Page 128 of Key West Homecoming

Emma had no idea what staying would look like. Her job was still waiting in Chicago, although she was beginning to wonder whether she wanted to return to a life that demanded so much of her. Even the cottage might feel different once the legal fight was over and there was nothing keeping her in Key West except her own desire to be there. Then there was Jake, and the possibility of a serious relationship she hadn’t expected but was no longer willing to dismiss.

What she knew was simpler. The possibility of staying no longer frightened her as much as the thought of leaving without finding out.

Later, Emma sat on the patio outside her bungalow with Gloria’s notebook closed in her lap. She thought about her grandmother and the life Gloria had built over so many years. She thought about the cottage, her father’s initials beneath the railing and the letter that had forced Emma to look at her own life more carefully.

She thought about Jake too. Yesterday she had kissed him. Today he had told her he wanted her to stay, and Emma had discovered that hearing those words didn’t make her feel trapped. They made something she had already been considering feel possible.

Chicago was still there. Her apartment was still there, along with Priya, her job and the life she had spent years building. None of it had disappeared simply because another life had begun to take shape in Key West.

For the first time, Emma understood that she didn’t have to diminish one life to consider the other. She only had to decide which one she wanted now.

She wasn’t ready to answer that question tonight, but she no longer needed to postpone asking it. Emma opened Gloria’s notebook and read until the light began to fade.

CHAPTER 21

Fourteen wine glasses had gone out on Thursday. Fourteen had come back. Kaitlyn considered that the greatest administrative achievement of her career.

Saturday morning found her wrapping them one at a time in newspaper at the long table in Paradise Harbor House. The shutters were open to the side street. The ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, and somebody’s radio played from somewhere down the block. The hand-painted sign out front had needed redoing for two years. Kaitlyn still couldn’t decide whether repainting it would be an improvement or a betrayal.

The donor evening had gone better than any of them expected. Sixty-one people had crowded into a house built for forty. A woman from Miami played cello for an hour. Later, a man in a linen shirt wrote a check at the door and apologized for the amount. The check was for four thousand dollars.

By any reasonable measure, Kaitlyn should have been pleased. Instead, she was thinking about Will again.

Elena Armstrong came through from the office with her reading glasses pushed into her hair. She stopped when she saw the boxes.

“You’re still on the glasses.”

“I’m on the last nine.”

“Leave them. Somebody else can do the last nine.”

“Nobody else wraps them right, and then we lose some. My aunts will kill me if I don’t get them all back.”

Elena sat on the arm of the sofa. Kaitlyn knew what that meant. Her employer wasn’t simply passing through anymore.

“Thursday was good,” Elena said.

“It was awesome.”

“So why have you got that face on?”

Kaitlyn set down the glass in her hand. She’d been out of sorts for three weeks without complaining about it to anyone. That was mostly self-preservation. Her Aunt Tess would have a theory before Kaitlyn finished the sentence. Aunt Leah would have a plan by lunch. Elena, at least, would listen first.

“Will’s been strange.”

Kaitlyn told her about Patrick’s boat and the project Will wouldn’t explain. She mentioned the two canceled dinners too. Lately, he sometimes seemed to answer a question forty minutes after she asked it.

“Wednesday I asked what he was thinking about, and he said nothing worth mentioning. Will has never once, as long as I’ve known him, had nothing worth mentioning. That man mentions everything.”

Elena’s expression barely changed. “And what have you decided it means?”

“I’ve been trying not to decide.”

“Kaitlyn, don’t stick your head in the sand. If you have concerns you need to talk to Will about them.”

Kaitlyn looked down at the newspaper spread across the table. “I think he may be working himself up to telling me something I don’t want to hear.”

Saying it made the fear feel more real, but at least it was out there.