Natalie and Link exchanged a significant look.
“I know it sounds ridiculous. You don’t need to be involved. I just wanted to let you know why I acted so strangely last night.”
“We have to get back,” Natalie said. “Nice to meet you, Kurt. I hope you find your brother, Andy.”
“Brothers,” Alan said.
“Brothers,” Natalie said, and walked away briskly.
Alan was the oldest of the brothers, and that meant that he was the one who blazed all the new trails in the family.
He met a girl in the seventh grade. Her name was Marci, and she had just transferred in from Scotland. Her father was a mining engineer, and she’d led a gypsy life that put her in stark contrast to the third-generation homebodies that made up most of the rest of their class.
She had red hair and blue eyes and a way of holding her face in repose that made her look cunning at all times. No one understood her accent, but there was a wiry ferocity in her movement that warned off any kid who thought about teasing her about it.
Alan liked to play in a marshy corner of the woods that bordered the playground after school, crawling around in the weeds, catching toads and letting them go again, spying on the crickets and the secret lives of the larvae that grubbed in the milkweed. He was hunkered down on his haunches one afternoon when Marci came crunching through the tall grass. He ducked down lower, then peered out from his hiding spot as she crouched down and he heard the unmistakable patter of urine as she peed in the rushes.