Leo closed the notebook. He looked at the water. It was calm again, holding its secrets close.
He dragged it onto the exposed roots of the pecan tree. The zipper was corroded but still held. Inside, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag that had somehow kept most of the water out, were notebooks. Dozens of them. Moleskines, the black ones, their pages swollen but legible. Falcon Lake
He did not call the police. Not yet. First, he sat on the roots of the drowned tree, the notebooks stacked beside him like a tombstone, and he listened to the lake. Somewhere beneath him, a church bell from Old Zavala still stood upright in the murk, its clapper long rusted silent. Leo closed the notebook
Not a strike. A snag.
Most tourists came for the trophy bass—the double-digit giants that lurked in the flooded brush. But Leo came for the quiet. And lately, the quiet had been speaking to him. He dragged it onto the exposed roots of the pecan tree
