She stood on the bank, arms crossed on her chest as she watched a red-orange leaf float in the small millpond, dragged inexorably to the dam by the strong current. Finally the leaf plummeted over the spillway, then spun downstream. It would likely get hung up on a rock, a fern, driftwood or a patch of mud or moss long before it got near Quabbin—and it wouldn’t care, because it was a leaf and it had no plans, no goals, no one to disappoint or cheer it on. Footloose and fancy-free or pathetic? Samantha lowered her arms to her sides and glanced at the boulder where she’d sat yesterday, recovering from her relatively minor bout of smoke inhalation and waiting for the firefighters. No journal. She would have easily spotted its bright red cover among the tall grass, ferns and rocks. If it had slipped into the brook, the water was clear and shallow enough that she would have seen it. That meant she hadn’t dropped it out here, or someone else had found it.
