Chapter 1 #2
“And if you’d rather not assert a claim, then you don’t have to do a single thing. We’ll close, the file’s finished, and nobody will ever ask you about it again.” Samantha’s voice softened noticeably. “But I wanted the choice to be yours.”
Emma looked down at the notes on her legal pad without an idea of what any of it meant.
“Thank you,” she said. “Could I have your number, in case I need to reach you?”
“Of course.”
Emma wrote down Samantha’s details, thanked her again, and hung up.
She didn’t move from her desk. Instead, she stared at the legal pad and without thinking began making circles around the closing date.
The clock on the wall kept ticking. Somewhere down the hall, a cleaning cart rolled past on the carpet and a woman hummed something to herself.
Emma had solved problems professionally for years.
Now, she couldn’t form a complete thought.
Words like Arthur, a will, and twelve days floated through her mind, but none of them made any sense to her.
Why couldn't she think? And then, without trying, she remembered her grandmother’s phone call. Gloria had called out of nowhere. Maybe two years before she got sick.
“Em, I want you to know something.”
“I’m listening, Grandma.”
“That cottage in Key West is going to be yours when I’m gone.
” Her grandmother had said it the way she said everything, as though it was already settled and merely needed announcing.
“You keep it, do you hear me? You come and go as you please, but you keep it. It’s your home too, whether you know it or not. ”
And Emma, thirty-three years old, exhausted, halfway through a spreadsheet, had smiled into the phone and said, Of course, Grandma.
She had assumed it was one of those moods older people fall into when they begin thinking seriously about the shape of what they’ll leave behind.
She’d said something loving and hung up and gone back to the spreadsheet inside of ten seconds.
She hadn’t thought about that phone call once, not a single time, in all the long months since the funeral. Until right now.
Emma stood and walked back to the window, where Chicago was fully lit against the gray.
Twelve years in this city. Twelve years of building a career her mother would have bragged about to strangers in the grocery store and her grandmother would have been quietly, fiercely proud of.
There was an apartment she genuinely liked, colleagues she respected, and a life that fit her perfectly.
Fifteen minutes ago she would have told anyone that was the whole of it.
Her mind went to the crushed-shell path, the screen door and the lilies. She pictured Gloria standing at the kitchen sink, humming as she washed the breakfast dishes, sleeves pushed up past her elbows.
Then came her father, David, who had grown up in that cottage and taught Emma to swim off the little beach at the end of the lane, holding her up with one hand beneath her stomach and telling her she could do it.
He had been gone so long now that she wasn’t certain whether she remembered him or only remembered the photographs.
Am I out of my mind? she thought. I don’t need this. I have a presentation in fifteen hours, and I don’t want Uncle Arthur anywhere near my life.
Doing absolutely nothing was a real option, and Samantha had said so plainly and kindly and had meant it.
Emma could pick up her jacket, go home and let the closing happen.
In twelve days that cottage would belong to someone who would paint over the pink, hang a lockbox on the door, and rent it out by the night.
Arthur would take his money and disappear, and the only place in the world where anyone had ever called her Em, would belong permanently to a stranger.
Emma went back to her desk and opened her laptop again. It took her four minutes to book a flight. Six-forty out of O’Hare, direct to Miami, one seat left in coach, and she took it without looking at the price. Then a mid-size sedan from Alamo for the same morning.
She was partway through clearing her calendar when the elevator opened down the hall.
“Your lamp’s on,” Marcy said from the doorway.
“I thought you went home,” Emma said.
“I’m meeting Kelly for drinks and remembered I have her scarf in my desk. I promised her I’d return it tonight. Why am I not surprised you’re still here?”
“I got a phone call.”
“And?”
“There’s a house in Key West.”
“Whose house?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” Emma answered.
Marcy sat on the edge of the desk and put her hand flat on Emma’s legal pad so Emma had to stop writing on it.
“How can I help?”
“I’m on the six-forty to Miami first thing in the morning. I need Greg on the client calls and Bradley on the presentation at nine o’clock.”
“Bradley will be sick in the men’s room at eight-forty and superb at nine, so no worries there.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“It’s what everyone thinks except Bradley.”
“What else?”
“All I can say right now is it’s a family thing. I know that’s vague but it’s all I got.”
“All right,” Marcy said. “You’ll tell me when you know more.” She stood and picked up her umbrella, “I’ll move the Brookfield call, and I’ll say you had a family emergency and nothing else. If one of them asks me I’ll be extremely pleasant about it and they won’t ask again.”
She walked out of Emma’s office and went to her own desk. She took her friend’s scarf from a drawer, turned once more to look at Emma. “Stay in touch, and don’t eat too much key lime pie. You’ll come home ten pounds heavier.”
Shortly after Marcy left, Emma decided to go home and pack.
In the elevator she watched the numbers come down. At nine in the morning the conference room would fill up and Bradley would open her presentation and walk seven partners through numbers she had built.
Somewhere around the twentieth floor she understood that she wasn’t flying to Florida about a piece of property. It was more than that.
Her uncle had told her the roof was gone. A broker in Naples had told her about a cottage that was in great condition. Her uncle had been lying to her from the start.
The guard at the desk in the lobby raised a hand to wave. “Have a good evening, Ms. Kendrick.”
“Same to you, Sam.”
Emma walked outside to a wet Chicago evening and suddenly felt overwhelmed by the thought that twelve days was not very long at all.