This is Me Trying (Evergreen Ridge)

Chapter 29

Riley

I sit here, cross-legged on the floor, with tears streaming down my face as I go through a box of my mother’s things. I’ve had all of this packed away for years, but the conversations I’ve been having with Finn, telling him about her and the altercation with my father, have me yearning to be closer to her. To have some piece of her. I’ve gone through these boxes of hers four times now, and I can’t find it.

Isn’t it weird losing someone and all that’s left of them are their worldly possessions? They always say you can’t take stuff to heaven, and these boxes remind me how true that is. These things are the story of her. So, maybe you can’t take it with you, but your loved ones can hold on to it in memory of you.

There are a lot of things that I have on display in my own home that were hers, like all the knickknacks that she collected from secondhand shops and a few sweaters that I wear with my dresses in the spring. What’s left in these boxes are a lot of pictures and picture frames that I haven’t been able to bring myself to display, but maybe I will now. Now it feels like reminiscing and not as much mourning, though I will mourn the loss of that beautiful soul for the rest of my days.

The last thing I find in these boxes are all the beautiful scarves that she collected throughout her cancer journey. Once again, she got them from wonderful vintage stores we would visit together on the weekends. There were even a couple of times that she found some designer scarves for a steal, and I can still see the way her face beamed with happiness, even though what she was buying it for was to cover tragedy.

These are all things I’m so glad to have, but there’s one thing that’s missing I can’t remember seeing after she passed. Something I want to be able to wear every day to have her close to my heart. A beautiful vintage teardrop necklace, with the tiniest diamond in the middle. It was something that she splurged on. One of the only things I can remember her ever really splurging on for herself. If it was for me, she would do it easily, but for herself, she always found excuses as to why she couldn’t get something, even if I knew she really wanted it. It was right after her diagnosis that she bought it. As morbid as it sounds, she probably figured that it was the time to do it while she still could.

So, where is it? My eyes widen as the realization hits me, and I begin to cry harder. I know it isn’t buried with her—she wanted me to have it, so I would have never let that happen—but my father did say goodbye to her before she was taken away to be prepared. He has it. I feel my panic rising when I feel strong arms envelop me.

“Hey, hey, Riley, baby, what is going on?”

“Nothing.” I sniffle.

“It’s obviously something or you wouldn’t be this upset. Talk to me.”

“H-how did you even get in here? Should I be worried?”

“Yes, you should be worried. I used the key that you keep under the plant on your front porch. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about how unsafe that is, but now is obviously not the time.”

“Her necklace,” I whisper.

“Whose necklace?”

“My mother’s. It’s gone. I looked through all these boxes four times, and it’s not here.”

I can tell he looks worried, but he pushes on, “Okay, I’ll help you look again.”

“No, he has it. My father has it. I know he does. I never saw it after she passed. She wasn’t wearing it when she was buried, but she never took it off. She wouldn’t have taken it off. He must have taken it when they took her.”

Finn’s eyes darken to something I’ve only seen one other time. When my father confronted me at work. “Don’t worry, Riles, I’ll get it back.”

“No, Finn, I don’t want you to do that. I’m done with him. I highly doubt he has it, anyway. He probably sold it the first chance he got. It’s fine. I’m just being emotional. I was feeling sentimental and decided to look through her things I haven’t looked at in a hot minute and remembered the necklace. If I haven’t thought about it til now, it’s not that important, right?”

“Does it feel important?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Then it’s important. Whatever is important to my girl is important to me.”

I freeze. “Your girl?”

“Yes… are you not mine?”

“Am I?”

“What is this twenty-one questions? Yes, of course, you’re mine. You’ve been mine for a while now, Riles. I was just waiting for you to come around to the idea.”

I smile a bit shyly, which is weird because I’m not really shy around Finn anymore. “Yeah, I think I like the sound of that. So, are you like my boyfriend now? Is that what I tell people when they ask?”

“You mean Chloe?”

