Where?

When he lowered his palm it came to rest on the grip of his service revolver.

She ran most of the way.

The route from New Lebanon Grade School to Blackfoot Pond was three miles along 302 (which she was forbidden to walk on) but only a half-hour through the forest, and that was the path she took.

Sarah avoided the marshy areas, not because of any danger – she knew every trail through every forest around New Lebanon – but because she was afraid of getting mud on the shoes her father had polished the night before, shiny as a bird's wings, and on her rose-print knee socks, a Christmas present from her grandmother. She stayed to the path that wound through oak trees and juniper and pine beds of fern. Far off a bird called. Ah-hoo-eeeee. Sarah stopped to look for it. She was warm and took off her jacket, then rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse and unbuttoned the collar. She ran on.

As she approached Blackfoot Pond she saw her father standing with Mr. Slocum at the far end of the water, two or three hundred feet away through the thickest part of the forest. Their heads were down. It looked as if they were searching for a lost ball. Sarah started toward them but as she stepped out from behind a maple tree she stopped. She had walked right into a shaft of sunlight so bright it blinded her. The light was magical – golden yellow and filled with dust and steam and dots of spring insects that glowed in the river of radiant light. But this was not what made her hesitate. In a thicket of plants beside the path she saw – she thought she saw – someone bending forward watching her father. With the light in her eyes she couldn't tell whether it was a man or woman, young or adult.

Maybe it was just a bunch of leaves and branches.

No. She saw movement. It was somebody.

Her curiosity suddenly gave way to uneasiness and Sarah turned away, off the path, starting downhill to the pond where she could follow the shoreline to the dam. Her cautious eyes remained on the figure nearby and when she stepped forward her gleaming black shoe slipped on a folded newspaper hidden under a pile of dry leaves.