Page 179 of Key West Homecoming

“I am.”

Priya studied her.

Emma thought about Gloria’s cottage and the people who had made room for her before she understood she needed them. She thought about Jake.

“I know what I want. I don’t know exactly what it’ll look like yet, but I know where I want to be.”

Priya nodded.

“That’s enough.”

The storage unit on Clybourn was eight feet by ten.

Emma stood outside it Sunday morning with the key in her hand.

She hadn’t opened the door since the month after her mother died.

For nine years, she had paid the monthly charge and told herself she would deal with everything when she had more time. Standing there now, Emma understood that time had never been the problem.

She unlocked the door.

Most of what she expected was still there. Furniture from the Evanston house filled one side. Four boxes held Ruth’s teaching files. A rolled rug leaned against the wall beside a lamp with a good shade and a terrible base.

Emma smiled when she saw it.

Her mother had refused to throw that lamp away for twenty years.

The box Emma wanted was against the back wall.

Ruth’s handwriting had faded to brown around the edges of the marker.

David’s things. Keep.

Emma sat on the concrete floor with her back against the teaching files and opened it.

There were photographs in a folder and a watch that had stopped. Her father’s wallet was worn pale at the fold. Two paperbacks had his name written inside in the handwriting of a much younger man.

Emma touched each thing before setting it beside her.

Then she saw the newspaper.

It was from 1996 and wrapped around something the way Ruth had always wrapped fragile things. Too much paper. Too much tape.

Emma peeled it away carefully.

The model sat in her lap.

She wasn’t sure what she was looking at.

It was about the size of a bread box. Her father had built it from scrap pine and painted it carefully. The little house had one story, a narrow front porch and two windows across the front. Black shutters framed the windows.

The porch railing had tiny balusters cut one at a time.

Beside the house stood a tree made from a piece of dowel and green felt. It leaned slightly to one side.

Emma stopped breathing.

She knew that porch.