Chapter 25
Jake sat on the porch step with a cup of coffee and a Saturday that had nothing in it. The pergola was finished. He had been thinking about building a shelf beneath the workshop overhang, but even that didn’t interest him this morning.
For the last few weeks, he had done little except react to whatever happened next. Usually, if he stepped back long enough, he could make sense of things. He had always been good at that.
Emma was different.
When he was alone, he thought about something she had said or the way she had laughed.
He remembered her standing beside him with a level in her hand or sitting on the porch eating the sandwich he’d made her.
Instead of deciding what any of it meant, he picked up a hammer or a saw and let himself think about her while he worked.
Until this morning, Jake had been able to tell himself they were close friends who had become something more. He was the person Emma came to when things got difficult. They kissed. They laughed. Neither of them had tried to put a name to what was happening.
That had suited him.
He had already had his love story. At least, that was what he’d believed.
Jake looked down and realized he had put on his shoes, taken them off and put them on again without remembering any of it. Two cups of coffee hadn’t helped either.
He carried his cup to the sink and grabbed his phone.
A walk sounded better than sitting there thinking.
Old Town was quiet when he left Hibiscus Lane. Saturdays started slowly. The first tourist buses wouldn’t unload on Duval for another hour, and plenty of second-shift bartenders were probably still asleep.
Jake had taken walks like this hundreds of times since coming to Key West. In the beginning, walking without a destination had been one of the few things that settled him.
He knew these streets now. He knew where bougainvillea grew heavy over the sidewalks and which fences the neighborhood cats considered their own. He knew where the good coffee was and where the coffee was merely fine.
This morning he forgot about coffee almost as soon as he left the cottage.
He walked from Simonton to Truman and then up Whitehead. When he passed the courthouse, he thought about Emma standing outside after the hearing with tears in her eyes. A few days earlier, he would have told himself he had gone there because she needed a friend.
He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore.
By the time he turned onto William Street, Emma was in his head again.
Her face. Her laugh. The way she had teased him through an entire day of sightseeing. The way she had leaned against him at Mallory Square while everyone around them watched the sunset.
Jake kept walking.
Then, halfway down the four hundred block, he stopped.
He was in love with her.
The realization was so simple that he almost laughed.
Of course he was.
Looking back over the last three weeks, he could see it happening a little at a time. There hadn’t been one moment when everything changed. Emma had simply become part of his days until he could no longer imagine those days without her.
Jake stood on William Street with his hands in his pockets and wondered how long it had taken him to notice what everyone else probably already knew.
That was when he saw the house.
It was a small pale blue conch cottage with dark green Bahama shutters and a narrow porch supported by two wooden columns. The front step had been worn smooth in the middle by years of people coming and going.
A low picket fence separated the house from an overgrown garden. Jasmine had climbed the left side of the porch and nearly swallowed one of the columns. In the side yard stood a lignum vitae that had to be close to eighty years old.
A sign in the yard read FOR SALE. Beneath it were the words ESTATE PROPERTY, PRICED TO SELL, CASH CONSIDERED.
Jake crossed the street for a better look.
He had walked past this house dozens of times and never really seen it. For three years, he’d had the cottage on Hibiscus Lane and no reason to look at another house.
Now he noticed everything.
The pale green trim had probably been chosen decades ago and repainted several times since. The current coat was tired but salvageable. The shutters were hand-built. Jake knew how much work had gone into them because he had restored one at the cottage during his second summer.
Whoever had lived here had cared about the place.
The house needed work, but it was the kind Jake understood. The shutters could be restored instead of replaced. The trim needed to be taken back and painted properly. The porch step could be shored up from underneath.
The garden needed someone with patience.
Standing there, Jake realized he wasn’t looking at the house as another project.
This felt different.
For three years, Gloria Kendrick’s cottage had been exactly what he needed. It had given him quiet when quiet was the only thing he knew how to want. He had been grateful for every day there.
But the cottage belonged to Emma now.
It always had.
Jake thought about David’s initials beneath the porch railing and Gloria holding on to the house all those years.
Emma had inherited more than a piece of property.
