Page 20 of Brody
Laughing under his breath, Brody helped me back to my feet. “Well, at least we know why you ran into the dumpster.” Hepointed to a fresh dent in the side of the container right near where I’d grabbed onto it.
I barely heard him over the sound of ringing metal that echoed in my ears. The dumpster had made a particularly loud clang when I hit it. The noise bounced around inside my skull, knocking things loose wherever it went. I couldn’t keep up with the vague images and impressions that flashed behind my eyes and gripped the sides of my head to silence the chaos.
Slowly, like a fading echo, everything settled down, and a single picture was left behind.
“There was a tree.” Grabbing onto Brody, I shook him in my excitement. “I remember a tree.”
He wasn’t as excited as I thought he would be. With this new revelation, I’d literally doubled my number of memories, but his face remained blank.
With one hand, he gestured toward the forest. “Uh, that doesn’t really help us.”
I scanned the forest near us, but none of them were the right tree. “No. There’s a specific tree. It has pink flowers and a wonky branch. I remember it. Come on.”
Dragging him with me, I headed for the tree line as quickly as I could without actually running. Just as Martha had said, a dirt hiking path split through the trees and disappeared around a bend after only a few dozen feet.
I started to move down the path but was suddenly jerked back by Brody’s hand on my arm.
“Wait. You can’t just go running off into the woods.”
“But I came this way. I know I did. It’s like… it’s like a superstition. I feel it, even if I can’t remember it.”
Brody held onto me tighter. “I understand, but it’s still not safe. We’ve managed to find this much. We can come back with supplies later.”
“But…”
I hated arguing with him. Brody’s words had become law in my mind, and disagreeing with him felt like committing a crime. Yet, I was so close to getting answers, I couldn’t just turn away now.
“How about we just follow the path. I’m certain I stayed on the path, at least for a while. If it turns out I left the path, then we can turn back, but surely a hiking path would be safe to follow.”
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, but after a moment he nodded.
“All right. We can follow the path for a while, but you’re not setting one foot off the path, and if it starts getting too late, then we’ll have to turn back whether we’ve found anything or not. Even a hiking path can be dangerous once it gets dark.”
I probably would have agreed to anything at that moment if it meant we could keep following the trail of my memories. Luckily, Brody was only concerned with my safety and wasn’t the kind of person to take advantage.
All of my clothing was borrowed from Brody, except for my footwear. Those were my one article of clothing that had survived the accident with the tree. The sturdy boots were well suited to navigating the dirt trail and supported the idea that I’d gone hiking off into the woods.
Now, if I could just figure out why I had been out here, then maybe I could finally rest easy.
I hadn’t told Brody this, but I’d remembered something other than a single tree. I remembered why the tree was important.
Something was buried beneath it.
Coupled with my memory of burying someone, I was afraid of what we might find, but I refused to turn back. One way or another, I needed answers.
As we followed the path, Brody told me about a few more stories from his time in the military. They were mostly funny stories, like the time Magnus had accidentally stepped on a hornet’s nest and been chased around their base by a swarm of angry insects, and when they’d been posted in a foreign country that didn’t speak much English and Creed almost accidentally got himself married to a girl from the local village due to a series of unfortunate mistranslations.
I was certain that Brody was leaving out a lot of information from his stories, and maybe even completely making some of them up. Military service surely involved a lot more violence and danger, so he must have been cherry-picking only the most innocent events to tell me about. Still, I listened eagerly and soaked up every word he said like a desperately dry sponge.
Not once in any of his stories was there a hint of romance between him and the other men. Magnus and Creed were clearly important to him, possibly even closer than brothers, but it was an entirely platonic relationship.
It also turned out that Magnus was already dating someone. The third man I’d seen around their home was named Trent, as I’dthought, and although he didn’t live on the property, he and Magnus had practically moved in together.
Brody completely supported the relationship despite it being between two men. While that didn’t mean he was necessarily gay, it at least meant he accepted of homosexuality.
That meant there was a chance.
A chance for what?
