She would read the diary, she decided. She sensed that there was something in these pages she was meant to read. Perhaps one of the answers she was searching for. Leaning back in her rocker and raising the flashlight into position, she opened the diary to the first page and began to read.

June 12, 1912 Dear Diary, I am alone in my room. Mrs. Hodges thinks to punish me and told me to write in this diary. It will teach me not to draw on the walls. She was very angry and said I was not the lady my mother was. That was very hurtful of her to say. I don't remember my mother.

I don't see what the fuss was all about. After all, it is my room isn't it? And my drawings are quite lovely. I spent a very long time on the Turk's cap lily. It is a very difficult shade of red-orange to get right. There are so many different kinds of wildflowers. Lowrance knows the names of all of them. I hope that by knowing the names and habits of things wild, I shall feel a little less afraid of the woods. I do not wish to be afraid.

Daddy says that fear is our greatest enemy. He also tells me that we are most afraid of what we do not know. I believe this, too.

So that is why I painted wildflowers on the walls. Not to be headstrong or selfish, like Mrs. Hodges said. Not at all! I thought if I painted the flowers on the wall, I would see them each morning when I awoke and each evening before I fell asleep and I would learn their names.

I do hope Daddy won't be angry at me. My Daddy is the handsomest man in the county, everybody thinks so. People tell me we both have the Watkins dark eyes. His eyes have so much love in them that seeing them makes me want to try harder to be a good girl. I don't think Daddy ever sins like I do. I wonder, can ministers sin?

I won't write any more in this silly diary. I shall lie in bed and read Wind in the Willows. I wish I could escape from this stuffy old house and live with Rat and Mole at Toad Hall. When I grow up I shall live deep in the woods and fish and hunt and do whatever I want to do-even if I am a girl.

So, this is good-bye Diary!

Kate Watkins Mia finished the entry and stared into the fire. What a precocious girl, she thought. Mia could almost hear her voice. She reached over to pick up the picture and looked once more into the girl's face. She saw the challenge in the lift of her chin. There was a maturity to her writing-even wit. Most certainly, there was stubborn will. She smiled ruefully as she set the photograph aside. Wasn't it amusing that both she and Kate were afraid of the woods, Mia thought, feeling a bond with the young girl.

And what a lovely idea of hers to paint the wildflowers on the wall. She had once read how Whistler had painted the walls of Lillie Langtry's drawing room with gold fans because she'd found the room so dull. Mia thought that Kate's choice of indigenous wildflowers was much more clever. Her mind went to the china she'd discovered in the armoire. Each plate was hand-painted with a wildflower. Mia smiled, making one more link.

Eager for more, she tucked a leg beneath her and turned again to the diary.

June 13 Dear Diary, It is because of Daddy that I have decided to write again in this diary. I would do anything for him. He is more than just my father. He is my teacher. My fly-fishing companion. My best friend.

Last night he walked slowly along the wall, hands behind his back, studying my paintings. Then he stopped before my painting of the Turk's cap lily. "A very good rendition," he told me. "But there should be six segments, not five." He told me if I was going to be a serious student of nature, then I had to pay attention to the details. He said, "Nature is nothing if not a miracle of details."

When Daddy asked me why I had painted on the walls I told him about my plan to learn the names of all things that live in the woods. He liked that idea a lot. I could tell by the look he got in his eyes. It was the same look he gets when he catches a fish. Then he called me his own little naturalist. Me! I've never heard him call Lowrance a naturalist. He went to his room and brought back his fishing diary. Its binding looked like the heavy tweed of his outdoors suit. There were neat black lines that were filled with my father's tidy script and pencil drawings of trout and the flies he used to catch them.

I never even knew there was such a thing as a fishing diary! But I knew at that very moment that someday I was going to make a fishing diary of my very own. I looked up at Daddy and he laughed and said I looked like a trout on a hook! Daddy told me to take pains to be accurate with my entries. He said it is better to write one entry carefully than to write a dozen willy-nilly. In life, he said, I should trust my own eye and not rely on what others tell me.

This is my plan. I will begin with wildflowers. Then I will move on to trees. Then critters. By the end of summer I will know as much as Lowrance. Maybe more. Most of all, I will not be afraid. I will make the woods my own!

Very truly yours,

Kate, the Brave

Mia leaned back and rocked for a long time. Gazing at the fire, she thought of the words she read and the spirit behind them. Even though just a girl, Kate had confronted her fears. Children were innocent of their own mortality and it made them fearless. Yet Mia felt that spirit still lived in all women's souls. Don't we all need to go bravely into the woods? she thought.