Except for her uncle, she’d claimed the memories that held her family together.
It was clear that Emma had to return to the cottage in whatever way she wanted.
He looked at the blue cottage again.
Someone could buy it, hire a crew and make it look new in six weeks. Jake found himself hoping that wouldn’t happen.
He remembered what Edmund had told Emma about noticing what she kept reaching for instead of trying to decide everything at once.
Maybe that applied to him too.
Jake took out his phone and typed in the number from the sign.
He didn’t call.
Not yet.
He saved it and walked back toward Hibiscus Lane.
Emma arrived at twelve-thirty carrying a container of coffee cake Rebecca had sent home with her.
“Coffee cake,” she announced as she came through the gate.
Jake looked up from the porch. “I’ll have some of that.”
“Rebecca’s daughters got up at ten and ate three quarters of it. This is what survived.”
Jake took the container from her.
“How was your morning?” Emma asked.
“Quiet. I took a walk.”
“Where?”
“Just around.”
Emma gave him a look. “That sounds suspiciously vague.”
“It was a vague walk.”
“Was it a good one?”
Jake thought about the pale blue cottage and the phone number saved in his contacts. Mostly, he thought about what he had finally admitted to himself on William Street.
“It was.”
He could have told her about the house. The problem was that the house made sense only if he told her the rest.
Jake had known he was in love with Emma for less than two hours. Announcing it over Rebecca’s leftover coffee cake seemed like poor planning.
“I’ll slice this,” he said. “You want coffee?”
“I’d love some.”
They sat on the porch with coffee and cake.
Emma told him Priya had already texted twice about visiting Key West. Jake told her the pergola had survived twenty-four hours without collapsing, which he considered encouraging.
“What are you doing today?” he asked.
“I have no idea. I’m trying to get better at that.”
“At what?”
“Not scheduling every minute of my life.”
“How’s it going?”
“I find it unsettling.”
Jake smiled. “You’ll improve.”
Emma stayed for a little more than an hour. When she left, she kissed him at the gate.
Jake stood there after she drove away.
The house on William Street stayed in his mind for the rest of the afternoon.
He thought about it while watering the herb pots and again while cleaning cedar dust from the side of the pergola.
Still, he didn’t call the real estate agent.
His grandfather had once told him he stood at the edge of a piece of Michigan farmland for most of a summer before deciding to buy it. Jake had always understood that story.
Some decisions deserved time.
He was beginning to suspect some didn’t need nearly as much as he gave them.
That evening Emma stopped at Margarita Max’s.
She hadn’t planned to. The idea had been to sit at Winslow’s with Gloria’s notebook and enjoy a quiet evening.
At six, she put on her shoes and drove into town anyway.
Lloyd was on his stool.
“Lloyd.”
“Emma.”
“You having a good Saturday?”
“I’ve been on this stool since one o’clock. That’s a good Saturday.”
Emma smiled.
Leah stood behind the bar in a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt Emma hadn’t seen before.
“Where’s Tess?”
“Bahia Honda. She and Jamie left at seven this morning. She forbade me from calling her and said she’ll be back tomorrow.” Leah set down the glass she was drying. “Mark my words, she’ll come home with a sunburn because that woman refuses to wear a hat.”
“She’s not the only one. I hate hats too, but I wear them.”
“If I had to guess, she and Jamie spent half the day arguing about a hammock.”
“A hammock?”
“Jamie’s been threatening to put one between two palms in his backyard for a year. Tess says if he does, he’ll spend every Sunday lying in it and never accomplish another thing for the rest of his life.”
Emma laughed. “She may have a point.”
“They’re going to argue about that hammock for another year. It’s their thing.”
“That’s a good thing to have.”
“It is.” Leah reached for a glass. “What are you having?”
“Iced tea and the tomato basil soup.”
Leah stared at her.
“What?”
“Emma, my dear, I love that soup too, but at some point you need to let loose and order something else.”
“I like the soup.”
“I know. That’s becoming the problem.”
Leah poured the iced tea and called the order back to the kitchen. Then she leaned against the bar.
“You want to talk about something?”
“Do I look like I want to talk about something?”
