Page 97 of Key West Homecoming

“That’s our sister Gretchen’s daughter,” Leah said. “She came down for a week two years ago and never left. She works too much, but so does Will.”

“Kaitlyn and Will are the perfect couple,” Tess said.

Leah looked at Emma. “See what I live with?”

Emma smiled. “I’m beginning to.”

Joey kept playing while the screen door opened again and another group came in from the street. Tess moved toward them, Leah reached for clean glasses, and Lloyd settled more comfortably onto the stool he claimed he didn’t spend all his time on.

Emma stayed where she was at the bar. She had told someone in Chicago that she wasn’t coming home yet, and nothing had fallen apart. Her job was still there. Her apartment was still there. Everything she’d built over twelve years was waiting for her return. She wasn’t surprised when she realized she didn’t care one bit.

CHAPTER 16

Emma was on the patio at Winslow’s with a cup of coffee when her phone buzzed on the table beside her. She looked at the screen without picking it up.

The name Arthur Kendrick appeared on the screen.

His name was still in her contacts from the year before, after Gloria died. She had never thought to remove it.

Emma let the call go to voicemail.

When the notification appeared, she picked up the phone, tapped play and set it back on the table.

“Emma. Sweetheart. It’s Arthur. Uncle Arthur. Listen, I don’t know what you’ve been told down there, but I think there’s been a real misunderstanding. I’d love to get on the phone with you for five minutes so we can straighten it out, family to family. Give me a call back when you can, sweetheart. This is nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Emma stared at the phone.

He called her sweetheart, twice.

She had heard that same voice three days after Gloria’s funeral, when Arthur told her the cottage was coming down around itself and there was nothing there worth making the trip to see. He had sounded concerned then too. Almost protective.

She had believed him then, but things were different now.

Emma forwarded the voicemail to Rachel without listening to it again.

The second call came at ten-twenty. She watched it ring through and waited for the voicemail. This time Arthur sounded less patient. It was very important that they speak. He knew she had retained counsel and didn’t know what Rachel had been telling her, but he and Emma had decades of family history that shouldn’t be discussed through lawyers.

Emma sent that one to Rachel too.

The third came at eleven-fifteen.

By then, the concern had disappeared. Arthur wanted her to remember that he was the only family she had left and asked whether she was really willing to let strangers turn her against him.

Emma listened once and forwarded it.

The fourth call came at eleven-forty.

She let it ring. When the voicemail appeared, she played it and heard nothing but ten seconds of an open line. There was a television or maybe a fan somewhere in the background, followed by a click.

Emma played that one twice before sending it to Rachel.

Then she sat back and looked at the coffee she had barely touched.

She had believed him. That was the part she couldn’t get away from. Arthur had lied to her about the cottage, about Gloria and about what he had been doing for years, but the lie itself wasn’t what bothered her most. It was how easily she had accepted it. He had counted on that.

Emma had been in Chicago with a job that consumed most of her life, and Arthur had known she wouldn’t ask many questions about a cottage more than a thousand miles away. He had known she trusted him because he was family, and he had used that trust to keep her from looking any closer.

The humiliation of it had nothing to do with money.