Chapter 14
Rachel picked Emma up at six sharp with two large coffees and a paper bag of croissants from a bakery Emma hadn’t known existed. Emma had slept badly, but the coffee helped, and by the time they pulled up in front of Rebecca’s house at six-fifteen, she felt awake enough to face the drive to Miami.
Edmund was waiting on the porch. Rebecca stood beside him in a robe, holding a glass of water in one hand.
“Drink it,” she told him.
“I’m going to be sitting in a car for three hours.”
“That changes nothing.”
Edmund looked at Emma as if hoping for support.
“She’s the sugar police too,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t argue with her.”
Rebecca smiled. “Thank you.”
Edmund finished the water and handed her the glass.
“How did you sleep?” Rachel asked Emma once they were on the road.
“Not well. You?”
“Never before something important. I made peace with it fifteen years ago.”
Edmund was quiet in the back seat for the first hour.
Somewhere north of Marathon, he told them the last time he’d made the drive had been with Gloria three years earlier.
On the way home, she had wanted to stop at a Cuban place in Islamorada for coffee, and Edmund still remembered exactly what she’d ordered.
They stopped there on the way up instead.
The woman behind the counter recognized Edmund as soon as he walked in. She came around the counter and hugged him carefully, then said something in Spanish that Emma didn’t understand. Edmund answered her quietly. The woman touched his arm and nodded before going back behind the counter.
Emma didn’t ask what they’d said. She didn’t need to know every part of Gloria and Edmund’s life together. She was beginning to understand there was something comforting about simply knowing they’d had one.
They got back in the car with fresh coffee and a small bag of pastries Rebecca would probably have objected to.
By nine-thirty they were on Brickell.
Ocean National Bank occupied the ground floor of a glass tower with a quiet lobby and a manager who came out from behind her desk after Rachel explained why they were there. She was in her forties, brisk without being unfriendly, and carried a clipboard against her chest.
“I’ll need identification from Mr. Fairbanks and Ms. Kendrick, both signatures on the register and the key.”
Edmund signed first. His hand shook when he picked up the pen, but his signature was steady enough when he put it to paper. Emma signed beneath him while Rachel stood nearby and watched.
Then Edmund reached into his jacket and took out a small brass key.
He held it out to Emma.
“This part is yours.”
The manager led them to a wall of brass doors and stopped in front of one near the middle. She fitted the bank’s key into one lock, and Emma put Gloria’s key into the other. They turned them together.
The door opened.
The manager removed a long metal box and carried it into a private room with a table and a chair. Someone brought them two more as they waited.
“The room is yours for as long as you need it.”
She closed the door behind her.
Emma sat in front of the box. Edmund took the chair across from her while Rachel remained standing, giving Emma time.
“Go ahead,” Edmund said.
Emma lifted the lid.
A manila envelope lay on top with For Emma written across the front in Gloria’s handwriting. Beneath it was a smaller sealed envelope marked For Edmund. There was also a photograph inside a cardboard sleeve, a velvet pouch and a small leather notebook worn soft at the corners.
Emma took out the manila envelope first and opened it.
The original will was inside.
She knew before Rachel touched it that it was the document they had come for. Gloria’s signature appeared at the bottom of every page. There were two witness signatures and a Miami-Dade notary seal.
Emma handed it to Rachel.
Rachel sat down and read every page carefully. When she finished, she laid the will flat on the table and looked at Emma.
“It matches the Monroe County copy word for word. The witnesses and notary information are all here.” She touched the edge of the document. “This is what we needed, Emma. I’m going to file it as soon as we get back.”
“So it’ll hold?”
“I believe it will. Arthur can challenge it, and I expect he will, but this puts us in a much stronger position.”
For more than a week, she had been living with the possibility that Gloria’s wishes might disappear beneath whatever Arthur had done. Now the original will was sitting on the table in front of her with Gloria’s signature on every page.
Her grandmother had been careful.
Emma reached into the box again and took out the photograph.
She slid it from the cardboard sleeve and stared at it.
She was four years old, standing on the cottage porch in a red bathing suit and holding up a jar with something inside it. Her father crouched beside her with one hand on her shoulder, laughing.
She hadn’t seen a photograph of her father in years.
There were several in a box in her closet in Chicago, but she hadn’t opened it since Ruth died.
He looked younger than the father she carried in her few memories.
