"If he has made me an unwitting participant in my own kidnapping and murder, I am going to be so mad," I told Toll as I heard him climbing into the driver's seat and turn over the engine.
Time slowed as we drove, but when the car stopped, it seemed like we were likely still in Navesink Bank, though maybe more on the outskirts of it.
"You know something, angel?" Toll asked as we sat there with the engine running.
"What?"
"That man would have killed me in that ring because he knew I was into you."
"Yeah," I agreed, even if a part of me still cringed at that memory.
"He's a hard man."
"Yes," I agreed again. "What are you getting at?"
"My point is, you must be one hell of a woman to make a man that hard do something this soft," he told me, climbing out of the car.
The next thing I knew, my door was opening, and Toll's hand was reaching for mine, helping me out.
"What now?"
"Now you take off your blindfold and take your next clue."
With a surprisingly nervous flutter in my belly, I pulled off the blindfold to find myself on a tree-lined street that wasn't familiar to me. Five feet away from me was my mother standing there with a big smile and daisy in her hand.
Several feet behind her was my father with a flower.
Then Niro's mom with one, then his dad.
From there, I saw Billie standing on a driveway. Then Gracie. I imagined Hope was further down, but I couldn't see her.
Everyone was a little more dressed up than usual for this random little display Niro had set up.
"What's going on?" I asked my mom as I moved toward her.
"What's going on is you have one hell of a thoughtful fiancé," she told me, giving me a soft smile. "Okay, I am supposed to give you this," she said, pressing the flower into my hands. "As well as a memory."
She launched into a short story about the time I had convinced Niro to sneak out with me when we were ten so we could sleep outside, where I showed him all the constellations for the first time.
My father gave me a daisy and the memory of Niro trying to teach me to drive on the turnpike, which had led to a panic attack and a very dangerous changing of drivers while driving because we couldn't pull off to the side to do it safely.
Each of our closest loved ones held a story that I hadn't thought about in a long time, but Niro clearly always had on his mind.
By the time I was halfway down the driveway, tears were flooding my eyes.
"You don't have a flower," I said, stopping in front of Hope who was standing there in her usual all-dark attire, but the pants were actually slacks and the top was silk. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen her in anything other than casual clothes in my life.
"I don't," she agreed, giving me a smile. "I have a silk ribbon," she told me, producing it. "This is a ribbon from your sixteenth birthday. You said it was the perfect shade of yellow and you wanted your whole house painted this color one day."
"How does he remember all of this?" I asked, reaching up with my free hand to wipe the tears off my cheek.
"I have no idea," Hope said, reaching out, carefully wrapping the silk ribbon around the stems of the daisies my loved ones had already given me.
"Hope, what is going on?" I asked.
"Look at the bouquet," she demanded, voice uncharacteristically soft.
My gaze went down, turning the bouquet in my hands to where she'd tied the bow.
And there it was.
A key.
My gaze shot up and past her to the farmhouse sitting on what looked like a decent piece of land, which was hard to come by in our area.
The house itself was two stories with all-white board-and-batten siding, a black metal roof, and a massive wrap-around porch with a giant overhang so you could sit out on the rocking chairs and watch a storm roll in.
"No," I said, shaking my head as I looked back at Hope.
"Yes," she told me, smile big. "Now, I don't have a memory for you. I have an instruction."
"Okay," I agreed, my head spinning.
"Take the key, go up on the porch, and unlock the door to your new house," she told me. "You're supposed to explore it, but do not go to the kitchen at the back of the house until you have looked at everything else first. Trust me, it will all make sense."
"Okay," I said, feeling strangely buzzy, like all this wasn't quite real.
But it was.
And I was making my way up to the porch of my new home. Our new home. Where we would have animals and tend gardens and hopefully someday, raise some babies of our own.