“As a matter of fact, you do.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I’ve been reading rooms for twenty years. Talk.”
Emma looked down at her glass.
She had come to Max’s without admitting why. Now that Leah had asked, the reason seemed obvious.
“Jake and I are seeing each other.”
Leah didn’t so much as blink.
Emma narrowed her eyes. “You knew.”
“I have eyes.”
“Does everyone know?”
“Probably.”
“That’s comforting.”
Leah smiled. “Keep going.”
Emma took a drink of iced tea.
“I like him. More than I expected to.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Leah.”
“I’m listening.”
Emma tried to decide how to explain something she hadn’t quite explained to herself.
“I told Priya yesterday that I don’t think I’m going back to my old life in Chicago.”
Leah’s expression changed. “That sounds like a pretty big decision.”
“It is, but I still don’t know exactly what comes next. Staying in Key West for now is one thing. Building an entirely different life here is another.”
“And Jake is part of that.”
Emma nodded.
She thought about the day before. Jake had spent hours showing her the island, but he hadn’t tried to convince her to stay. He had simply let her see the place he loved.
“I don’t know how serious this is for him,” Emma said. “I know how I feel when I’m with him, but we haven’t really talked about what this is.”
“Then talk about it.”
Emma shook her head. “I can’t just ask him if he’s falling in love with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because that sounds terrifying.”
Leah laughed. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The actual problem.”
Emma looked at her.
“You’re not confused about Jake. You’re scared to find out whether he feels the same way you do.”
Emma started to argue and stopped.
Leah was right, which was irritating.
“I hate when people do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say something I don’t want to hear because it happens to be true.”
“I’ve made a career out of it.”
Emma smiled despite herself.
Leah rested her elbows on the bar.
“You don’t need to ask the man for a five-year plan. You don’t need to decide where you’ll be living next Christmas. Tell him what’s true now.”
“And what exactly is true now?”
“You tell me.”
Emma thought about Jake making her lunch when she needed him. She remembered the lighthouse and his hand at her back. She thought about Mallory Square and how easy it had been to lean against him while the sun went down.
“I miss him when I’m not with him.”
Leah smiled.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The soup arrived, heavy on the basil. Emma took the first spoonful while Leah moved down the bar to help another customer.
A few minutes later, Lloyd spoke without turning his head.
“Leah’s right.”
Emma looked at him. “You were listening?”
“I listen. That’s most of what I do in here.”
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
Lloyd took a drink of beer.
“Be honest with Jake. That’s the whole of it.”
“Thank you, Lloyd.”
“That’s my opinion.”
“I thought you didn’t have opinions.”
“I’ve got particular ones.”
“That’s twice you’ve had a particular opinion in eight days.”
“I’m coming out of my shell.”
Emma laughed.
Leah returned and caught the end of it.
“See? Even Lloyd knows.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Lloyd said.
“I know, honey.”
Emma finished her soup.
At seven-thirty, Connie came out from the back so Leah could leave early.
“Jack’s cooking,” Leah said as she untied her apron. “I’m a lucky woman.”
Emma noticed the change in Leah’s face when she said his name. There was nothing dramatic about it. She simply looked happy.
“You love him,” Emma said.
Leah looked at her. “Of course I do.”
The answer came so easily that Emma almost laughed.
Leah picked up her purse.
“You know something? You look pretty happy yourself. Maybe that’s worth paying attention to.”
Emma thought about Edmund’s words from the day before.
Pay attention to what you keep reaching for.
Apparently everyone in Key West had decided to tell her the same thing in different ways.
“Thank you, Leah.”
“Now go home. Or go to Jake’s. Go anywhere you want. Just don’t spend your whole life in this bar or you’ll end up like Lloyd.”
Emma paid the bill.
Without turning around, Lloyd muttered, “My life’s not so bad.”
“No one said it was,” Emma told him.
Outside, the Saturday evening had settled into blue.
Emma stood on Simonton with her keys in her hand.
Winslow’s was quiet. Gloria’s notebook was waiting for her there.
Jake was on Hibiscus Lane.
Emma smiled, then she walked toward her car.