Chapter 8 #2
Rachel’s voice softened. “You have people helping you, Emma.
For most of her adult life, she had been the person other people called when something needed to be handled. She was good at it and had built a career around being good at it. Depending on someone else still felt unfamiliar.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’ll see you at nine tomorrow. My office will email everything within the hour.”
When the call ended, Emma remained at the small writing desk with the phone in her hand.
She had a lawyer.
More important, she had a way to stop the sale.
Emma looked at the legal pad. Her notes covered nearly two pages, but the words at the top were still the ones that mattered most.
STOP SALE.
Arthur might have lied about the will. He might have collected rent he wasn’t entitled to collect, and he might have tried to sell the cottage before Emma ever learned what Gloria had done. Rachel would sort through all of that.
For today, the cottage wasn’t going anywhere.
Emma felt some of the tension she’d been carrying since Sunday begin to ease.
Then she looked at the last line on the list she’d made before the call.
Protect the tenant.
She knew exactly where she needed to go next.
Jake was on the porch when Emma came through the gate.
He wore jeans, a clean T-shirt and no shoes. A mug of coffee rested between his hands as he watched her come up the crushed-shell path.
He didn’t stand this time.
Emma took that as a good sign.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Very well.”
“You have a lawyer?”
“As of this morning.”
Jake studied her. “You look different.”
“Different how?”
“Like you slept.”
Emma smiled. “I did, actually.”
“Come sit down.”
She climbed the steps and took the wicker chair she’d used the day before. Yesterday’s beer bottles were gone, and the porch had been swept again.
Emma was beginning to notice that nothing around Jake stayed neglected for long.
He remained on the step with his coffee while she set her legal pad on her lap.
Emma had spent part of the morning deciding how much to tell him. Rachel had made the answer simple. Jake was involved whether Emma liked it or not, and he deserved to understand why.
“My grandmother left me this cottage,” she said. “There’s a later will in the county records that says so.”
Jake didn’t move.
“It was signed two years before she died. My uncle either didn’t know about it or chose not to tell anyone about it. When my grandmother died, he took an older will through probate. Under that one, everything went to him.”
Jake lowered his mug slightly.
“So he owns the house?”
“That’s what the probate records say right now. The problem is that the later will says something different.”
“And that one gives the cottage to you.”
“Yes.”
Emma watched him take that in.
The cottage was quiet around them. A breeze had finally started moving through the yard, stirring the leaves of the key lime tree beside the steps.
“My uncle told me the cottage was in terrible condition,” she continued. “He said there was nothing here worth dealing with and that eventually it would probably have to be sold for the land.”
Jake looked toward the porch railing he’d painted.
Emma followed his eyes.
“I know,” she said. “I believed him.”
“You hadn’t seen it?”
“Not in years.”
Jake nodded once.
There was no judgment in his face, which somehow made Emma feel worse.
She looked toward the yard. The lilies along the fence were open, and the shell path had been raked clean. Yesterday she’d wondered how much of the cottage had survived because of Jake. Sitting beside him now, she was fairly certain of the answer.
“About two weeks ago, the buyer started a title search,” Emma said. “Their broker found the later will in the property records and saw my name. She called me Sunday night.”
“That’s why you came down here.”
“That’s why I got on the first flight I could.”
Jake took another drink of coffee.
Emma knew the next part would be harder.
“The buyer is a short-term rental company.”
His eyes came back to hers.
“They don’t keep long-term tenants,” she said.
Jake didn’t say anything.
“The letter you received said you could stay after the sale.”
“I remember.”
“It didn’t come from the buyer. Their broker confirmed that yesterday, and it didn’t come from her office either.”
Jake set his mug beside his foot. He did it carefully, as though spilling coffee was the one thing in the conversation he could control.
“Arthur sent it.”
“That’s what we believe.”
“To keep me quiet.”
Emma nodded. “At least long enough for the sale to close.”
Jake looked out at the yard.
She watched his eyes move from the lilies along the fence to the shell path and then to the young key lime tree. Three years of his life were sitting in front of him. He had painted the porch, cared for the garden and mailed a rent check every month to a man he believed had the right to collect it.
Emma knew what it felt like to discover that Arthur had been lying. She had only been living with that knowledge for a few days. Jake had just learned that the lie had been going on for years.
“Three years,” he said.
Emma waited.
“I’ve been sending him money every month for three years.”
“I know.”
“And if the sale had gone through?”
Emma wished there were a gentler answer.
“You probably would have had to leave.”
Jake ran a hand through his hair and left it pushed back from his forehead.
For a while, he didn’t look at her.
Emma let him have the silence. She remembered sitting at her desk in Chicago after Samantha’s call and feeling as though the facts of her own life had shifted while she wasn’t paying attention. She suspected Jake was feeling something similar now.
Finally, he looked at her.
“So what happens now?”
“My lawyer is filing papers this morning to stop the sale. After that, she’ll challenge what happened in probate and start looking at everything Arthur did with the property.”
“You think you can get the cottage back?”
“I think I have a real chance.”
Jake nodded slowly.
“And Arthur?”
“That depends on what they find.”
He picked up his mug again but didn’t drink from it.
Emma looked at the porch around them. She’d come to Key West believing Arthur had stolen something from her. Now she understood that his choices had reached much farther than that.
“There’s something else you need to know,” she said.
Jake waited.
“My lawyer considers you an important witness. She’ll probably want to talk to you and see the original letter. She may ask you for copies of your rent checks or your lease.”
“That’s fine.”
“I also told her I trust you.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
Emma hadn’t planned to tell him that part, but now that she had, she didn’t regret it.
“You do?” he asked.
“I do.”
Jake looked down at the coffee in his hands.
For the first time since she’d arrived, some of the tension left his face.
“You knew some of this yesterday?” he asked.
“Some of it, but not enough. I wanted to tell you, Jake. I just wasn’t going to come here with suspicions and turn your life upside down until I knew what was real.”
“Fair enough.”
“I promised I’d come back when I knew more.”
“You did.”
“And now you know what I know.”
Jake looked around the porch again.
Emma wondered what he saw when he looked at the cottage. For her, every corner seemed to hold something from the past. For Jake, it was simply home. Maybe that was why the thought of him losing it had bothered her almost from the beginning.
“There’s coffee inside,” he said.
Emma glanced at his mug.
“It’s been sitting since seven, and it’s not very good.”
“I’ll take some anyway.”
Jake stood and went inside. The screen door slapped twice behind him.
Emma smiled at the familiar sound and settled back in the wicker chair.
The lilies moved slightly in the breeze along the fence. Somewhere beyond the cottage, a truck passed on the street and then everything was quiet again.
She had come to Key West thinking Arthur had taken something from her. Now she understood that Jake had lost something too, even if he was only beginning to realize it.