Chapter 24
Rebecca met them at the front door on Simonton. Her hair was still in the same clip she'd worn to the courthouse.
“Come in. He's in the living room telling himself he's fine, which means he isn't. He's tired, and I've already told him he's going to drink some water.” She looked at Emma. “You look like a woman who could use a sandwich.”
“I could, actually. Thanks.”
“Good. I made four. That's for the four of us, and if one of my daughters comes home at three, she's out of luck.”
“Thank you for having us.”
“Please. You're family. Come in.”
Emma stepped into the tiled foyer with Jake behind her. She felt some of the tension leave her body. She'd spent the morning braced for whatever might happen in that courtroom. Now it was over.
Rebecca's house smelled like pressed Cuban bread and pickled onions.
Edmund sat in the wingback chair by the piano. His jacket hung over one arm, and he held a half-empty glass of water in his hand. Emma suspected Rebecca had already reminded him to drink it at least once.
He stood when Emma came in.
“You shouldn't be standing.”
“I stand for the women in my life. I'll sit down again in a moment.”
“You'll sit down now,” Rebecca called from the doorway.
“I'll sit down now,” he obeyed.
Emma smiled as Edmund lowered himself into the chair.
Rebecca disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a plate of Cuban sandwiches cut in half. A small dish of pickled cucumbers sat beside them.
“On the veranda,” she said. “It's cooler.”
They moved outside. Jasmine climbed one of the columns, and a fig tree filled a corner of the small walled garden. Rebecca had already put out a pitcher of iced tea and four glasses.
Emma took the same chair she'd sat in eleven days earlier. That afternoon, Edmund had told her the truth about Gloria and the cottage. It seemed impossible that so much had happened since then.
The sandwich was extraordinary, and Emma told Rebecca so.
“It's the bread. There's a Cuban bakery on Petronia that presses their own. If you don't have their bread, you don't have a Cuban sandwich. You've got a ham and cheese with pretensions.”
Jake smiled. “Ham and cheese with pretensions. I like that.”
Edmund set his sandwich down.
“Emma, may I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“Your grandmother said something to me once that I've been carrying around for a while now. I meant to write it down for you, but I never did. I think I'd rather say it out loud.” He glanced at Rebecca. “You can correct me if I get any of it wrong.”
“I've heard this one before.”
“Have you?”
“You told me on the porch in Providence when the girls were eleven.”
“I did?”
“Twice.”
“That sounds like me.”
Edmund turned back to Emma.
“Gloria told me that people spend too much time trying to decide what the next part of their life should look like.
She said sometimes you don't decide it all at once.
You pay attention to what you keep reaching for and where you feel most like yourself.
Eventually, if you're brave enough, you stop arguing with what you already know.”
Emma smiled. “That sounds like Grandma.”
“She said she figured it out some six years after your grandfather died. She'd spent those years wondering whether she was allowed to be happy again. Eventually she got tired of waiting for permission.” Edmund smiled. “Then she met me at the mailboxes.”
“And you were what she kept reaching for?”
“Every day of the eight and a half years.”
Emma looked down at her hands.
She thought about the last two weeks and all the times she'd found reasons to stay a little longer. There had been mornings at Margarita Max's when she could have gone back to Winslow's but didn't. There were evenings on Jake's porch when she had known she should leave and hadn't wanted to.
Even the hearing had stopped feeling like the thing she was waiting for before her life could begin.
Maybe Gloria was right. Emma had been paying attention without realizing it. She had noticed what she wanted for weeks and was ready to declare it.
“Edmund?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome, Em.”
Emma looked up.
No one but Gloria had called her Em.
Her eyes filled before she could stop them. Edmund noticed, but instead of saying anything, he picked up his sandwich. Emma was grateful for the kindness of being allowed to have the moment without explaining it.
Rebecca refilled her iced tea. After a while she said, “I'm going to make my father lie down for an hour. Emma, Jake, stay and finish your sandwiches. The pitcher's yours. There's coconut cake in the refrigerator too, and I'd consider it a favor if you ate some because I made too much.”
“I'll eat some,” Jake said.
“Bless you.”
Edmund stood again. He kissed the top of Emma's head as he passed and rested a hand on Jake's shoulder before following his daughter inside.
Emma and Jake stayed on the veranda.
“Em,” Jake said.
She looked at him.
“Only Grandma called me that.”
“And Edmund.”
“Him too.”
“I won't call you Em if you don’t want me to.”
Emma surprised herself by realizing she didn't mind the idea.
“You can.”
Jake stopped eating and put his hand on her arm.
