Page 122 of Key West Homecoming

“My career used to be the thing everything else fit around,” she said. “It isn’t anymore. Right now I’m learning how to have a mother I didn’t grow up knowing. She has health problems, and Connie has been taking care of her for years. I want to be here for that. I also want to be here with Patrick.”

Emma nodded. “I guess I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life.”

“You’ve been here a few weeks. Nobody expects you to have the rest of your life figured out.”

“I do.”

Maeve laughed. “Yes, I suspected that.”

Emma smiled.

“If you want my advice, stop trying to answer the biggest question first. You have a legal mess to get through, a grandmother you’re still grieving and a life in Chicago you haven’t decided whether you miss. Take those things one at a time.”

Emma looked at her.

“That sounds very reasonable.”

“I’m occasionally reasonable.”

“What happened to the woman who stopped trying to control everything?”

“She’s sitting on a boat worrying about whether a dock line is coiled correctly. Progress has limits.”

Emma laughed.

Maeve leaned back against the bench.

“I’m happy here right now. That’s the part I know. I make bread. I spend too much time at Margarita Max’s. I love a man who doesn’t care whether I’m the sharpest person in the room. I have a mother and an aunt I didn’t know existed until I came here, and somehow this island has become part of all of it.”

“Does Patrick know you feel that way?”

Maeve looked at her.

It wasn’t the question she expected.

“No.”

“Maeve.”

“I know.”

“You told me at the bar that he’d asked you twice what you were doing in September and then stopped asking. You said it like it didn’t matter, but it obviously did.”

Maeve looked down at her lemonade.

Patrick had been patient in a way that occasionally made her feel worse. He had stopped asking because he loved her enough not to demand an answer she wasn’t ready to give.

“I’ll tell him.”

“When?”

Maeve gave her a look.

Emma smiled. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”

“Not today.”

“That’s the exact sentence I keep saying to myself about Chicago.”