I laugh and punch him in the arm lightly. “I have friends.”

“Oh yeah, who?” He smirks.

I scowl. “Chloe, Craig, you. Okay, maybe I don’t have friends, but this is a small town and the busy bodies talk, as you well know, so once Chloe knows, the whole town will. Are you ready for that?”

“Of course I am. I’ve been wanting to shout from the rooftops that you were mine for weeks now, but I didn’t want you to kill me. And Riles, I actually like the fact that you don’t have a ton of friends. It shows me that you’re a good judge of character. You guard your heart, so those you let in, you really care about and you think highly of them. I’m honored to be included in that.”

He kisses my nose lightly and stands up, reaching down to help me up as well. “Where are we going?”

“To the kitchen.”

I bite the corner of my lip. “I know I said tonight would be the night I would cook dinner for you, but do you think we could rain check? Call in take out instead and watch a movie?”

“I figured you wouldn’t be in the mood to cook now, so let me cook for you and we can still watch a movie. How about that?”

I rise on my tiptoes and kiss him lightly on the lips, but he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me to him, deepening the kiss and making me dizzy in the process. I hope this feeling with him never wears off. I will never tire of kissing Finn Hart. “Thank you. You’re amazing. Have I told you that?”

“No, you haven’t actually, and it wounds me.”

“Shut up, you killed the moment.”

“No, I didn’t.” He smirks at me.

“You’re right, you didn’t. What are you making for dinner?”

“What were you planning on making before?”

“Chicken Piccata.”

“Sounds great. I’ll make that, then,” he says, smiling down at me and brushing a piece of hair behind my ear.

“Have you ever made it before?”

“No, but I can follow a recipe, Riles. I’m actually quite the cook.”

“All right, then, let’s see what you got,” I say, ushering him into the kitchen.

I take out a bottle of wine while he looks over the recipe with the most serious face I have ever seen. He looks like a coach going over plays in the last minutes of a game. He rolls up his sleeves and gives me a glimpse of those sexy forearms of his. Then he grabs my apron off the hook with a straight face and puts it on. This six two built man is standing in my kitchen with a floral and ruffle apron, and I lose my mind laughing so hard the wine I was sipping comes out of my nose.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Very serious. What’s so funny?”

I wave my hand at him. “You are what’s so funny. This burly man walking around my kitchen in a ruffled apron is what’s funny.”

He smirks. “But sexy, right?”

I roll my eyes. “Very sexy, yes, but still funny. Now get to cooking, I’m hungry.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He salutes me.

I spend a few minutes watching him work and thinking about how good this feels. To be here, with him in my home, doing normal everyday things with him. I don’t need fancy dates and dinners, I just need this time with him. My mind strays to the fact that our time is running out. The project is almost done, and when it is, who knows where he’ll be. He said he’s not taking that job in Seattle, and it sounded like it was because he didn’t want to leave me, but I can’t expect him to center his life around me. We only just today decided we were officially together. Instead of ruminating on it, I just word vomit out my question.

“What’s going to happen when the project is over?”

“A new project will start,” he says matter-of-factly, and now I’m starting to feel a bit shy again.

“I know, but have you decided where? I know you said you weren’t taking that Seattle job, but you have to take some job, and Evergreen is so small. There must not be that many opportunities, so I can’t imagine it’s a guarantee that you will get a job here, so what will you do? Where will you go?”

He stops what he’s doing and comes around the counter to me and wraps me in his arms again, and my breathing evens out. “Baby, slow down. I can see your wheels turning and where your mind is going. I’m not going anywhere. Do I know exactly what I’m going to do? No, not yet, but I’ll figure it out, and we’ll have those conversations together. We’re a team now. I can’t guarantee I’ll never travel for work, but I won’t be away for long, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now let’s eat and watch a movie.”

That’s exactly what we do, except we only make it through half the movie before my eyes are growing heavy and I fall asleep in his arms because I can’t remember ever feeling this safe and cared for.