Chapter 12
Rebecca Fairbanks-Nash’s house on Simonton Street was a two-story Conch cottage painted pale yellow, with a wide veranda across the front.
Clay pots lined the porch steps, most of them filled with herbs Emma recognized, although there were two she couldn’t name.
A pair of teenage bicycles leaned against the side of the house, and through an open window she could hear music and the muted voices of a television.
Emma walked up the path at five minutes to three.
The woman who opened the door was in her mid-forties and still wearing scrubs, her dark hair pulled back and a mug of coffee in one hand. She looked as though she’d come straight home from work.
“You must be Emma. I’m Rebecca. Come in, please. He’s been on the back veranda since one o’clock rearranging the tea tray.”
Emma smiled. “Since one?”
“Twice. At one point he moved a shortbread from one plate to another because he decided the first plate was too large.”
Emma laughed.
“I’m serious. He got up, walked into the kitchen, asked me for a smaller plate, moved the shortbread and sat back down.”
“He’s nervous.”
“He’s beside himself, and I’m going to pretend I haven’t told you any of this. If you could look surprised when you see him instead of laughing, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you.”
Rebecca led her through a small tiled foyer and past a living room with cream slipcovers and a piano covered with sheet music.
French doors at the back opened onto a deep veranda where ceiling fans turned slowly overhead.
Jasmine climbed one of the columns and bloomed along the railing.
Beyond it a small walled garden held a fig tree, an avocado tree and a bed of plants Emma couldn’t identify from where she stood.
Edmund sat in one of two rattan chairs with a book open on his lap. The tea tray beside him had been arranged with obvious care. There were three cups, a small plate of shortbread and a pitcher of iced tea beside the hot pot.
He stood when Emma stepped outside.
“Emma. Right on time.”
“I try.”
Rebecca stayed in the doorway.
“I’ll leave you two.” She looked at her father. “Water, Dad. Please.”
“I’ll drink the water.”
“Thank you.”
She disappeared into the house.
“She’s been magnificent,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here without her. I probably wouldn’t be anywhere without her, but I absolutely hate drinking water.”
Emma smiled, “But it’s good for you.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“Rebecca seems wonderful.”
“She is. She had a full patient load this morning and still made sure she was home before you arrived. She would tell me you would have been perfectly willing to come to my hospital room if that had been necessary, and she’d be right. But it means something to me that we can do this here.”
He glanced at the tea tray.
“I have, apparently, been arranging this too many times for her liking.”
Emma tried not to smile.
“Have you?”
“I don’t know if Rebecca mentioned it.”
“She didn’t.”
“My daughter is a very discreet woman.”
Emma laughed, and Edmund poured her tea. He handed her the sugar bowl and a small pitcher of milk without asking what she wanted and waited while she added a little milk.
“There was a time when I’d sneak candy into my room, but the sugar police put a stop to that.”
“I used to put sugar in my tea, but not anymore. It isn’t good for you.”
Edmund looked surprised and then laughed. “You too?”
Emma shrugged. “Me too.”
His face turned serious. “I want to tell you the whole story today,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about where to begin, but I don’t think there’s a graceful way to do it. I’m going to start at the beginning, and if I get anything out of order, you’ll have to forgive me.”
“All right.”
Edmund rested both hands around his cup.
“Your grandmother and I were together for eight and a half years. I told you that yesterday, but what I didn’t tell you is that they were the happiest years of my life.
I say that as a man who was married for forty-one years to a woman I loved, who has a daughter I’ve loved every day of her life, and who spent forty years teaching a subject I found endlessly beautiful.
Gloria was the surprise that came at the end of all of it. ”
Emma smiled.
Edmund picked up his cup, then set it down again without drinking.
“We met the way I told you yesterday, at those terrible mailboxes. After that, we had coffee together almost every afternoon for eight and a half years. She read to me, and I read to her. We took the train to Providence five or six times to visit Rebecca and the girls. We spent Christmases together. Gloria came to my seventieth birthday party and told everyone she was ninety percent responsible for keeping me alive that year, which was probably accurate.”
Emma could picture her saying it.
“She had a laugh, Emma. I’m not sure if you remember that. It was low and warm and came from somewhere deep in her chest. When she laughed at something you said, she made you feel as though you’d done something wonderful.”
