Chapter 7
The trees on Hibiscus Lane were perfectly still. Not even the palm fronds moved.
Emma sat in her car and stared at the house across the street. She’d spent most of the drive telling herself this wasn’t a big deal. All she had to do was ask Jake to let her borrow the letter long enough to make a copy. She’d give it right back.
Simple enough, except Jake had no reason to trust her yet. Asking him to turn over something that belonged to him wasn’t exactly the best way to change that.
She needed to get this right. She’d already told Jake he didn’t need to start packing when she had no business making that promise. The least she could do now was give him a reason to believe she was someone he could trust.
Emma got out of the car and crossed the street.
The cottage looked exactly as it had the day before. The bougainvillea spilled over the porch railing, and the yellow and pink lilies along the fence were open. The young key lime tree sat in its clay pot beside the steps.
What had changed was the way Emma looked at all of it. Yesterday, she’d come looking for a house she remembered. Today, she felt responsible for what happened to it.
The gate was propped open with a clay pot. She stepped around it and started up the crushed-shell path.
She heard Jake before she saw him. The steady clip of pruning shears came from the far side of the cottage.
Emma followed the sound.
He was crouched beside the fence, cutting the woody growth from the bougainvillea. A canvas bucket sat beside him, already half full. He wore old jeans and a T-shirt that might once have been white. A faded blue bandana was tied around his forehead.
He hadn’t noticed her yet.
Emma watched him.
Yesterday he’d been painting the porch. Today he was working in the garden. She thought about the fresh white trim she’d noticed when she first arrived and the neat edges along the shell path.
Arthur had told her the cottage was falling apart.
She was beginning to understand why it wasn’t.
Jake looked up.
“Ms. Kendrick.”
“Mr. Kelleher.”
For a second neither of them said anything.
“Emma,” she said.
“Jake.”
He set the shears in the bucket and pulled off his gloves. Before offering his hand, he wiped it on his jeans.
Emma shook it.
His palm was rough with calluses. There was a small scar near his thumb that she hadn’t noticed yesterday.
“You’re back.”
“I told you I would be.”
“You did.”
He picked up the bucket. “Come around front. It’s cooler on the porch.”
Emma followed him.
Jake left the bucket near the steps and went up ahead of her.
“You want some water?”
“I’d love some.”
“Have a seat.”
He disappeared inside.
The screen door slapped twice behind him.
Emma smiled.
She remembered that sound. The door had always bounced once before settling into the frame. Her grandmother used to complain about it and then forget about it until the next time someone went through.
Of all the things that had changed, nobody had fixed that.
She sat in one of the wicker chairs and looked around. Yesterday she’d been too distracted to pay much attention to the porch. Today she noticed everything.
The floorboards were painted the same soft gray she remembered. A brass hook still hung beside the front door. Her grandmother had kept a wide straw gardening hat there during the summer.
The hat was gone now.
Jake’s things had taken its place. An easel stood in the corner with a half-finished canvas on it. Two paperbacks lay face down on a small table, their spines bent. A pair of men’s running shoes sat beneath one of the windows.
It should have bothered her to see someone else’s life scattered across her grandmother’s porch.
It didn’t.
That surprised her.
Jake returned carrying two glasses of ice water. Each had a slice of lemon floating near the top.
“Thank you.”
He sat on the porch railing across from her.
Emma drank half the glass before putting it on the table beside her.
“So,” Jake said. “What can you tell me?”
“Not as much as I’d like.”
He waited.
Emma looked down at her hands. “I need to ask you for something.”
“All right.”
“The letter you told me about yesterday. The one about the sale.”
Jake’s expression changed slightly.
“What about it?”
“I’d like to borrow it.”
“For what?”
“I need to make a copy.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’ll bring it back this afternoon,” Emma said. “I won’t keep it.”
“Who’s the copy for?”
That was the part she’d been dreading.
“Someone who’s helping me figure out what’s going on with the cottage.”
“What kind of someone?”
Emma hesitated.
Jake noticed. She could see it in his face.
“I can’t tell you everything yet,” she said. “I know how that sounds.”
“Not great.”
“No.”
Emma looked toward the yard.
She could have given him something vague and reassuring. She’d spent years in conference rooms doing exactly that when a client wanted an answer she wasn’t ready to give.
She didn’t want to do that with Jake.
“I found out some things this morning that I need help understanding,” she said. “The letter may be part of that. I don’t want to tell you something today and find out tomorrow that I was wrong.”
