Until Autumn Falls

by Elana Johnson

  “It’s not like Dante is out of prison,” she said. “I haven’t had any indication that anyone knows where I am.”

  “But you have a plan in place. We should too.”

  “You still haven’t kissed me hello.”

  He jumped away from her as if she’d spontaneously combusted. “That’s not gonna work again.”

  She gave him half a smile. “Well, maybe distracting you with food will work, then. It’s garlic chicken and peas with red quinoa.”

  “You realize I only eat one of those foods, right? I mean, chicken I understand.”

  She laughed and pulled two plates from the cupboard. “This is a recipe from the Food Network. It’s amazing.”

  “You’ve made it before?”

  “No, this is the first time.” She spooned quinoa onto a plate and covered it with the chicken, vegetables, and gravy. Steam rose from the top, and her idea to distract him with food seemed very plausible.

  He took the plate from her and sat at the counter again. While he waited for her to serve herself, he asked, “So do you have legal documentation stating you’re Hilary Finnegan?”

  She half-choked, half-coughed. “Yes, why?”

  “Just wondered.” He grinned at her, enjoying having a secret of his own—for once. “I asked Jared to take over the fishing this month,” he said. “Since we’re going to be partners and all. I’m going to be working on a few furniture orders that have come in, and prepping for the winter.”

  She sat next to him. “Partners, huh?”

  “It’s the right thing to do. He’s a good worker. Has a lot of great ideas that will make the business better.” Tripp took a bite of his chicken and quinoa, the garlic and cream bursting in his mouth. “Wow, this is amazing. This is the first time you’ve made this?” He took another bite and moaned, glad when she giggled and the mood surrounding them lightened.

  * * * *

  Tripp enjoyed sleeping in. He hadn’t turned the fishing over to anyone in years, and his body didn’t quite know how to stay in bed past five a.m. Thankfully, Hilary slumbered next to him, and when he couldn’t stay lying there with her soft breath cascading over his forearm, he eased out of her bed and padded into the kitchen. Surely she’d have coffee, and while he wasn’t worth much in the kitchen, he could use a coffeemaker well enough.

  He turned the TV on low in her living room just to have something to stare at. His mind churned around an idea he’d had while forging ahead with a single engine for the past couple of days.

  Asking Hilary to marry him. Sure, it might be fast. He wasn’t sure how she’d take it, if she’d think him foolish, or overly romantic, or what. He just knew he loved her, and she’d said she loved him. He felt it in her touch, the way she surrendered to him completely when they kissed, the way she’d told him about her past. He wanted to share everything with her, and the very idea of her leaving town without telling him where she was going struck fear right behind his breastbone.

  He took an overly large sip of his coffee to try to get his nerves to settle. They didn’t, and he ended up with a burnt tongue. He set down his mug and leaned his head against the back of the couch. He dozed off, only waking when Hilary’s ice-cold fingers skated across his shoulders.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Woke up too early,” he murmured. “Thought you’d take me with you when you went to buy fish this morning.”

  “Decided to take Sundays off.” She came around the couch and snuggled into his side. “I don’t like working seven days a week.”

  “Hmm.” He put his arm around her and they breathed together. Tripp couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy before, this content, this at ease with a woman. And though Hilary had a name he didn’t know and the possibility of leaving town at any moment, his satisfaction level had reached an all-time high.

  He didn’t go into work that day either. He spent a lazy morning with Hilary and a busy afternoon with his family. He stuck himself in the wood shop for the next several days, hammering and measuring and sanding wood into beautiful picnic tables. Jared woke early and ran Betsy Ross out to the halibut pods. August slipped into September, and Tripp’s life with Hilary became comfortable, routine.

  He’d had a hard time getting into the jeweler to pick out a ring. Hilary only worked mornings, and Genn’s didn’t open until almost noon. Besides, he didn’t trust himself to pick out the right thing anyway. He finally called Polly, who nearly deafened him with her shriek after he’d asked her to go with him.

  “Sophie will want to come too.”

  Tripp groaned. “We’ll make a spectacle. I want to keep this a surprise.”

  Polly’s pause didn’t sit well in Tripp’s gut. “A surprise? Have you met Hilary?”

  “We’ve talked about getting married,” Tripp said.

  Polly laughed without hesitation and without remorse. “You have not. If you had, I would’ve heard about it. Hilary would’ve ordered two shakes that day and downed them both before dinner.”

  Tripp glared at the wall across from his desk, caught in his lie. “So, you think it’s a bad idea to ask her?”

  “I’m not the one who spends twenty-four hours a day with her.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Right,” Polly said. “The way I heard it, you’re practically living at her place.”

  So he stayed over sometimes. Okay, most nights. Maybe every night last week. Big deal. “I still have my place, Polly.” He closed his eyes and searched for his patience. Maybe calling his sister for help had been a bad idea.

  “Just repeating rumors,” Polly said, her voice on the high end of false innocence.

  Tripp’s teeth ground together. The infamous small-town rumor mill. He’d never been the target of it, but Jared had. Tales of his teenage escapades with women had been flying for years. Now that he was back in town, attached, and settled into a job, they’d died completely. Tripp wondered if Hilary knew about the rumors, and if she did, what she thought about them.

