When she comes to her senses, she is at the edge of a wood, near a river where a small, red-haired boy is drowning. Dana wades in after him, drags him to shore, and tries to revive him. The boy's mother begins screaming and hitting Dana, accusing her of killing her son, whom she identifies as Rufus. The boy recovers and a white man arrives and points a gun at Dana, terrifying her. She becomes dizzy again and regains consciousness at her new house with Kevin beside her. Kevin, shocked at her disappearance and reappearance, tries to understand if the episode was real or a hallucination. The Fire Dana washes off the filth from the river but dizziness marks another transition. This time, she comes to in a bedroom where a red-haired boy has set his bedroom drapes aflame. He is Rufus, now a few years older. Dana quickly puts out the fire. Rufus confesses he set fire to the drapes to get back at his father for beating him after he stole a dollar. As they talk, Rufus casually uses the N-word to refer to Dana, which upsets her, but she comes to realize that she has been transported in time as well as space, specifically to Maryland, circa 1815. Rufus advises her to seek refuge at the home of Alice Greenwood and her mother, free blacks who live at the edge of the plantation. Dana realizes that both Rufus and Alice are her ancestors, as they will have a child from whom she'll descend. At the Greenwoods', Dana witnesses a group of young white men smash down the door, drag out Alice's enslaved father, and whip him brutally for being there without papers. One of the men punches Alice's mother when she refuses his advances. The men leave, Dana comes out of hiding, and helps Alice's mother. She is confronted by one of the white men, who attempts to rape her. Fearing for her life, Dana luckily returns to 1976. Though hours have passed for her, Kevin assures her that she has been gone only for a few minutes. The next day, Kevin and Dana prepare for the possibility that she may travel back in time again by packing a survival bag for her and by doing some research on Black history in books in their home library. The Fall In a flashback, Dana recounts how she met