As she rocked, Mia stared into the flames and saw herself lying on the gurney, waiting to be rolled into surgery. She was pale and thin, looking up into the fluorescent lighting, trying to be brave knowing that in a short while her body would be cut in a battle to save her life. She was offering her breast as a sacrifice to the gods with hope they would be appeased and let her live. Mia remembered the fear she felt when the oxygen mask was placed over her mouth, wondering for one black moment if she would ever wake up.

She had confronted death, and hadn't she found her way back from that darkness? Wasn't that brave, Mia asked herself?

Mia stopped rocking, rose from the chair, and went from window to window, opening them wide to the dark. What, she demanded of herself, was she afraid of? The night had no hold on her. Every moment of her life was a victory over death. Standing in the middle of the room she called out, "I am Mia the Brave!"

Chapter Five.

Dear Diary, Today I begin my life as a naturalist! Isn't it a lark? I am beginning a nature journal and will go into the woods to gather wildflowers. I adore them! When I walk into a mountain meadow and see bursts of pale pinks, shimmering white, deepest reds, I am certain I am entering a fairy land. Or when Daddy takes me with him to the river early in the morning, I see the daintiest blossoms peeking at me through the rocks. I think I've never seen anything more lovely.

Every day I will go a little bit farther into the woods. Day by day, until I am no longer afraid.

Very truly yours,

Kate, the Naturalist

Mia hummed as she drove down the dusty road. She should be tired. She'd read Kate's diary until the wee hours of the morning and woke when she heard the early birdsongs outside her open window. She laughed aloud. How wonderful it was to let the music in!

She'd never slept so well. Certainly not since she'd arrived in the mountains. Before going to bed she'd put that ridiculous, humongous knife back in the kitchen drawer where it belonged. With the window above her bed open, Mia fell asleep to sounds she'd found frightening earlier: the melodic calls of a night bird, the hoots of an owl, the stirring of trees in the wind lulling her to sleep with whispered rustling. She'd slept without a single bad dream or haunting memory. And when she woke, she wasn't sweaty and groggy. She felt deliciously refreshed. Looking up at the sky, she saw it was a brilliant cerulean without a cloud in sight. Mia tapped the wheel in time to the music on the radio.

She went first to Shaffer's for coffee. The little bell clanged as she came in, and Becky called out a welcoming hello.

"You're back!" she exclaimed from behind the counter.

This time Mia wasn't aloof; she smiled warmly and ordered a coffee and a powdered-sugar cruller. Then she pulled out a second chair at her table. "Care to join me for a cup?" she called out.

Becky's brows rose. Then she smiled wide and came around, limping slightly. Gripping the sides of her chair she eased gracefully, though slowly, into the chair.

"How are you?" Mia asked, concerned about her leg.

Becky adjusted her seat and shrugged. "There are good days and bad days. Today's a pretty good one." She waved her hand, eager to change the subject. "Anyway, how are you doing up there in the Watkins cabin? Any good ghost stories to share?"

"Not unless you consider the lights going out a ghostly event."

"Really? They just went out?" Becky slapped her hand on the table and her eyes gleamed. "I knew it. The place is haunted. What did you do? Whooee, I'd've been out of that cabin and in my car in two seconds flat. Gimp leg or no."

Mia laughed and shook her head. "Sorry to disappoint you, but it wasn't a ghost. It was the toaster oven. I blew a fuse."

Becky laughed heartily, enjoying the joke. "Damn. And here I thought all those stories we heard about Kate haunting that house were true." She wiped her eyes, chuckling again. "I'm thinking you might do best to keep that bit about the toaster oven to yourself. It's good that folks think that place is haunted. Keeps the kids from going up there if it stands empty. They're always looking for a place to hang out."

"Becky, what do you know about Kate Watkins?"

Becky took a sip from a mug of steaming coffee.

"Not too much. She used to be kind of a legend in these parts. I guess you could say she went from famous to infamous. Why?"

"Living in her cabin makes me curious. That's all." She set down her cup and put her chin in her palm. "What was she famous for? The murder?"

"No, no, that mess all came later. Our Kate used to be famous for fly-fishing."

"Really?" she said, inordinately delighted by this. So Kate made it as a fly fisherwoman after all. She noted that Becky had referred to the woman as our Kate.

"I didn't think women did much fly-fishing back in the nineteen hundreds. Wasn't it a male sport? All clubbish and no-women-allowed kind of thing?"

"It still is in some parts. When anglers come in to pick up their coffee and doughnut, I still hear some old farts grumble about women in the streams, like they have no right to be there." She harrumphed. "But it's changing. We've got groups of women coming up here to fish now, same as men."

"So Kate was a pioneer."

"I guess. Of course, she had the social standing to back it up. When you got money, you can get away with a lot and no one gives you grief. At least not to your face."

