Chapter 24 #2
“It's both. That's the whole island in one story.”
They crossed the street and climbed the lighthouse.
By the sixtieth step, Emma was breathing hard but refused to mention it. At the top, the gallery was narrow enough that she and Jake had to stand close together.
She didn't mind at all.
Key West stretched below them. Tin roofs and white clapboard houses appeared between the trees. Cruise ships sat at the western end of the island, and beyond them the water seemed to change color every few miles.
Emma stood quietly for a while.
“There it is,” Jake said.
“It's small.”
“Two miles by four.”
“That's the whole thing?”
“That's all of it.”
Emma looked north and east toward the highway that eventually led back to the mainland.
“Where's the cottage?”
Jake stepped behind her and pointed over her shoulder. Emma followed the direction of his hand toward a green pocket of trees in the distance.
There, almost hidden among them, was a small square of pink.
Emma stared at it.
From up here, the cottage looked tiny. For the last eighteen days, it had felt large enough to hold Gloria, Arthur, her father and every question Emma had carried to Key West.
Now it was simply a house among hundreds of others.
Her house.
“Amazing,” she said.
Jake's hand settled lightly against her back.
They had lunch at Blue Heaven in Bahama Village. Their table sat beneath a tree in the courtyard, and a rooster stood beside an empty chair watching Emma.
“That's a rooster.”
Jake glanced over. “There are a few around.”
A hen crossed beneath the next table with four chicks behind her. A cat on the wall watched without much interest.
“Jake, there's a rooster on that chair.”
“That's his chair.”
“His?”
“Sure. You'll notice nobody else is sitting there.”
Emma laughed.
She ordered the jerk chicken. Jake had shrimp, and afterward they split a piece of key lime pie topped with four inches of meringue.
Emma studied it when it arrived.
“That can't be structural.”
“Eat the pie, Emma.”
“I'm assessing it.”
“You're stalling because you know you're about to admit something.”
She took a bite.
Jake waited.
Emma took another.
“This might be the best thing on the island.”
“I knew it.”
By the time they finished, only a small piece of crust remained.
Jake looked at the plate. “I'm pretty sure you had more than I did.”
“I'm the tourist. You're sacrificing for my enjoyment.”
“All right, but I want that recorded for the future.”
The words caught Emma's attention.
For the future.
Jake said them casually, but she liked the sound of them anyway.
They walked to the Southernmost Point and waited in line behind about thirty people. A man from Wisconsin took their picture with Emma's phone. He took four because the first three included a stranger's elbow, and apparently the man from Wisconsin had standards.
Emma looked at the words painted on the buoy.
Ninety miles to Cuba.
“That's closer than Miami.”
“By a good bit.”
Later they walked out toward the fort and sat on the rocks with their shoes off. The water moved in and out below them.
“Where are your people?” Emma asked.
“Michigan. Same farm my grandfather bought in 1954.” Jake turned his water bottle between his hands. “My father still runs it, more or less. My mother has decided at seventy-one that she's owed a greenhouse. Apparently she's having one by spring.”
Emma smiled. “Just the three of you?”
“Just the three. No brothers or sisters.”
“Me either.”
“I know. I worked that out about the first week.”
Emma looked at him. There was still so much they didn't know about each other. Eighteen days wasn't long enough to know the important things, yet somehow Jake already knew where she went when she was upset and when to make her laugh.
She wanted to know his important things too.
Around four, they gave up on sightseeing and stopped at an open-air bar on the waterfront. A dog slept beneath the next table. Jake ordered two beers, and Emma sat with her shoes off while salt dried on her ankles.
For the first time all day, they weren't going anywhere.
Emma watched Jake lean back in his chair. She realized she'd never seen him this relaxed.
He caught her looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Emma.”
“You're different out here.”
Jake turned the beer bottle on the table.
“I've lived at that cottage for three years. I've been to this bar maybe twice.”
“Why?”
