Chapter 13 #2
She hadn’t cried when the nursing home called a year ago to tell her Gloria was gone. Emma had been sitting at her desk. She thanked the woman on the phone, put the receiver down and went to the ladies’ room, where she stood at the sink for a while before washing her hands and returning to work.
Two weeks later, she had helped Arthur choose flowers for the graveside service in Miami and decide what should be written on the small stone marker. She flew back to Chicago the next morning and was working on the Henderson deck the morning after that.
She had been dry-eyed through all of it. She hadn’t cried for Ruth in three years, not the way she needed to, and she hadn’t cried for her father in thirty.
Emma put her forehead on the table with Gloria’s pages beneath one hand and cried.
She cried for her father, whom she remembered in only a few scattered pieces, and for the seven-year-old boy whose initials were carved into the porch railing outside. The tears were for her mother and grandmother. And somewhere in all that grief, she cried for herself.
“Grandma.”
She said it again.
“Grandma.”
Then she closed her eyes.
“I’m here.”
When the crying finally stopped, it was still light outside.
Emma kept both hands on the pages and looked through the window at the herb garden. She waited for whatever was supposed to come next, but there was no sudden peace and nothing inside her felt magically repaired.
She did feel different.
Something she had carried tightly for a very long time had loosened, and for now that was enough.
Emma wiped her face with the back of her wrist, folded the letter along its original creases and slipped it carefully into the envelope. She left one hand resting on it for another minute before standing.
Then she went outside to the east side of the porch, about a foot from the corner. She got down on one knee and ran her fingers along the underside of the railing. She found the letters almost immediately.
D.K.
The initials were small and uneven, cut into the wood by a seven-year-old boy with a jackknife and enough confidence to believe his mark should stay there.
David Kendrick.
Her father.
Emma ran one finger over the letters. She pictured him kneeling in this same spot while Gloria made lunch in the kitchen or worked in the garden.
He had been a child here before he was her father, and Gloria had known exactly where those initials were for more than fifty years.
She had left them there because they made her smile.
Emma stayed beside the porch with her hand against the wood until it grew warm beneath her fingers.
Then she stood, brushed off her knees and went around the cottage to find Jake.
Jake was near the back fence, coiling the hose over one arm. He looked up when he saw her.
“Hey.” He took one look at her face and set the hose down.
Emma knew her eyes were red. She had cried too hard and too long to hide it, and she didn’t have the energy to try.
Jake crossed the garden.
“Come sit down.”
He led her to the bench beneath the lignum vitae and sat at the other end. He looked out at the garden instead of at her, and Emma was grateful that he didn’t ask what the letter said or whether she was all right.
After a while, she spoke.
“My father carved his initials into the porch railing when he was seven. My grandmother told me where to find them in the letter, and they’re still there.”
Jake nodded.
“I’ve been living here three years, and I never knew that.”
“No one did except Gloria, I guess. He was seven. He probably thought he was getting away with something.”
Jake smiled.
“D.K.?”
“D.K.”
“How deep?”
“Not very. You’d miss them if you weren’t looking.”
“Nobody’s touching that corner.”
Emma looked at him.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
She smiled, although her eyes filled again.
“Thank you.”
They sat together for another few minutes. A boat horn sounded somewhere toward the water, and the late afternoon light moved through the branches above them.
Emma looked at her hands.
“There’s a safe deposit box in Miami with the original will in it. Edmund is named on it, and so am I. I need to go get it.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning if Rachel can go. I’ll call her when I get back to Winslow’s.”
Jake nodded.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Emma looked over at him. The question touched her more than she expected.
“I do, but I think this is something Edmund, Rachel and I need to do. Edmund kept his promise to Gloria, and Rachel’s the one who has to get that will in front of the court. I need to be the one who signs my name and takes it out of the box.”
“That makes sense.”
“Thank you for asking, though.”
Jake nodded once.
A minute later he looked at her.
“You want anything to eat before you drive back?”
Emma smiled faintly. It was such a Jake question that it nearly made her cry again.
“I don’t think I could eat right now.”
“All right.”
He didn’t ask again.
When Emma was ready to leave, Jake walked her to the gate. She stopped there and looked back at the cottage, at the pink walls and the porch and the bougainvillea spilling over the railing. Somewhere beneath all those years of paint were her father’s initials.
Gloria had stood in this yard and looked at the same house while remembering the little boy who carved them there.
Emma thought about the letter and what Gloria had written about making her life smaller so it would fit inside a job. The words hurt because they were true, but for the first time Emma didn’t feel the need to defend herself against them.
She had been surviving. Maybe she was ready to do something more than that.
For some reason, she wanted to tell Jake all of it.
She wanted to tell him about Gloria’s warning and the years Emma had spent going to work and going home and telling herself that was enough.
She couldn’t explain why she wanted him to understand, except that somewhere in the middle of all the confusion, Jake had become her friend.
There was more to come. Arthur was still her uncle, and the things he had done weren’t going to disappear because Gloria had written Emma a beautiful letter.
But right now, none of that felt as important as the small initials beneath the porch railing.
“You’ll come back?” Jake asked.
Emma looked at him and smiled.
“Of course.”
“Good.”
Emma got into the rental car and set Gloria’s letter on the passenger seat.
As she pulled away, she looked once in the rearview mirror. Jake was still standing at the gate.
Marisol was at the front desk when Emma came through the main house at Winslow’s. She looked up from her book, took in Emma’s face and didn’t ask a single question.
“There’s a plate in your refrigerator.”
Emma stopped.
“You put a plate in my refrigerator?”
“Ramon made too much again. He does it on purpose and would deny it to your face.” Marisol turned a page. “Eat it or don’t. I’m not your mother.”
Emma smiled.
She made it about six steps down the path before turning around.
“Marisol.”
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
Marisol waved one hand without looking up.
“Go on with you.”
Emma walked back to the bungalow with tears threatening again, although this time she almost laughed at herself.
Apparently, once she started crying, there was no telling when it would stop.
She left the plate in the refrigerator for later and took Gloria’s letter onto the patio. The light was beginning to fade, and the palms moved gently above the garden wall.
Emma called Rachel.
She answered on the second ring.
“Emma.”
“Rachel, I have a letter from my grandmother. There’s a safe deposit box at Ocean National Bank on Brickell Avenue in Miami, and the original will is inside. Edmund is named on the box, and so am I. Can we drive up in the morning?”
“Are you certain the original is there?”
“Gloria says it is in the letter. Edmund confirmed it yesterday.”
“All right. Six o’clock. I’ll bring coffee. Tell Edmund we’ll pick him up at his daughter’s place at six-fifteen.”
Emma smiled.
“Thank you.”
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
“I will.”
She ended the call and texted Edmund with the plan. Then Emma sat back with the envelope in her lap and watched the last of the daylight turn blue over the palms.
She thought about her father as a seven-year-old boy with a jackknife.
Memories of her mother holding her hand through all the years that came after his death flooded her thoughts.
And her grandmother, always sitting at a kitchen table writing a letter she hoped Emma would someday read in her chair.
For most of her life, Emma had thought of legacy as something people left behind when they were gone. Tonight, she understood it differently.
Sometimes what they left behind was a place to come home to. Only a few initials beneath a porch railing, a letter from her grandmother and Emma knew that she had been loved every single day of her life.