Page 13 of Key West Homecoming

Marisol laughed, “That sounds about right. Now, you go rest up, so you have energy to enjoy our little piece of heaven.”

Emma took her suitcase and walked down the path. The bungalow was just what she needed. It was small, clean, painted a soft buttery yellow with white trim. Inside was a king bed with a white coverlet, a small writing desk, an armchair, and a set of French doors that opened onto a little private patio with two chairs and a table under the fan of a palm frond.

She set her suitcase on the luggage rack, kicked off her heels, and stood barefoot on the cool tile.

The day had been the longest of her adult life, and almost nothing in it had gone the way she’d braced for. She’d expected a ruin and found a cottage someone had regularly tended. She'd expected to be the only person in Key West who cared what happened to it. Instead, she’d found a room full of strangers who cared, and had fed her for the sake of a woman they'd known only a little. And Gloria, in all the years Emma hadn't been paying attention, had been sitting at a corner table with a man she never mentioned who read to her out loud.

She stepped out onto the patio.

The light had gone amber, the last of it filtering through the palm above her. Somewhere on the property a fountain ran. The bougainvillea against the wall was the same magenta as the bougainvillea on the porch at Twenty-Three Hibiscus Lane.

Emma sat in one of the patio chairs and let her shoulders relax. Tomorrow she would call Samantha Larson, find a lawyer, and go back to the cottage to tell Jake Kelleher the truth. Whatever this was going to become, tomorrow would be the start of it, and she was ready for whatever came her way.

Her grandmother had known this place. Gloria had walked these streets with a gentleman friend Emma had never heard of. At the end of her life, Gloria Kendrick had built a small warm quiet life that her son, Arthur, had never bothered to notice.

Emma tipped her head back and looked up through the palm.

“All right, Grandma,” she whispered. “I’m here. What do I do now?”

CHAPTER 4

By seven-thirty the next morning, Emma had showered and pulled on a linen shirt and a pair of khaki pants, along with the leather flats she’d thrown in the suitcase at the last minute.

At home, she would have jogged on the lakefront path an hour ago, four miles behind her and a shower ahead. Here there was only the winding path toward the main house, so she walked it to greet the morning. A housekeeping cart squeaked past somewhere behind her. A wren worked through its morning song in the palm near the path. A far-off leaf blower started up and stopped again.

In the morning light, Winslow’s looked different. Two gardeners worked the beds around the middle pool. An older couple in hotel robes sat at a small table drinking coffee.

The main house had breakfast set out on a long sideboard with fresh fruit, croissants, scrambled eggs and a coffee urn.

Marisol was behind the desk. “Sleep all right?”

“Better than I expected.”

“That bed's my favorite in the whole property. I'd sleep in it myself if they'd let me.”

“I'd have argued with you about that yesterday. My hotel experience has never been great when it comes to getting a good night's sleep.”

Marisol came out from behind the desk, picked up a plate Emma hadn't asked for and set it at the end of the sideboard. “The eggs are all right, but they've been sitting there since six-thirty. Give me two minutes and Ramon will make you fresh ones.”

“The croissant’s plenty.”

“The croissant is a pastry, and you’re going to be out walking around this island all day in this heat on a pastry? I don’t think so.”

Marisol was already halfway to the kitchen door and didn’t turn around to say the rest of it. “Two minutes.”

She came back with a small plate of eggs and a piece of Cuban toast that had been pressed flat and buttered while it was still hot.

The dining porch had a handful of tables under a slow turning fan. Emma had picked one at the far end, where the bougainvillea vine spilled over the railing. The coffee was good. The light was already the color of late morning, even though it wasn't yet eight o’clock. For as long as the cup lasted, Emma was somewhere other than inside her own head.

Then her phone buzzed, as she'd known it would, given her abrupt escape from Chicago.

It was a text from Bradley wanting to know if she'd seen his e-mail about slide seventeen of the Henderson presentation. She read the text and then the e-mail and replied with a two-sentence answer that took her forty-five seconds. Determined to forget about work for a bit, she set the phone down face up on the table.

Emma had promised herself two things: the firm wouldn't think she was falling apart, and it wouldn't think she was available either. Bradley's slide seventeen question fell into a third category she hadn't planned for. Having to hold Bradley’s hand while he dealt with their client was more than she had the energy for this morning. There was no way she would fall for it. As much as she felt a tiny bit of guilt for leaving the way she did, she knew the firm would manage just fine without her.

When she finished her breakfast, Emma dialed Samantha Larson's number. Samantha picked up on the second ring.

“Ms. Kendrick, I was hoping to hear from you.”