Chapter 19 #3
“My career used to be the thing everything else fit around,” she said.
“It isn’t anymore. Right now I’m learning how to have a mother I didn’t grow up knowing.
She has health problems, and Connie has been taking care of her for years.
I want to be here for that. I also want to be here with Patrick. ”
Emma nodded. “I guess I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life.”
“You’ve been here a few weeks. Nobody expects you to have the rest of your life figured out.”
“I do.”
Maeve laughed. “Yes, I suspected that.”
Emma smiled.
“If you want my advice, stop trying to answer the biggest question first. You have a legal mess to get through, a grandmother you’re still grieving and a life in Chicago you haven’t decided whether you miss. Take those things one at a time.”
Emma looked at her.
“That sounds very reasonable.”
“I’m occasionally reasonable.”
“What happened to the woman who stopped trying to control everything?”
“She’s sitting on a boat worrying about whether a dock line is coiled correctly. Progress has limits.”
Emma laughed.
Maeve leaned back against the bench.
“I’m happy here right now. That’s the part I know.
I make bread. I spend too much time at Margarita Max’s.
I love a man who doesn’t care whether I’m the sharpest person in the room.
I have a mother and an aunt I didn’t know existed until I came here, and somehow this island has become part of all of it. ”
“Does Patrick know you feel that way?”
Maeve looked at her.
It wasn’t the question she expected.
“No.”
“Maeve.”
“I know.”
“You told me at the bar that he’d asked you twice what you were doing in September and then stopped asking. You said it like it didn’t matter, but it obviously did.”
Maeve looked down at her lemonade.
Patrick had been patient in a way that occasionally made her feel worse. He had stopped asking because he loved her enough not to demand an answer she wasn’t ready to give.
“I’ll tell him.”
“When?”
Maeve gave her a look.
Emma smiled. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.”
“Not today.”
“That’s the exact sentence I keep saying to myself about Chicago.”
Maeve smiled.
“I know. That’s why I’m letting you get away with asking me.”
The pelican left its piling and flew low over the harbor. Somewhere across the marina, a halyard tapped against a mast in the breeze.
Emma turned her glass between her hands.
“Rachel says most of Gloria’s estate comes to me if the later will is accepted.
I’ll honor whatever Gloria actually left me, but I don’t want to spend the next year chasing Arthur for every dollar he may owe.
I want the cottage. I want him stopped from selling it.
After that, the court can decide what happens to him. ”
Maeve nodded. “That sounds less like giving something up and more like deciding what you want your life to be about.”
Emma looked toward the water.
“The strange thing is that even with Arthur and the hearing and everything else, I’ve felt more relaxed here than I have in years.”
Maeve waited.
Emma smiled faintly.
“I suppose that means something.”
“It probably does.”
They stayed on the boat for nearly another hour.
The conversation moved away from probate and Chicago.
Maeve told her where to buy fish that had been in the water that morning, which charter captains could be trusted with a boat and which were better trusted with a story.
Emma asked questions with the concentration of someone who would have taken notes if Maeve had handed her a pad.
When Emma finally stood to leave, Maeve walked her to the side of the boat.
“One more thing.”
Emma waited.
“You said Jake Kelleher’s name once while you were telling me about all those numbers.”
Emma’s expression changed just enough to answer the rest of the question.
Maeve smiled.
“That’s what I thought.”
Emma looked down, then back at her.
“I kissed him yesterday.”
Maeve’s eyebrows went up.
“You left that out.”
“I was discussing probate.”
“You spent an hour on my boat discussing probate while withholding the only piece of information I actually needed.”
Emma laughed.
Maeve was tempted to ask for every detail, but there was something new and slightly uncertain in Emma’s face that made her stop.
“Was it good?”
Emma’s smile came slowly.
“Yes.”
Maeve nodded. “Then I’m happy for you.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t have to know yet.”
Emma looked at her, and Maeve could see the answer settle somewhere.
“Thank you for the lemonade.”
“Thank you for finally telling me something interesting.”
Emma laughed again.
“Come by whenever you want. Patrick’s heard about you since the day we met, and he’s already decided he likes you.”
“I’ll have to meet him.”
“You will.”
Emma stepped onto the dock and started toward Whitehead Street.
Maeve watched until she disappeared beyond the harbormaster’s office.
Then she picked up the dock line and went back to coiling it. She had almost finished when she thought about what Emma had asked her and the answer she had given.
Patrick deserved to hear it too.
Maeve set the line down and reached for her phone.
Then she stopped.
Not today, she had told Emma.
Maeve smiled at herself, picked the line back up and decided she would make bread that afternoon after all.