“It did, actually.”
I stood up. My legs were shaky, but they held my weight. The forest around us opened onto a small clearing. Among the patch of unobstructed sunlight, a single familiar tree stood alone.
“If you weren’t chasing me, I wouldn’t have come this far. I think… I think this is where I stopped after I got away the first time. Look. I know that tree. I’ve seen it before.”
Small pink flowers and a wonky branch. It was exactly like I remembered.
I took a step toward the tree, but stopped and turned back to Brody, urging him to follow me. “I came into the forest to hide, but I was held up by the cliff. They caught up to me. The… bad people. I got away, but I decided it wasn’t safe. I had to hide it.”
Taking hold of my hand, Brody followed me into the clearing.
“Hide what?”
“It’s… something important.”
At the roots of the tree sat a patch of freshly disturbed soil. Everything pointed toward the fact that something had been buried here, but right on the verge of getting my answers, I froze.
Before all this, I remembered burying someone. Surely whatever lay beneath our feet couldn’t be a dead body.
Right?
I clearly remembered running here while being chased. I couldn’t have done that while carrying the weight of a person, dead or alive.
Shaking away my worries, I knelt before the tree and started digging with my bare hands. The area of disturbed soil wasn’t that big. Certainly not big enough to conceal a person.
Maybe my first memory had been wrong. Maybe I never buried anyone at all, and the memory had just gotten twisted in my mind.
Brody joined me, and together the two of us soon uncovered a small box.
It was plain, with no embellishments. There wasn’t even a hinge. The lid just sat loosely on the top. I could easily hold the whole thing in one hand, and it barely weighed anything at all.
“Well,” Brody nudged me. “Go on.”
Taking a deep breath, I opened the box.
Inside, sat a key.
It wasn’t secured by anything and rattled around loosely. Based on the sound alone, I could tell it was made from solid metal and seemed to be very old. About the size of my palm, it had intricate carvings on the handle and looked expertly crafted.
It also brought no memories at all. I remembered how desperately I’d run to get here, and how determined I’d been to hide the contents of this box, but when I looked at the key, I felt nothing.
This couldn’t be it. There had to be more.
As I was still processing my lack of reaction, Brody suddenly snatched the key from the box. The little bit of metal looked ridiculously small in his large hands as he stared down at the key. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were so wide I could see the whites all the way around his blue-green irises.
“Where did you get this?”
All I could do was shake my head, gaping at him silently like a suffocating fish.
He waved the key in my face, pointing at the carving on the handle. “Do you know what this is? It’s a poppy flower. This is Poppy Milford’s key.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s—”
Before Brody could even begin to explain, he was cut off by the jarring sound of his cellphone ringing. It was a miracle he could even get cellphone reception out here, but since he lived in thesemountains, he probably had some way to ensure he always had a signal.
The sound of his ringtone made Brody jolt in surprise. Still gripping the key in one hand, he answered his phone with the other, putting it on speaker so he wouldn’t have to hold it up to his ear.