Jake rested his forearms on his knees.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Emma let the silence stay between them.
Finally, Jake stood.
“How long?”
“An hour, maybe less.”
“Wait here.”
He went inside.
Emma sat back in the chair.
She hadn’t expected him to say yes.
That fact had made her more uncomfortable than if he’d refused. Trust was easier when she was the one deciding whether to give it. Having someone else place it in her hands was different.
Especially when she wasn’t sure she deserved it yet.
She heard Jake moving through the cottage. The floorboards creaked beneath his footsteps.
Emma knew those sounds too.
In her mind she was twelve years old again, lying in the back bedroom with a book while her grandmother moved around the kitchen. She could almost hear Gloria humming to herself.
Then Jake’s footsteps came closer and the screen door opened.
He held a plain white envelope.
“There you go.”
Emma took it from him.
“Thank you.”
She pulled out the letter.
It was two pages long. She read the first page quickly, then slowed down and read it again.
The language sounded official without saying much. The cottage was under contract. Closing was scheduled. The new owners intended to keep the current tenant in place.
Jake had been told there was nothing he needed to do.
Emma read the signature at the bottom. She didn’t recognize the name. There was a phone number beneath it.
She thought about what Maeve had said.
The letter mattered.
Emma folded it carefully and returned it to the envelope.
“Emma.”
She looked up.
Jake was watching her.
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
“I know.”
“I’ve lived here for three years. I pay my rent. I take care of the place. Then I get a letter telling me it’s being sold, and the next thing I know you’re standing in my yard asking questions.”
Emma felt a small pull of guilt.
He was right. Jake hadn’t done anything except rent a house. Whatever Arthur had done had reached into Jake’s life without his knowing it.
“I wish I could tell you more.”
“So do I.”
She looked down at the envelope in her hands.
“I will.”
Jake nodded.
“I believe you.”
Emma looked at him. “You do?”
“I gave you the letter.”
That was true.
“You also told me yesterday not to call the number,” he said. “I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
Jake shrugged. “You seemed pretty sure about it.”
Emma smiled.
“So apparently I’m already trusting you.”
“I won’t make you regret it.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
She slipped the envelope into her bag.
“I’ll have it back before dinner.”
Jake walked her to the steps.
Emma started down, then stopped. There was something she’d been wondering since yesterday.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends.”
“What did you do before you came to Key West?”
Jake paused.
“I was a paramedic.”
Emma hadn’t expected that.
“Where?”
“Miami.”
“How long?”
“Seven years.”
A paramedic.
Emma looked at him differently after that. Maybe it explained something she’d already noticed. Jake was watchful, but he wasn’t nervous. Even yesterday, when she’d appeared without warning and started asking questions about the house he lived in, he’d stayed calm.
Seven years was a long time to do that kind of work and then walk away.
“Why’d you stop?”
Jake looked toward the garden.
“I needed the quiet.”
There was more behind the answer. Emma was sure of it.
She wanted to ask what had happened. She wanted to know why he’d chosen Key West and how he’d ended up in this particular cottage.
Instead, she picked up her bag.
“Thank you for the water.”
Jake looked almost surprised that she wasn’t going to keep asking questions.
“Anytime.”
Emma walked down the path.
At the gate, she looked back.
Jake had already picked up his gloves.
By the time she reached her car, she heard the pruning shears again.
Marisol was behind the front desk when Emma returned to Winslow’s.
Emma came through the door with Jake’s envelope tucked inside her bag. She’d put it there rather than carry it under her arm. It seemed safer somehow, although she knew that was ridiculous. She’d driven less than two miles and had checked for it twice at stoplights.
“Back so soon?” Marisol asked.
“I need a favor.”
“How can I help?”
Emma smiled. “Do you have a copier?”
Marisol pointed behind her. “I have two.”
She came around the desk, and Emma took the envelope from her bag.
For a second, she hesitated before handing it over.
It wasn’t even her letter.
That struck her as she watched Marisol remove the pages. The letter belonged to Jake, and he’d given it to her because she’d asked him to. No proof of who she was. No explanation he could check. He hadn’t even asked for her phone number before letting her walk away with it.
Emma wasn’t sure she would have done the same thing.
The copier hummed beside them.
Through the open doors at the back of the main house, she could see part of the garden. A couple sat beneath an umbrella near the pool. Someone had left a paperback face down on a lounge chair with a pair of sunglasses resting on top of it.