“For a long time, I couldn't be anywhere with a lot of people. In time, I didn’t need that isolation, but by then staying home had become a habit.”
“So today's for you too.”
“About twenty percent.”
“And the other eighty?”
Jake looked at her. “I wanted to see what you're like on a day that isn't about your uncle.”
Emma sat back. “And?”
“You laughed at Roland.”
“Roland was funny.”
“You waited ten minutes to get your picture taken in front of a painted buoy. You tried to talk a rooster out of a chair, and you've eaten enough key lime pie for three people.”
“I have not.”
Jake smiled. “You're fun, Emma. I mean it. I think you've spent so much time being responsible that you forgot you're allowed to enjoy yourself.”
Emma looked toward the water.
There was some truth in that, although she wasn't sure she wanted to examine all of it while sitting barefoot in a bar.
“Maybe I needed the right tour guide.”
“I'll take partial credit.”
She smiled and took another drink of beer.
At six, they walked to Mallory Square as the light turned gold.
Emma finally understood what everyone meant by the sunset celebration. Hundreds of people crowded the square. Performers worked every open patch of pavement, and a man with a shopping cart full of trained house cats somehow convinced one of them to jump through a flaming hoop.
Emma stared. “Now that's a cat.”
“That's Dominique's cat.”
“That cat just jumped through fire.”
“That cat has a pension.”
A juggler pulled someone from the crowd. A man on a unicycle insulted tourists for five minutes and earned a hat full of money. Someone's dog got loose and was returned before its owner realized how far it had gone.
Out beyond the pilings, a schooner with red sails moved slowly across the water.
Emma had seen pictures of Key West sunsets. She had assumed the photographs exaggerated them.
They didn't.
The sun dropped toward the horizon until the water seemed to catch the light. When it finally disappeared, the whole square applauded.
Emma laughed and clapped with everyone else.
She turned toward Jake and found him watching her.
“You're supposed to be looking at the sunset.”
“I've seen it.”
Emma smiled. “That isn't the point.”
“I know.”
He stepped closer.
“Besides, I like this view better.”
It was a ridiculous line, and Emma knew it. She also knew she liked hearing it from him.
She leaned into Jake when he put an arm around her. For a few minutes, they stayed that way in the middle of the crowd.
On the walk back up Duval, they bought key lime pie on sticks dipped in chocolate.
“This is a crime against a perfectly good pie,” Emma said.
Then she finished hers before Jake was halfway through his.
He drove her back to Winslow's at half past nine.
They didn't talk much on the way. Emma didn't feel any need to fill the quiet. The day had been full enough.
At the gate, she got out and stood beside the truck with her hat in one hand.
“Thank you for today.”
“You've now seen Key West.”
“I've seen about a tenth of Key West.”
“You've seen the tenth that's in the brochures. The rest takes years.” Jake rested his hand on the top of the door. “That's not pressure. It's a scheduling observation.”
Emma smiled. “Understood.”
“Em.”
She looked at him.
It was the first time he'd called her that since Edmund's veranda.
“Yeah?”
“There are about forty more days like this one available. We never used the swimsuits, so there's still a beach day in your future.”
“Only one?”
Jake smiled. “As many as you want.”
Emma looked at him. Eighteen days ago, she would have heard the question hiding beneath those words and immediately started searching for an answer.
Tonight she didn't need one.
“I'd like that.”
Jake leaned over and kissed her. Emma rested a hand against his cheek and kissed him back.
When they separated, he smiled. “Good night, Em.”
“Good night.”
She watched his taillights disappear up the road before walking toward the bungalow.
Her feet hurt, and she was tired enough to fall asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Still, she didn't want the day to end. She wanted to remember Roland's jokes, the view from the lighthouse and the ridiculous rooster guarding its chair.
Most of all, she wanted to remember Jake looking at her in Mallory Square while everyone else watched the sunset.
Emma lay in bed and thought about what Edmund had told her.
Pay attention to what you keep reaching for.
She closed her eyes.
For the first time, she didn't have to wonder what that was.