  “So, when can you go?” Polly asked. “Are you still there?”

  “What? Yeah, I’m still here.” He exhaled, trying to figure out a plan. “What about tomorrow morning? She usually takes a bit longer on Saturdays to deliver her catch. We could sneak into the shop and out before anyone sees us.”

  “That won’t work for Sophie.”

  “Sophie isn’t my main concern,” Tripp growled. “I barely want you to come.”

  In the background, a bell rang, and Polly said, “Gotta go. Customer. Call you later,” and hung up.

  Tripp resisted the urge to slap the phone to the desktop. Why had he thought talking to Polly about an engagement ring would be a good idea? He dreaded the following day’s trip, but Polly never did call him back later. So he kissed Hilary good-bye in the morning and drove downtown.

  He’d arrived an hour early, but he went in Polly’s shop through the back door, which she kept unlocked if she was working. Which she was.

  “How’s the reception coming?” he asked from the doorway.

  “Great. Almost done.” She tossed him a grin over her shoulder. “Probably the last wedding of the season. Not a lot in the winter here.”

  “Yeah.” He watched her delicate fingers bend and press stems into the exact spot they should be. “I guess we can always hope for someone to die.”

  She gave a lighthearted chuckle. “I suppose.” Her silence unnerved Tripp. Polly was rarely so quiet. Usually only when she wanted—

  “Have you been over to the new hotel?”

  And there it was. Tripp leaned in the doorway so he wouldn’t feel so tired. “I haven’t. You?”

  “Oh, yeah, loads of times. I’ve walked through it even. It’s huge.”

  “You walked through it? When?”

  “Oh, you know.

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “After the construction crew leaves.”

  “Polly, that’s dangerous.”

  She scoffed, and Tripp knew better than
to argue with her. She’d do what she wanted, regardless of what he said.

  “There’s a huge ballroom,” she continued. “I’m hoping they bring in destination weddings. You know, like ‘Get married on the beach! Stay at our hotel!’ type of stuff.”

  He nodded though her back was still turned to him. “I don’t think the hotel will be as bad as some have said.”

  Polly’s fingers stumbled and she straightened to look at him. “Wow. Are you saying the mighty Tripp Thurgood was wrong?”

  “I was never against the hotel,” he said. “And I’m not mighty anything.”

  She cocked her head and gave him a look that said, Really? You’re joking, right?

  “You got the city council to vote unanimously on a policy,” she said. “That hasn’t happened in Redwood Bay in, oh, that’s never happened in Redwood Bay.”

  “I talked to a few people, that’s all.”

  “Great.” She grinned at him again. “Start talking to a few more. Get in the new hotel manager’s head that one of his marketing ideas should be destination weddings.” She gave him a sugar-sweet smile that made his stomach sick and turned back to her flowers.

  By the time they made their way across the street to Genn’s, Tripp was cursing himself for not front-loading with ibuprofen. Especially because when he and Polly entered the shop with the tinkling of bells, there stood Millie Larson.

  Tripp groaned, but Polly bounced over to Millie and started looking in the cases with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Hilary loved autumn in Redwood Bay. The wind blew colder, and she frequently drove out to the Redwoods to listen to what they had to say. Some of the older trees shed their needles, and she sometimes pressed her hand to the trunks of the diseased trees that had piles of needles under them.

  She took Tripp with her one Sunday morning, and they crunched along the path just beyond the campground, their hands intertwined.

  “So it’s almost officially fall,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She’d gotten out her windbreaker for the trip, because the breeze along the coast had a way of piercing right through her sweatshirts.

  “Not a lot of tourists around anymore.”

  “Nope.” She wasn’t sure if he was just making conversation or if he had a point. Until he got to it, Hilary was content to wander through the trees in silence. He didn’t say anything else until they arrived at a bench cut into the fallen trunk of a Redwood.

  “Mont will be home in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’ll be good for Sophie.” She’d shut down her taco stand a couple of weeks ago, and Hilary missed seeing her every morning. She hadn’t told Tripp yet, but she’d been in to meet with the manager of the hotel while he was in town last week. They had an on-site restaurant and she wanted to be their fish supplier.

  She still hadn’t told Tripp anything about the hotel chain her father owned, and with every passing day without a threat in sight, the farther away the thought became. He didn’t need to know. Dante wasn’t getting out of prison. She’d left Miami twenty-eight months ago, and the attack was almost three years old. She wasn’t making trouble for them; they wouldn’t come looking for her.

  Hilary leaned into Tripp as she pulled her feet up onto the bench. His arm came around her, and she pressed her back into his chest. She could spend every day with him and be happy. She’d needlessly worried about sharing her special space—her Redwoods—with him. Just like everything Tripp did, he’d taken the jaunt down to the national forest in stride.

  “Hil, I want to talk to you about something.”

  She tipped her head back and gazed up at the tall trees, the path of gray sky beyond them. “All right.”

  “I’ve been thinking about something for the past couple of weeks, and, well.” He cleared his throat. “If I asked you to marry me, what would you say?”

