Page 176 of Key West Homecoming

She had made that trip thousands of times.

For years, the routine had comforted her. That morning, she watched people get on and off with coffee cups and work bags and wondered how many of them were living a life they had chosen and how many had simply kept showing up.

The thirty-second floor hadn’t changed either.

Emma stepped into her office and stopped.

The plant on her windowsill was alive.

She was still staring at it when Marcy came around the partition.

“I watered it.”

Emma turned.

“Every Tuesday for six years. Whether you were here or not.”

“You did?”

“You never noticed, which is fine. The plant noticed.”

Emma crossed the space between them and hugged her.

They had never hugged in six years.

Marcy allowed it for approximately four seconds before patting Emma twice on the back.

“That’s enough of that.”

Emma laughed and let her go.

“Frank is ready for you.”

“The question is whether I’m ready for Frank.”

“You are.”

Frank Reyes closed his office door behind Emma, which he rarely did. Instead of taking his usual place behind the desk, he sat in the chair beside hers.

“You look different.”

“I’ve been outside.”

“That’ll do it.”

Emma smiled.

“I told you on the phone I wanted to hear what happened,” Frank said. “I meant it.”

So Emma told him.

She started with the call from the broker in Naples and the cottage that was supposed to be falling down but wasn’t. She told him about Jake, although she kept that part mostly to herself. Then she explained the will, the safe deposit box and Edmund carrying Gloria’s letter for a year because he had been too ill to deliver it.

By the time she reached the hearing, Emma realized she was no longer telling the story as something that had happened to her.

It was simply part of her life now.

She finished with Arthur standing at the water cooler in a suit that no longer fit.