I grumbled under my breath as my teeth started to chatter but I followed him through an over grown field toward a row of trees. Garrett handed me a flashlight after turning his on. “You’ll want to watch where you’re walking. There are some holes along here,” he said, indicating the uneven ground.
I was all about some good old fashioned outdoor fun. I loved to hike and had spent most of last summer learning the trails in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains. But even I had my limits. And they definitely applied to traipsing through a field in the middle of the night in a short skirt in freezing temperatures.
But I followed Garrett knowing that come hell or high water I was ready to follow him anywhere. Crazy how a few months can change your mindset so completely.
“If I fall and break my ankle, your ass is carrying me out of here,” I whispered harshly.
“Why are you whispering? Are you afraid Big Foot will come and eat you?” Garrett joked and I swatted his arm.
We walked into the line of trees and come through in a clearing by a river. There was a fire pit off to the side surrounded by a ring of rocks and some chairs. There was a picnic table and a dock with a boat tied to it.
And most importantly there was a small cabin nestled back in the trees. Garrett pulled me toward the small building, stopping in front of the door. He reached out to rest the flat of his hand against the smooth wood, his head bowed.
I put my hand on his shoulder, not understanding the sudden change in his mood.
“Are you okay?” I asked him softly.
Garrett’s shoulders heaved and then he looked up at me. In the gleam of the flashlights I could see that his eyes were wet. “I haven’t been here since…they died,” he said in a rush and I understood that this place had belonged to his parents. And him taking me here meant something extremely important.
I opened my mouth and then shut it; I didn’t know quite what to say. Garrett squeezed my hand before dropping to dig his keys out of his pocket. Fumbling in the dark, he finally found the right one and put it into the lock. With a squeak he pushed the door open and we walked into the heart of his past.
We were met with a blast of stale, musty air. Garrett felt around on the wall until he found a light switch. He flicked it on, illuminating the darkness to reveal a space that looked as though it had been neglected for some time.
The old, worn furniture was covered with a thick layer of dust and grime. There were cobwebs everywhere. I coughed and then fell into a fit of sneezing.
“This place is worse than I thought,” Garrett said more to himself. He went and opened a few windows to try and air the place out. The rush of cold filled the room and I was shivering all over again.
Garrett caught sight of me with my arms wrapped around myself and cursed. “Shit, I shouldn’t have brought you here. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He sounded so dejected that I forced myself to unwrap my arms and unclench my legs so I could walk over to him.
“Well, why did you bring me here?” I asked him.
Garrett lifted his shoulders in a sad shrug. “I was thinking about this place the other day and how much I loved being here when I was younger. Mom and Dad bought it when I was ten and we spent a lot of weekends fishing, swimming, doing your typical family stuff.” He walked over to the fireplace and picked up a framed picture that was covered in so much filth that you couldn’t see the picture beneath the glass. He pulled his sleeve down over his hand and wiped at the frame, slowly revealing the picture of a family smiling together in this very room.
The man and woman were the same people in the picture at Garrett’s house. And the boy smiling a full, happy smile with a head full of unmanageable blond hair was a younger, more content version of the man who stood beside me.