By the last afternoon of the conference, Sam's notebook was almost full.

Pages of notes.

Names of people she wanted to remember.

Ideas she'd underlined, circled, and starred.

But at the very top of one page, Sam had written just one question.

It came from a session she'd almost skipped.

The speaker asked it, then kept going.

Sam didn't.

For the rest of the session, she kept coming back to the question.

By the time she left the room, she'd drawn a box around it.

On the flight home, Sam opened her notebook again.

Her eyes went straight to the top of that page.

She read the question.

Then read it again.

It made her think about an old colleague she hadn't talked to in a long time.

I should reach out, she thought.

She closed the notebook.

As the plane landed, her phone started dinging with messages.

Her daughter wasn't feeling well.

Her mother needed a prescription picked up before they left town.

And somehow, despite Sam being away for only three days, she was fairly certain her house would look like a bomb had gone off by the time she walked through the door.

The next morning, her calendar was packed with meetings.

There were 73 unread emails waiting for her.

And at the end of the week, the whole family was leaving town for her niece's wedding, which meant she'd be out of the office again.

The notebook sat on the corner of her desk for the next few days.

Now with a perfectly defined coffee cup ring on the cover.

She still planned to reach out to her colleague.

Maybe after they got back from the wedding?

She could still picture the question she'd written at the top of the page.

It was still itching at the back of her mind.

It felt like a spark.

Something that had the potential to become significant.

But how significant?