Page 39 of Key West Homecoming

Below it, she wrote the same facts she’d gone over with Maeve, followed by the questions she still needed answered. Then she started a new section and wrote a list of what she wanted Rachel to accomplish.

Stop the sale.

Recover the property to the estate.

Recover as much rent from Arthur as possible.

Refer Arthur to the state attorney’s office.

Protect the tenant.

Emma stopped writing and looked at the last line.

She hadn’t planned to put Jake on the list, but there he was. Maybe protecting him was simply part of protecting the cottage and building a case against Arthur. Jake had the letter, three years of canceled rent checks and firsthand knowledge of what Arthur had told him.

That was the practical explanation but Emma knew it wasn’t the only one.

Jake had trusted her before he had much reason to, and she’d spent most of yesterday thinking about how important it was not to lose that trust. Somewhere along the way, he had also become the person in Key West she trusted most.

She left the words where they were and reached for her coffee.

Morning had begun to settle over the property. A cardinal called from somewhere beyond the palms, and Emma could smell coffee drifting from the main house. In another hour, people would be moving between the bungalows and heading toward the pools. For now, she had the patio to herself.

She thought about her father. Emma had been so young when he died that most of what she remembered came in pieces. She had four memories she believed were really hers, although she couldn’t be certain how much the photographs had filled in over the years. There was also the small wooden model of a house he’d built by hand. It had sat on her mother’s dresser throughout Emma’s childhood and was now packed away in her storage unit in Chicago.

She’d never really known what her father had been like as a man. She knew Gloria had been his mother, though, and she knew he’d grown up in the cottage on Hibiscus Lane. Her grandmother shared stories about her son that Emma could only imagine. She wondered how much of his personality and mannerisms she’d inherited.

Emma looked down at her notes.

She had spent summers in the same house where her father had once been a boy. She’d eaten breakfast at the kitchen table where he must have eaten breakfast. She’d walked through the same screen door and slept beneath the same roof.

She had never thought about the cottage that way before.

For the last few days, she’d told herself she was fighting for it because Gloria had left it to her. Arthur had lied, and he had no right to take something their grandmother had wanted Emma to have. Samantha Larson had given her the chance to stop him, and Emma intended to do exactly that.

All of it was true, but sitting there in the quiet, she understood there was more to it.

The cottage was one of the few places left where her father had once lived and where Emma could still imagine him. Arthur had almost sold it without her ever knowing it belonged to her and without knowing how much the connection to her past mattered.

She looked toward the palms beyond the patio.

“All right, Dad,” she said softly.

She wasn’t sure why she said it, but the words brought tears to her eyes before she had time to stop them.

Emma lowered her head and let them come. She hadn’t cried over her father since she was a child, and she wasn’t sure she was crying only for him now. Maybe some of it was for Gloria, or for the years that had passed without Emma understanding what the cottage meant to her.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t fight it.

A few minutes later, she wiped her face and reached for her coffee. It had gone cold, but she drank it anyway. Then she picked up her legal pad and went inside to get ready for the call.

Rachel Alden answered on the second ring at exactly nine.

“Good morning, Ms. Alden. It’s Emma Kendrick.”

“Good morning, Emma.”

“Thank you for making time for me.”