6. Tessa #2
“Yeah,” she said, an automatic response really. “There’s just a lot in here and… I thought it was at least going to be organized.”
“Like a little box marked ‘Grammie Alice’s Necklace?’” Greer said, giving her a wide smile.
“Pretty much,” she admitted, feeling herself soften and smile back at him. “That would have been great.”
“It really would have,” he agreed, stilling his hand and taking in the shelves himself. “But that’s not where we’re at, so… You wanna start over there, I’ll start here?” Greer proposed, as easily as anything.
Tessa looked at the dark, adjustable shelves in front of her, the kind that you might find in a warehouse. They extended all the way to the ceiling and were absolutely packed with boxes.
“I suppose we need to start somewhere, don’t we?” Tessa said, trying to figure out how to get to the top. The necklace had to be inside one of the boxes, maybe packed in with other things?
“That’s the spirit,” Greer said, giving her his megawatt smile, as he eagerly climbed up the shelving like gravity was a mild annoyance.
Tessa cautiously lifted her hands to an upper shelf, bracing her foot on a lower.
Testing it cautiously, she pulled herself up, satisfied when the unit didn’t so much as budge.
Figuring it would be best to start at the top, she continued on up, each shelf holding a thicker layer of dust than the one before.
When she finally reached the top, she settled in front of the first box, gently lifting the lid and fighting a dusty spider web for dominance. Peering inside, she discovered a lot of green colored vases and some goblets mixed in for good measure. Were they organized by color?
Material?
Shape?
At all?
Hearing Greer rifling through a treasure trove of his own, she took in a deep breath. She had a sinking feeling that this was going to be an exceptionally long day.
Tessa sneezed for the nine millionth time that morning.
“Gesundheit,” Greer said, also for the nine millionth time. “You doing okay over there?”
“No.” She and Greer had been searching through these boxes for nearly four straight hours, still without the necklace.
Standing back to back in the center aisle of the room, they continued to plug away at the bottom boxes, each lid lifted making Tessa more sick to her stomach.
She’d uncovered box after box of useless junk.
Old dolls and children’s toys. More dishware than the law should allow. Even a box of vintage clowns.
Clowns.
She half expected to see a red balloon appear somewhere in the room.
And now they’d worked their way down from the top, discovering that most of the heavy stuff, of course, was stored on the bottom shelves. And while they’d found dozens of boxes of silver teapots and cups, pottery, and tubs full of hand-sewn quilts, they’d yet to stumble onto anything jewelry.
“Gosh, Greer, do you think we’re going to find it?” she asked, turning around to meet her search partner, going through his own set of boxes. “I haven’t seen any jewelry of any sort in here at all.”
“Could it be elsewhere?” he asked. “Maybe Natalie has a more secure place for the valuable stuff?”
Tessa shook her head, feeling sadness well up in her chest. “She told me everything was in here. If we can’t find it, I’m not sure where to go next.”
“Hey,” he said, taking a look at her worrying her bottom lip. “We’re going to get your grandmother’s necklace back.”
She sighed, looking around at all the boxes they still had left to go through. It should be giving her hope, but instead, it was giving her heartburn. “I just have this really unsettling feeling that it’s not here.”
Greer pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her. His hug was fantastic, and it was everything she needed right then. She rested her cheek on his chest as he snugged her in further.
“It’s not fun, and it’s not fast,” he said, “but don’t give up on me yet, Tess.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, feeling her voice get shaky. “It just feels so hopeless.”
“Nah, this is hard, but it isn’t hopeless,” he assured her, pulling back and locking his mossy green eyes with hers. “And you know what? All the good stuff is.”
“How can you be so positive about it?” she asked, truly wondering what made this man tick. “We’re stuck in a dirty old storage room filled with other people’s castoffs, with no indication that what we’re looking for is even in here.”
“Well,” he said, thinking back and adjusting his stance, settling his hands against her rather than letting go. “It probably comes from my very first trainer. He taught me that the good stuff is just on the other side of the bad.”
“That’s… surprisingly deep,” Tessa said, eliciting a laugh out of Greer. And just like that, he’d done it. While she still didn’t feel fantastic, she didn’t feel as hopeless anymore. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, leaning in and touching his forehead to hers, his smile still firmly in place. “Now, get to work, will you?”
“Well, I’ll do my best. No slacking on your end,” she teased, smirking back at him as he took a step away, turning back to rifle through more boxes.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a mock salute, which caused her to chuckle even more.
She turned back to the boxes she’d been rifling through, peeking inside the next one and hoping against all hope it was going to be a box full of antique necklaces and her grandmother’s would be sitting right on top.
Sadly, as she peered inside, she found mountains of milk glass containers instead.
But she didn’t let it deter her. Considering they only had this last shelf of (probably) heavy items left to go through, Tessa reached down deep and gathered all the energy and wherewithal she had left to finish the job.
The task was starting to become easy, given the repetitive motions she went through of lifting lids or untucking flaps, peering inside, minimal rifling, and sealing it all back up.
However, when she got to the last box, she let out a quiet sigh of defeat. Just as she expected, the necklace wasn’t there.
She could feel Greer behind her, still looking, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
Eyes transfixed on her last box, she held her breath momentarily, all hope resting on him as he went through the very last box in the room.
In her mind’s eye, she could picture him finding the necklace, turning to her with a wide smile on his face, declaring that their search wasn’t all for nothing.
As she kept still, bracing for his final word, she felt a delicate stroke against her hand.
Pausing to drink in the sensation, she realized she’d had a habit of doing that whenever Greer passed by her now.
There were these minimal touches they’d exchange whenever they were near, and she wondered if he even realized he was doing it.
A brush of his hand, his arm sliding against hers as he passed, sometimes a gentle touch to the small of her back as she walked by.
Turning toward him, she was surprised to see him two feet away.
Had he moved away that fast?
Darting her eyes quickly to her hand, she nearly leaped out of her skin when she saw the large, black, long-legged spider perched perfectly on the back of her knuckles.
Screaming and flailing her arm, bashing it quickly into the shelf above it, she briefly saw a black spot go flying through the air as Greer leapt a few feet off the floor in response.
Continuing to freak out, swatting her arms in the air and screaming, she backed out of the space and toward the door, tripping over her own feet on the uneven stones beneath them.
“Tess!” Greer called as her body flew into the door to the room. Racing out of the shelving area, he dove for her, wrapping his arms around her waist as she began climbing him like a tree. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“Spider!” she said in between panting breaths, gripping onto him like he was a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
“You’re okay, I’ve got you,” he said in a soft tone.
Instead of taking the obvious bait and laughing at her, which nobody could have faulted him for—especially given her epic freak out—he simply ran his hand up and down her back.
It felt wonderful, and she found herself dropping her head to his shoulder, focusing on her breathing and not choking the poor man out thanks to her grip around his neck.
While she wasn’t necessarily afraid of spiders, they certainly weren’t her favorite. Now all she could do was feel the ghostly presence of that massive one on her hand. Her skin began to crawl, as if that spider and perhaps a hundred of his friends were climbing her limbs all at once.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, pulling back from him and feeling her cheeks flush.
Her legs were around his waist, and he was holding her entirely aloft with one hand on her bottom, whispering kind words of encouragement in her ear as he stroked her back like a spooked cat.
“I just went through the last box. It’s not in there. ”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said, though she noticed the light had dimmed some in his eyes. “I didn’t find anything either.”