January 3, 1981
A few days after Sam left, I stopped seeing my Grandmother, because the kids were out of school for Christmas, and everything got busy. I’m excited to go see her tomorrow.
Melanie stayed for the weekend. We enjoyed each other’s company, and I took her out to dinner a few times, and we saw Al and Whitney and the kids. I called my father to see if they wanted to go out, but they were busy the whole weekend.
Then she went back to Florida.
I got an acceptance letter from Boston State College, and will be starting as a full-time matriculated student in the fall. When I went down to the campus to drop off the necessary paperwork, I asked about taking courses before that, and they told me that I’d be able to take two during the spring semester, and two during the summer. For the spring, I signed up for English Composition, and Calculus which will are the first level classes I’ll need.
Christmas came, and I spent the holidays at home. Melanie had to work, and I didn’t want to overdo things too early with my family. If, all of a sudden, I started showing up at every event, I knew that it would become suspicious. They were welcoming, but I didn’t want to push to soon.
In all of the free moments I had those days, I had hope, and I want to thank you for that. I was sad to see you leave, Sam, but thank you for helping to put me back in a situation in which I know I’m not alone, thank you for making me tell Melanie. But, I’m really curious about these other travelers. I need to know more, even if it’s indefinite, I need to know more. Who are they; and why did they go back; and are they operating independently of our time-travel technology. I have four and a half years to ponder these questions, and to try to think of ways to identify others. I know you said you couldn’t tell me, but I’ve begun investigating. I put an ad in the personals in The Globe.
Do you know Samantha Cole? Did you help her move back in October? If so, I need to talk to you. If so please mention how you know her. Please respond to “P.O. Box 22216, Lynnfield MA, 01940”.
I’ve received about fifty responses, all but one of them are completely unlikely to be true; most were obscene. That’s good to know somethings never change.
One of them seems like it’s possibly true.
I was told that I’d only need to help her move her broken down vehicle off of the road, and then there would be no further contact. Is she ok?
The response included a similar P.O. Box number in Salem. It’s clear that whomever you had help you, is as skittish as I am about revealing the whole truth of their time-travel. Did you not tell them about me? I really need to know, and I suspect correspondence with your mystery benefactor isn’t going to help me learn anything at all.
Since I worked straight through the holidays, I told my boss I needed to take a month off to go home and take care of some business. The truth is, I’m going to down to Pennsylvania to see Judy, then I’m going to Florida to see Melanie, and then Vegas to gamble on the results of the Super Bowl again. Melanie is going to fly out and meet me in Vegas; apparently she’s never been before.
I leave for PA tomorrow, and I’ll stay there for a night, and then head on to Florida for a week.
Without a Tether 
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