Chapter 9 #2
“He just likes to be included,” Tess whispered. “He’ll forget all about it in ten minutes.”
“And about the man living in the cottage?” Leah asked. “Jake, right?”
“Jake Kelleher. He’s been there three years.”
Emma turned her glass slowly on the bar.
“He handed me an important document on my second day here. I hadn’t told him much of anything, and he still trusted me enough to let me walk away with it.”
Tess glanced at Leah.
Emma noticed the look but chose not to ask what it meant.
Connie came up holding a bottle and four small glasses. After a moment, she added a fifth and carried it down the bar to Lloyd.
“To Gloria Kendrick,” she said when she returned, “who sat at that table by the window and never once told me she had a granddaughter worth all this trouble.”
Emma smiled.
“I’m not sure that was a compliment.”
“It was from Connie,” Leah said.
They raised their glasses.
Whatever Connie had poured tasted terrible. Emma swallowed it anyway and immediately reached for the iced tea Tess had set in front of her.
Tess laughed.
“You get used to it.”
“I don’t think I want to.”
Emma stayed longer than she intended. The afternoon crowd began to drift in, and the room changed around her as stools filled and the low hum of conversation grew.
Tess moved easily behind the bar while Leah disappeared in and out of the kitchen. Connie argued with a delivery driver near the back door, and Lloyd remained exactly where he’d been when Emma arrived.
Four days ago, none of these people had been part of Emma’s life. Now they celebrated with her.
A little before four, she checked the time.
She picked up her bag. “I need to go.”
Tess looked at her. “To update the tenant?”
Emma gave her a look. “The tenant has a name.”
“I know. You’ve said it several times already.”
Emma ignored her and headed for the door.
She could hear Tess laughing behind her.
Jake was near the far end of the garden when Emma came through the gate. He had pruning shears in one hand and a bucket at his feet. He was working on the same stretch of bougainvillea she’d watched him trim two days earlier.
He looked up when he heard her. “Well?”
Emma smiled. “The sale is stopped.”
Jake set the shears on top of the bucket and straightened.
“Since when?”
“Nine o’clock this morning.”
“Officially?”
Emma smiled. “Court order. The title company has been notified, and Arthur will know by the end of the day.”
Jake nodded, then he smiled.
Emma had seen hints of it before, but never quite like this. The smile was small and didn’t last long. It changed his face enough that Emma wished he’d smile more often.
“It’s a good day,” he said.
“It is.”
His smile returned.
“How are you doing?”
“Tired.”
“I bet.”
Jake pulled off his gloves, dropped them into the bucket and wiped his palms on his jeans.
“Do you want to see the garden?”
Emma looked around.
“I thought I already had.”
“You’ve seen the yard. That’s different.”
“All right.”
He picked up the bucket and started toward the fence and Emma followed.
Jake began with the bougainvillea, explaining that it had been allowed to grow too thick before he moved in. He’d spent the first year cutting it back a little at a time because doing too much at once would have damaged it.
Along the shed, he pointed out a row of crotons with leaves streaked in yellow, red and green. A neighbor had given him the lemongrass growing near the back fence, and the lignum vitae in the far corner was older than the cottage, or at least Jake thought it was.
He knew every plant.
Emma noticed that he never sounded as though he was trying to impress her with what he knew. He simply told her what things were, what they needed and which ones had given him trouble.
She liked listening to him.
The garden looked different when she saw it through Jake’s eyes.
What Emma had first taken for a pretty Key West yard was something he had thought about and worked on these last three years.
He explained there were reasons plants grew where they did.
There were places he’d added shade and others where he’d opened things up to the sun.
They came around the side of the cottage, and Emma stopped.
The lily bed ran almost the entire length of the fence between the cottage and the neighboring yard. Yellow and pink blooms rose above the leaves, along with soft white flowers she hadn’t noticed from the street. Some reached nearly to her waist.
“My grandmother grew lilies.”
Jake looked at her.
“I know. These were hers.”
Emma turned toward him.
“You knew that?”
“There were only a few when I moved in, but I could tell they’d been here a long time.”
She looked back at the bed and her eyes watered.
The lilies were one of the clearest things she remembered about Gloria’s garden.
Her grandmother used to cut them for the kitchen table and then complain when the pollen fell onto the tablecloth.
Emma could remember Gloria rinsing the vase at the sink and telling her not to touch the orange dust because it would stain her clothes.
She hadn’t thought about that in years.
“I’m glad you kept them.”
“They needed some attention.”
Emma walked closer to the bed. The mulch was fresh and the edges were clean.
“There are more here than I remember.”
Jake nodded.
“I added some.”
“Why?”
“They liked it here. The ones that were already growing kept coming back stronger, so I figured I’d give them some company.”
Emma smiled.
Jake pointed toward the far end of the bed.
“I drew the garden out on paper when I first moved in. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the yard, but the lilies were one of the things I knew I wanted to keep. I bought a small flat at a nursery on Stock Island and planted them along the fence. They took off.”
Emma reached down and touched one of the leaves.
Jake had taken something Gloria left behind and kept it alive without knowing that one day her granddaughter would stand beside him and recognize it.
“They’re beautiful,” she said.
“I’m glad you think so.”
They continued toward the back of the cottage.