"Oh? What social standing?"

Becky looked at her sideways. "She was a Watkins."

When Mia still looked at her with puzzlement, Becky said, "You know this town is called Watkins Mill, don't you? She was one of those Watkinses."

"I'm not from these parts so I don't know the family. Are they like the Vanderbilts?"

"Well, hell, honey. There aren't many that can stand with the Vanderbilts. You ever been to the Biltmore? Who hasn't, eh? Such opulence! Some two hundred and fifty rooms in that house. And I complain about cleaning my eight. Famous people from all over the world came to visit them back when." She reached over to help herself to a piece of Mia's cruller. "The Watkins house isn't too shabby, though. Did you ever see Watkins Lodge just up the road a piece?" She popped the doughnut into her mouth, sprinkling her chest with powdered sugar.

"I've seen the brochure." Mia recalled the impressive Queen Anne mansion on the rolling grounds. She had thought Kate came from money. The diary photograph indicated a certain lifestyle, and her father had a housekeeper and a cook. But she didn't expect the level of wealth that would have been required to live at an estate. "That's quite a grand place."

"It's been added on to over the years, of course. All the new buildings, the lodge, the spa-none of that was there back when Kate lived there. But the main house, that's where she grew up."

Mia smiled, thinking of the little girl's bedroom walls painted with wildflowers. She wondered if the child's paintings were still there, lighting up the plain white walls. Probably not. They undoubtedly had been painted over by new owners. Made into the dull and proper hotel room.

Becky took another sip of her coffee, getting a little caught up in the topic. "The Watkins family owned a chunk of land hereabouts, too. Thousands of acres. But then the Depression came and they went under."

"That's when they sold their house?"

"It was a common enough story back then. Lots of estates were sold off."

"The loss of a fortune is hardly a scandal or a mystery."

"No, but the thing is, Kate became a recluse. A one hundred percent, genuine hermit."

A young mother came in with a girl in tow. The girl let go and ran to the glass cabinet, flattening against it and declaring which pastries she wanted to buy. Becky rose but before she walked off she turned to Mia.

"And don't forget, there was that little matter of a murder."

She wanted to ask more questions but another customer came in, jingling the bell. The more Mia learned about Kate, the more intrigued she became. She paid her bill and left.

She went first to Clark's Hardware. A small-framed man with wisps of gray hair on the top of his head stood at the cash register. He wore an apple red apron with the name Clark's Hardware in bright green letters.

"Can I help you?" he called out in a flattened voice.

"Yes, thank you." She looked at the aisles of tools and gadgets and felt lost. "I'm not sure I know what to ask you for."

"Don't be shy. That's what I see as my job, hear? To help the customers, especially the ladies when they get confused. We're a small bread-and-butter kind of place and service is our middle name." He stuck out his hand. The bones were delicate and he had a soft grip. "I'm Clarence Clark, the owner of this store."

"Hello," she replied. "Mia Landan."

"You from around here?"

"I'm from Charleston."

"We get lots of visitors from Charleston. Pretty city. I go there often. So, what can I do you for?"

"Well, Clarence, if I may call you Clarence?" He nodded emphatically. "I have a problem."

Clarence removed his glasses and polished them briskly. "Ask away. I'm your man."

Mia told him how the cabin had lost power when she'd plugged in the new toaster oven she'd just purchased in his store.

"Blown fuse, no doubt about it. I'll bet that electrical system is ancient. Did you bring a fuse with you?"

Mia shook her head. She was embarrassed to tell him she couldn't even find the box.

He put his glasses back on and pursed his lips in thought. "Probably just as well. Those old fuse boxes can be tricky. I wonder what size fuse it would take?" He thought, drumming his fingers on the counter. "Was it the kind you screw in?"

"Honestly, Clarence, I have no idea."

"Do you know where the fuse box is?"

Mia shook her head.

He sized up the situation quickly. "I'll have to come up and have a look-see."

Mia bet he'd love to be the first to see the inside of Kate Watkins's cabin. "All right, yes, thank you. That would be fine, if you can spare the time. It's a drive."

"I'll get Joe to come in and cover for me while I'm gone." He could barely restrain his enthusiasm. "I'll just be a minute."

"Before you go...I need some wood for the fireplace. Can you tell me how I can get that?"

"You've come to the right place. Do you want a cord?"

Mia sighed and shrugged. "What's a cord?"

His eyes widened. "Why, uh, a cord is the measure by which wood is sold." He leaned closer and spoke in a tone of confidence. "You've got to be careful where you buy your wood. I hate to say it, but there are some less than honest people who'll take advantage of a pretty girl like you. You don't want to get burned buying firewood." He laughed at his own joke.