
The official plaque named the committee and its donors. The board listed the people who carried timber through the mud. Noor found a photograph showing some of them at work, but could not identify every face or verify every scratched initial.
She preserved the board and asked the community archive to collect accounts before printing a definitive list. Her grandfather's contribution mattered to her, but she did not want family certainty to fill the gaps beside other names.
The replacement board went down unmarked, making the walk safe again. At the archive, the old underside faced visitors for the first time. People supplied photographs, corrected spellings and argued about dates. The hidden list became a starting point for that work rather than a finished history simply because it had survived in wood.