Page 56 of Key West Homecoming

Emma’s Friday morning meeting with Rachel took less than an hour.

Arthur had been served the courtesy letter at three the previous afternoon, and Rachel still hadn’t heard from him or an attorney representing him. She expected that to change before the end of the day or first thing Monday.

At the door to the reception area, Rachel stopped.

“You’re handling this well, Emma. I hope you’re as pleased as I am with how things are going, but don’t get too comfortable. These things can change quickly.”

“I won’t.”

Emma left Alden & Petit and walked back to her car. The meeting had gone as well as she could have hoped, but Rachel’s warning stayed with her. Arthur had been quiet since the letter was delivered, and Emma knew him well enough to understand that silence didn’t mean acceptance.

She drove down Fleming Street with no real plan beyond lunch at Margarita Max’s and an afternoon at Winslow’s going through the original probate file Rachel had given her. There was more reading to do than Emma wanted to think about, but for once she didn’t mind the work. Every document gave her another piece of what Arthur had done, and she was no longer trying to sort through it alone.

She parked on Simonton, walked the two blocks to Max’s and pushed through the screen door.

The lunch crowd was thinning. A few stools were occupied at the bar, and two tables near the windows were still taken. Tess was wiping down a tray of glasses while Leah stood at the register. Neither of them noticed Emma at first because Lloyd was in the middle of a story.

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” Lloyd said.

“Ninety-one,” Leah corrected.

“Eighty-eight, because the boat was still mine in eighty-eight, and I know what year I sold the boat.” Lloyd turned his glass a quarter turn on the bar. “Anyway, she’d been out to Woman Key with us all day. We came in around ten that night, and she went down into the cabin to get her sandals. She came straight back up without them.”

“Why?” Tess asked, although her expression said she already knew.

“Because there was a raccoon on the bunk.”

Tess stopped wiping the glass. “Alive?”

“Very much so. Sitting up on his back end with a peach from my cooler in both front paws, like a man eating dinner.” Lloyd took a drink of beer. “I’ve had two wives, and neither one ever looked at me the way that animal did.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got off the boat.”

Leah stared at him. “That was your boat, Lloyd.”

“It was his boat by then. You could tell.”

Emma laughed before she could stop herself.

Tess looked up.

“There you are. Sit down at the window, honey, but come here first. Connie’s got something for you.”

“Something for me?”

Tess reached beneath the bar and brought out a small cream-colored envelope.

Emma’s name was written across the front in careful handwriting.

She took it.

“Who left this?”

“His daughter, I think. Connie said it came in yesterday afternoon. She doesn’t think he wrote the envelope himself because his handshakes now.”

Emma looked at her.