  Every muscle in her body seized. The trees and sky swirled away from her as the earth suddenly started rotating much too fast. “Married?” squeaked out of her mouth.

  “I love you,” he said, the vastness of space capturing and swallowing his voice just after it sounded in her ears. “I practically live at your place anyway. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t know what to say. Of course she was happy. She was the happiest she’d been in years, maybe the happiest she’d been in her whole life. But marriage?

  “We’ve only been dating for a few months,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She heard the “but” in his voice though he didn’t say it. She knew what would come behind it anyway. Tripp wasn’t much of a waiter. When he wanted something, he went after it. He worked at it until he achieved it.

  Her thoughts wound around each other, twisting and tightening until they became a hopeless mess. She wasn’t sure how he was feeling, because she couldn’t see his face. He didn’t say anything else, and when the first drop of rain fell, she said, “Should we go back?”

  He got up and extended his hand to her. She took it, a tentative smile playing with her lips as she looked at him. He didn’t seem upset, but Tripp could cement his emotions behind a stone mask. She’d seen him do it several times.

  He drove her home, and a trickle of unease flowed through her. “I need to get some laundry done,” he said, his attention out the front windshield instead of on her, the way it usually was.

  A perfectly good reason, she told herself. He had a house of his own, a yard that needed work, and yes, clothes that needed to be washed.

  “Okay, see you for lunch,” she said.

  He nodded, smiled, and she went into her bungalow alone. She pressed her back against the closed door, a wave of desperation crashing over her. When the sound of his engine had faded, she pushed away from the door and strode down the hall to her bedroom.

  She closed and locked the door before she took down the one piece of her life her parents had shipped her from Miami. A newspaper clipping they’d sent someone out to get so she could have a physical copy.

  She looked into the eyes of the woman she used to be. Jillian Russell of the billion-dollar hotel conglomerate her great-great-grandfather had founded. That woman had deep, haunted eyes. Eyes that hadn’t seen anything worthwhile since the death of her grandmother.

  A grandmother who had left all the money, all the fame, all the prestige behind when she divorced her husband. Hilary had chosen to go underground and leave Miami because she hoped she had even a fraction of the strength her grandmother had.

  Next to Jillian sat a picture of Dante Hess. A mug shot, he still looked lethal and fierce. Hilary glanced away from him, away from the mostly true words about her assault, her injuries, her testimony.

  “I want to stay here,” she whispered to the newspaper. “I want to get rid of the backpacks and the cash and the worry about filling my car up when it’s only half empty.” Tears blurred the sight of her former self. And as she was alone and able to be completely honest with herself, she was able to say, “I want to marry Tripp Thurgood,” with only a thread of trepidation.

  She thought of her mother and how she still went into work every day, though they didn’t need the money, though her father had asked her to quit. A longing so deep sliced through her. She wanted to talk to her mother, hear her voice, get some advice about Tripp.

  Though Hilary hadn’t spoken to her mother in a very long time, she knew what she’d say. She’d say, “You deserve to be happy, Jilly.” She’d say, “Do what makes you happy, Jilly.” She’d say, “Be brave, Jilly,” the way she had the very last time Hilary had been with her.

  A fierce fire burned through Hilary. The paper crinkled in her fingers as they fisted. In the next moment, she ripped the paper in half. Once, twice, three times, and Hilary dropped the pieces to the ground as she strode toward the door.

  “I’m done,” she said. She moved into the hall. “I’m done worrying. Done planning to leave. Done hiding behind my past.” Her footsteps made angry sounds on the tile as she left through the f
ront door. “Done being Jillian Russell.”

  She popped the trunk and yanked her black backpack from the car. “I’m done with you.” She took the bag inside and removed the cash. She gathered all the money she’d stashed around her bungalow and stuffed it all inside her purse. She’d put it in the bank tomorrow morning when they opened.

  Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. She felt near breathless, almost lightheaded. “I am Hilary Finnegan, and I am moving on.”

  * * * *

  Hilary realized what time it was when her phone rang. Tripp. One-thirty. She swore as she swiped on the call. “Tripp, hey.”

  “Where are you?” He sounded halfway toward panic. “Are you….” Scuffling came through the line, and he said, “Coming to lunch?” in a much quieter voice.

  She pulled her keys from her pocket as she hurried toward her car. “I’m at the lighthouse. I just lost track of time.” She didn’t tell him about the newspaper clipping, or the way she just needed time and air and an ocean breeze in order to make her thoughts align.

  “But you’re coming?”

  “I’m coming right now.” She ducked into her car.

  His sigh of relief filled her ears, expanded to fill the car. “I was worried you’d—”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She wasn’t exactly sure, wasn’t entirely convinced of what her next step should be. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “Just tired.” And not only physically. She was tired of hiding her scars. Tired of trying to figure out what her future held. Tired of wondering if she had a life to live, and instead, she simply wanted to live it.

  Everything Millie had meant when she’d said she was tired suddenly made sense. She didn’t want to hold on to the past anymore, and Hilary didn’t either.

  When she pulled into Polly’s driveway, Tripp leapt down the several steps from the porch and strode toward her. He’d been the one to put distance between them earlier today, but now he wore only anxiety in the lines around his eyes.