He was only in his early thirties, and there was something so ordinary about the way his hand rested on her shoulder that it hurt more than Emma expected.
Gloria had written on the back.
David and Em, the cottage. It was the summer he’d taught her to swim.
Emma touched the edge of the photograph.
“I don’t remember this.”
Edmund’s voice was gentle. “You were very young.”
“I remember learning to swim, but I didn’t trust my memory to believe everything I thought I knew.”
She looked at the picture another moment before sliding it carefully back into the sleeve.
The velvet pouch held Gloria’s wedding ring. The gold band was thin from years of wear, and a small diamond sat in the center. Emma held it in her palm and remembered seeing it on her grandmother’s hand when she was a child.
She closed her fingers around it before returning it to the pouch.
Then she picked up the leather notebook.
She opened to a page near the middle and saw Gloria’s handwriting in short, dated entries.
Edmund read me the last chapter of the Erdrich. I cried a little. He kept his hand on my back.
Emma closed the notebook.
That was enough for today. She wanted to read the rest when she was alone and could take her time.
She picked up the envelope marked For Edmund and slid it across the table.
He looked at it for a long moment before picking it up.
“May I open it now?”
“Of course.”
Edmund worked one finger beneath the flap and unfolded the single sheet inside. He read it slowly. When he reached the bottom, he lowered the letter to the table and closed his eyes.
Emma looked away.
Rachel did too.
After a while, Edmund folded the letter along its creases and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Thank you,” he said.
Emma nodded. “I’m glad she left something for you too.”
“So am I.”
Rachel placed the original will in the accordion folder she had brought and wrote the date and contents across the front. Emma put the photograph, ring and notebook into her tote bag.
When she tried to return the safe deposit key to Edmund, he closed her fingers around it.
“It belongs to you now.”
Emma looked at him, then slipped the key into the small, zippered pocket inside her purse.
They were almost to the car when Edmund stopped in the parking garage.
He turned away from them and rested one hand against the concrete wall. Emma thought he was tired from the walk. Then his shoulders began to shake.
Rachel had one hand on the car door and looked in the opposite direction, giving him what privacy she could in the middle of a parking garage.
Edmund cried quietly for less than a minute. When he was finished, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his eyes and walked back to them.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Rachel opened the back door for him.
They drove south with the original will in Rachel’s folder and Gloria’s ring, photograph and notebook in Emma’s tote bag.
At Islamorada, Rachel pulled off the highway and turned into the same Cuban place they had visited that morning.
Edmund looked up. “We stopped here already.”
“You told me Gloria always wanted to stop on the way back.” Rachel put the car in park. “It’s the way back.”
Edmund looked at her.
“Ms. Alden.”
“It’s Rachel.”
H nodded. “That was a kind thing to remember.”
Rachel shrugged. “I notice things for a living.”
They took their coffee to a plastic table beneath the awning. It was warm and noisy, and the air smelled like coffee and toasted sugar.
“How long have you practiced in Key West?” Edmund asked.
“Twenty-two years.”
“And before that?”
“Tallahassee for four years. Sixty lawyers and an office window that looked at a parking garage.” Rachel turned her cup between her hands. “I came to Key West to visit a friend for a long weekend and gave notice when I got home.”
“That fast?” Emma asked.
Rachel smiled. “It wasn’t fast at all. It took four years and a weekend.”
“Drink your coffee, Professor,” Rachel said. “I’d like to be south of Marathon before traffic gets worse.”
“You’re a bossy woman.”
“I’ve been told.”
“It was meant as praise.”
“That’s how I took it.”
Emma smiled at their exchange.
Somewhere after Islamorada, Emma fell asleep in the front seat. She didn’t wake until they were nearly back in Key West.
Rachel dropped her at Winslow’s a little after six. Edmund had fallen asleep in the back seat too, his chin resting against his chest. Emma gathered her things and closed the door quietly.
“Call me tomorrow,” Rachel whispered through the open window. “I’ll let you know as soon as the will is filed.”
“I will. Thank you for today.”
Rachel glanced toward the sleeping Edmund. “It was a good day.”
Emma nodded and then watched the car pull away before going inside.
Jake had been awake before sunrise.
He made coffee and took it to the front steps while the sky lightened over the palms. He thought about the way Emma looked when she came out of the kitchen after reading Gloria’s letter.