Chapter 12 #2
The numbers began moving through her head before she could stop them. Ten years of rent, even allowing for taxes, insurance, repairs and months when the cottage might have been empty, would amount to far more than she had imagined.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. Your lawyer will have to work that out.”
Emma thought about the three years Jake had lived there and all the rent checks he’d sent to Arthur. Before Jake there had been other people. Maybe several of them.
“Did you ever suspect anything?”
“At first, no.” Edmund’s answer came quickly. “I want to be honest about that too. I sat beside your grandmother for eight years and never asked enough questions about what Arthur was doing with the cottage. I trusted her judgment about her own son. But…”
“But you weren’t certain?”
He shook his head.
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I could have looked.”
Emma didn’t answer.
“If I’d insisted on driving past the cottage during one of those trips, I might have seen a car in the driveway that shouldn’t have been there. I might have asked why someone else was living in Gloria’s house. I didn’t push because she didn’t want to push, and so neither of us knew.”
Emma looked at the regret on his face and understood it. She also knew there was no point telling him a second time that it wasn’t his fault. He’d already decided there were things he wished he had done differently, and Emma suspected nothing she said today would change that.
“When did she find out Arthur planned to sell it?”
“She never did, at least she never said so to me.”
Emma looked at him.
“What Gloria knew was her son. She knew that if she did nothing, the cottage would eventually go to him, and she believed he would turn it into money as soon as he could. She didn’t know he was already taking money from it, but she knew what he would do with the house after she was gone.”
“So she changed the will.”
He nodded. “Two years before she died.”
Emma waited.
“She told me what she’d done, and then she asked me for two things. First, she wanted me to keep a letter for you until the time came to give it to you. Second, she asked if she could put my name on a safe deposit box in Miami.”
Emma leaned forward.
“What was in it?”
“The original signed will and a few other things she wanted you to have. Gloria didn’t want any of it somewhere Arthur could get to it.”
“The original will is in Miami?”
“It is.”
“My attorney was able to get a copy. But I still think this original will help us.”
“Rebecca has the key in her dresser. I’ve been in and out of hospitals this past year, and I didn’t trust myself to keep track of it. Tell your attorney about what I’ve told you. Ask her what she needs, and we’ll make sure she gets it.”
Emma felt the first real relief she’d felt since the conversation began.
“She’s going to be very happy to hear that.”
“I’m glad I can finally make someone’s job easier.”
Edmund turned his cup slightly in its saucer.
“Gloria had the will prepared in Miami-Dade. She didn’t want to use anyone in Key West because she was afraid Arthur might hear about it. After it was witnessed and notarized, she made sure a copy connected to the cottage was placed in the Monroe County records. She wanted there to be a trail.”
“That’s what the real estate agent who called me, Samantha Larson, saw in the files. When she found the record during the title search she called me.”
Edmund nodded.
“Then Gloria’s plan worked.”
Emma looked down at her hands.
“She left enough behind that if one thing disappeared, something else would still be there.”
Emma looked at him. “She knew her son.”
“To the bone,” Edmund said. “That was part of what made it so painful. She loved Arthur, but she also saw him clearly. Those two things were true at the same time.”
Emma thought about the conversations she’d had with Arthur over the last year. She remembered how easily he’d lied to her and how certain he’d been that she would accept whatever he told her.
Gloria had known that part of him long before Emma did.
The music inside the house changed, and somewhere upstairs a door opened and closed. Rebecca called something up the staircase, a teenage voice answered, and a moment later they both laughed.
Emma smiled.
Edmund reached toward a small table beside his chair.
There was a manila envelope on it that Emma hadn’t noticed when she sat down. It was thicker than she expected, and her name was written across the front in handwriting she recognized immediately.
Edmund held the envelope with both hands before giving it to her.
“She wrote this the same year she changed the will. She told me what was in it before she sealed the envelope because she wanted to know if it said what she meant to say. I told her it said more than she realized. She sealed it that night and gave it to me, and I haven’t opened it since.”
Emma took the envelope.
The paper felt cool and heavier than it looked.
“It’s yours now,” Edmund said. “But I don’t want you to read it here. I thought about this last night.”
Emma looked up. “What do you mean?”
“I want you to take it to the cottage. Sit at the kitchen table where she used to sit and read it there. I think that’s where she would have wanted you to be.”
Emma looked down at her name again.
For the last several days, she had been surrounded by things Gloria had left behind. The cottage, the lilies, the will and now this.
“I’ll read it there.”
Edmund nodded.
“Good.”
Emma rested the envelope in her lap with both hands over it.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Edmund finally reached for the glass of water Rebecca had left on the tray and drank nearly half of it.
Emma smiled.
“Rebecca will be pleased.”
“I’m counting on you to tell her.”
“I will.”
He set the glass down.
Emma looked at him.
“Edmund?”
“Yes?”
“I’m so glad she had you.”
He didn’t answer right away.
When he did, his voice was quieter. “She was the best thing that happened to me. I’ve been hoping to hear some version of that from you.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
Emma felt her eyes fill and didn’t bother pretending they hadn’t.
She thought of Gloria sitting beside this man on trains to Providence, laughing over books and drinking coffee every afternoon.
She thought of the three trips to Key West when Gloria had wanted to go home and couldn’t, and of Edmund carrying her letter through the year since she died because he had promised to put it into Emma’s hands himself.
“I wish I’d known about you sooner.”
“So do I.”
Emma wiped beneath one eye.
“But I’m glad I know now.”
Edmund smiled.
“Me too.”
Emma stood when it seemed time to leave, and Edmund stood with her. She waited while he steadied himself against the arm of the chair, then kissed his cheek.
He looked surprised.
Emma smiled.
“Thank you for keeping your promise to her.”
“It took me longer than I intended.”
“You kept it, and that’s what counts.”
His eyes filled again.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it does.”
Rebecca appeared in the doorway as though she’d been waiting for the sound of chairs moving.
“I’ll walk you out.”
Emma held the envelope against her as Rebecca led her through the house.
At the front door, Rebecca touched her arm.
“He needed this,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for having me.”
Rebecca glanced at the envelope.
“You’re going to the cottage?”
“Right now.”
“Good.”
Emma stepped onto the porch, then turned back.
“Rebecca?”
“Yes?”
“Tell him the shortbread on the smaller plate was the right choice.”
Rebecca laughed, and for one brief second Emma heard something in it that reminded her of the way Edmund had described Gloria.
“I’ll tell him.”
“I’d like to come back sometime.”
“We’d like that too.”
Emma walked down the path with Gloria’s letter held carefully in one hand.
When she reached the rental car, she opened the passenger door and placed the envelope on the seat instead of tossing it into her bag. She stood there with one hand on the roof of the car as her eyes filled again.
She had come to Rebecca’s house expecting a letter. She was leaving with the original will waiting in a safe deposit box, ten years of Arthur’s lies to unravel and a fuller picture of the life Gloria had lived after Emma grew up and moved away.
But none of that was what Emma was thinking about as she got behind the wheel.
Her grandmother had written to her.
Emma started the car and looked once at the envelope on the passenger seat before pulling away from the curb and driving toward Hibiscus Lane.