“Only people close to me are allowed,” she said.
“Em?”
“Yes?”
“Coconut cake.”
Emma laughed.
The silliness between them had become one of her favorite things. After so many days filled with lawyers and legal talk, being able to laugh with Jake felt like a kind of healing she hadn't expected.
“Now? You want cake now?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Good idea. I'm on it.”
The morning after the hearing came slowly. Emma stayed in bed at Winslow's longer than usual and enjoyed having nowhere she needed to be.
When she finally got up, she took an orange and some grapes to the patio. She read four more pages of Gloria's notebook before calling Priya.
Emma told her about the hearing, Edmund and the ruling. She told her the cottage was safe.
“I'm so proud of you, Emma. But you have to keep me updated more often, and I don't mean by text.”
“Understood.”
“Good.”
Emma looked out at the palms beyond the patio.
“Priya?”
“Yeah?”
“I don't think I'm coming back.”
Another silence.
“You mean to Chicago?”
“I mean to my life there. The way I've been living it.”
“Emma.”
“Yeah?”
“I've been waiting to hear you say that for years.”
“You have?”
“I have. I'm going to cry for two minutes and then say something practical. Can I have the two minutes?”
Emma smiled. “You can have the two minutes, but only two minutes.”
Priya didn't make it two minutes before the practical questions started, although she cried through most of them. She wanted dates for a visit next month. She wanted to see the cottage and Margarita Max's, and she definitely wanted to meet the man Emma kept mentioning in a certain tone of voice.
Emma promised to look at the calendar and send her some dates.
After they hung up, she stayed on the patio until almost nine. Nothing was planned for the day, and for once, doing nothing sounded wonderful.
The phone rang at four minutes past nine.
“How long have you been in Key West?” Jake asked.
“Good morning to you too.”
“How long?”
Emma counted. “I don’t know almost three weeks.”
“And in all that time, what have you actually seen?”
“I've seen a great deal.”
“Name it.”
“A cottage. A bar. A bank in Miami, which doesn't count. Rachel's office. The courthouse.” Emma paused when the list ended sooner than expected. “A bookstore.”
“That's what I thought. Be ready in forty minutes. Wear your hat and shoes you can walk in. Bring a swimsuit and towel too.”
“In case of what?”
“You'll find out. And you're not paying for anything today, so don't start arguing.”
“Jake.”
“You inherited a house on an island you've barely seen. I'm fixing that.”
Before Emma could answer, he added, “Are you allergic to cats?”
“What?”
“Cats. Are you allergic?”
“No.”
“Good. See you soon.”
He arrived at ten to ten.
Emma climbed into the truck and looked at him. “Are you going to tell me where we're going?”
“Does it really matter?”
He had a point.
They started with coffee from a window on Southard. The woman working there took Jake's order without asking what he wanted. A minute later, she slid two small cups of Cuban coffee across the sill with a guava pastelito cut in half.
Emma drank the coffee in three swallows and stood on the sidewalk with her eyes watering.
“That's not coffee.”
Jake laughed. “It's coffee.”
“Holy cow. That's incredible.”
“The good news is you'll have enough energy to walk the entire island.”
They took the Conch Train from Mallory Square. Emma discovered within the first few minutes that she was going to enjoy the open yellow carriages far more than she wanted to admit.
The driver's name was Roland. He'd been doing the loop for nineteen years and knew exactly where every laugh was coming.
Emma laughed at the joke about the cemetery. She laughed even harder at the one about the mayor.
Jake leaned closer. “You're a real tourist now.”
“I'm being educated.”
“You're wearing a hat, riding a train and laughing at Roland.”
“He's funny.”
“Roland knows.”
They got off at the Hemingway House and joined a tour through the gardens. Their guide had probably given the same tour thousands of times, but somehow he still sounded as though the stories amused him.
Emma counted eleven cats before giving up. A gray one with extra toes slept in a patch of sunlight at the foot of the master bedroom bed. It didn't acknowledge a single person who walked past.
“Now I understand why you asked if I was allergic to cats.”
Jake smiled. “It would've been an unfortunate surprise.”
Emma glanced at the brochure. “It says they're all descended from Hemingway's cat.”
“So they say.”
“There are more than fifty of them.”
“There are.”
“Who does that?”
“A man with money and a wife who liked cats.”
At the pool, Emma listened to the story about the penny. Pauline had built the pool while Hemingway was away. When he returned and learned what it cost, he'd supposedly pressed a penny into the wet cement and told her she might as well have his last cent too.
Emma looked at Jake. “That's either the meanest thing I've ever heard or the funniest.”