Emma’s smile widened.
“I once tried to discuss a mystery novel with her that I hadn’t actually finished. She looked at me over her reading glasses and said, ‘Edmund, you’re a professor of Classics. It’s a mystery novel. You can admit you skimmed the middle.’ Then she laughed at me until I admitted it.”
“What did you do?”
“I went back and read the middle.”
Emma laughed.
“That’s what I want you to know first,” Edmund said. “Your grandmother laughed a great deal in those last years. She made me laugh too.”
“Thank you for telling me that.” Emma picked up her tea. “I’ve got a story for you too.”
“I’d like that.”
“When I was nine, she taught me gin rummy at the kitchen table in the cottage, and she cheated.”
Edmund set his cup carefully into the saucer.
“She cheated?”
“Every hand. She dealt off the bottom of the deck, and she wasn’t even good at it. She was absolutely certain I couldn’t see what she was doing. When I finally called her on it, she told me the whole point of the game had been to teach me to pay attention and that I’d just passed.”
Edmund stared at her.
“I played cards with that woman all those years, and she never once cheated me.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention.”
“Or maybe she’d finished teaching.”
Emma smiled.
For a few moments, they sat with their memories of Gloria between them.
Emma had spent so much of the last week learning things that hurt that it felt good to hear something that didn’t.
Gloria had been happy. She had laughed and traveled and read books with a man who had loved her. No one could have asked for more.
Edmund finally drank from his tea.
“Now we get to the harder part.”
“All right.”
“Your grandmother and I came to Key West three times together. The first trip was during our second year. The next was two years later, and the last was in our seventh year, before her health began to change.”
Emma listened.
“Every time we planned the trip, she wanted to stay at the cottage. It was hers, and it mattered to her. Her father had built it. Your father had spent his summers there and so had you. Gloria wanted to sit on that porch with me, drink coffee and remember.”
Edmund looked down at his cup.
“We stayed at a small inn in Old Town all three times instead of the cottage.”
Emma knew what was coming before he said it.
“Arthur?”
“Yes.”
She set down her tea.
“The first time, he told her the plumbing was being redone and the cottage wasn’t fit to stay in. On the second trip, he said it was being painted and there were drop cloths everywhere. The last time, he told her the roof was being repaired and the ceiling in the second bedroom had been opened.”
Emma felt something harden inside her.
“She believed him?”
“She did. She’d spent most of her life believing him about small things, Emma.
She wasn’t going to suddenly stop in her seventies, especially when he was telling her he was taking care of something for her.
I can’t tell you how much I wanted to check on the cottage because my instinct had me doubting Arthur.
I didn’t trust him. She died before it was ever convenient for her to go home. ”
Emma looked at him and could see the sadness in his eyes.
“I’ve thought about that often,” he said. “Every time she wanted to stay there, there was some reason she couldn’t. Then there wasn’t another trip.”
Emma thought of the cottage as it looked now, with the painted porch and Gloria’s lilies blooming along the fence. She imagined Gloria coming down to Key West with Edmund and staying at an inn only a few streets away because Arthur had told her the house wasn’t safe.
“You didn’t know he was renting it?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
Edmund shook his head.
“I want to be very clear about that. Gloria didn’t know Arthur was renting the cottage. About ten years ago, she sold her house in Coral Gables and moved into the Miami condo where I eventually met her. By then the drive to Key West had become harder for her, and she wasn’t coming down as often.”
Emma nodded.
“Around that same time, Arthur offered to manage the cottage for her. He told her he’d check on it, take care of the yard, handle the taxes and insurance and make sure nothing happened to the place while she was away. Gloria thought he was helping her.”
“And he rented it instead.”
“Yes.”
“For ten years?”
“As far as I’ve been able to determine.”
Emma sat back.
Edmund continued carefully.
“The property bills stopped coming to Gloria because Arthur arranged to handle them. She believed he was paying the taxes and insurance for her, and she gave him a small monthly amount for his trouble. Two or three hundred dollars, I believe.”
Emma stared at him.
“She paid him?”
“She thought it was fair. From Gloria’s point of view, her son was looking after a house she loved when she could no longer do it herself.”
“But he was paying the expenses with the rent.”
“Yes.”
“And keeping the rest.”
“Yes.”
Emma looked toward the garden.