Chapter 26
On Sunday morning, Emma and Jake walked down the dock with a small cooler between them and a bag of plantain chips.
The pelican was on its usual piling and barely acknowledged them. Two boats down, a charter captain leaned over an engine that refused to start.
Patrick was aboard No Worries with a brush in his hand and half the deck still wet. He straightened when he saw them.
“Maeve said you’d come. I bet against her, so now I owe her a dollar. She’ll take it in cash.”
“We brought chips,” Emma said.
“Then I’m glad I lost.”
Patrick put the brush in the bucket and helped Emma aboard. Jake followed with the cooler.
Maeve came up from the cabin carrying coffee. She looked at the bag in Emma’s hand.
“Anything in a bag counts as food to Patrick. Put it on the table.”
“I’m glad you two came,” she added. “I’ve been wanting the four of us to spend some time together.”
“No better place than on the water,” Patrick said.
A few minutes later, they were away from the dock. Maeve took the wheel while Patrick handled the lines. Emma sat beside Jake on the cushioned bench at the stern.
The marina slipped behind them at an easy pace.
Patrick opened a locker beneath the bench and pulled out two thermoses.
“One of these has sugar in it. I’m not telling you which.”
“That seems unnecessarily risky,” Emma said.
“It keeps people alert.”
He poured coffee into enamel mugs. Emma recognized them as the same kind Jake used at the cottage.
“I didn’t know anything about boats when I came to Key West,” Maeve called from the wheel. “Now Patrick can barely get me to give this one back.”
“It took some convincing to get her behind the wheel,” Patrick said. “Big mistake on my part.”
Maeve laughed. “You’re still the captain, my love.”
Emma smiled at the ease between them.
She had heard Maeve talk about Patrick enough to know how much he meant to her.
Seeing them together was different. There was no effort in the way they moved around each other.
Maeve knew when Patrick needed a line before he asked.
Patrick handed her coffee without interrupting whatever she was saying.
Emma wondered if people ever realized when they had reached that point with someone.
Patrick asked Jake about the pergola, and the two of them disappeared into a conversation about cedar. Emma understood approximately half of it.
“You’ve lost them,” Maeve said.
“I think they’re discussing wood grain.”
“They’ll be there awhile.”
Emma laughed.
They passed the last of the mangroves and entered a channel where the water deepened from harbor green to something darker.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked.
“A little key I like,” Maeve said. “About half an hour out.”
“What’s there?”
Maeve smiled. “Nothing. That’s the point.”
They rode for a while with the engine doing its quiet work beneath them. A small pod of dolphins appeared off the bow and stayed with the boat for a few minutes.
Emma stood to watch.
She hadn’t been on the ocean since a work retreat in Cancun eight years earlier. She had spent most of that trip answering emails from a lounge chair. At the time, she had considered that dedication. Now it seemed a little sad.
Jake came up beside her.
“You okay?”
“I’m thinking about the last time I was on the ocean.”
“Good memory?”
“Answering emails on my phone.”
Jake smiled. “Sounds memorable.”
“It probably tells you everything you need to know about me.”
“I don’t think it does.”
Emma looked at him but he’d already turned back toward the dolphins.
They ate on the deck.
Maeve had made chicken salad with grapes and tarragon. There was bread from the bakery on Petronia and the plantain chips Emma had brought. Patrick opened four beers and set them on the table.
“Boat beer is different from land beer,” he said.
Emma looked at the bottle. “It appears to be exactly the same beer.”
“Same beer. Different beer.”
“That’s your argument?”
“That’s the philosophy of the boat, and I’ll defend it.”
“Has anyone tested this philosophy?”
“Exhaustively.”
Jake raised his bottle. “I’m willing to participate in further research.”
Patrick clinked his bottle against Jake’s. “That’s the spirit.”
Emma laughed.
“Also,” Patrick said, “beer in the middle of the afternoon is one of the reasons I moved here. That and going barefoot most of the year.”
“Key West seems to suit you.”
“It does.”
Emma looked at Maeve. “What about you? Does it suit an attorney from Boston?”
The question came out more directly than Emma intended.
“I’m sorry. That sounded like an interrogation.”
Maeve smiled. “You’ve been spending too much time with Rachel.”
“I think I’m projecting.”
“About whether Key West suits an executive from Chicago?”
Emma nodded. “Something like that.”
Although even as she said it, she knew the question had changed. A week ago, she had been asking whether she could stay. Now she was trying to understand what staying might look like.
Patrick leaned forward.
“Can I give you my theory?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to anyway.”
“I like her,” Patrick said to Jake.
“So do I.”
Emma looked at Jake, but he was smiling.
Patrick pointed his beer toward the island in the distance.
“There comes a point when you stop asking whether you belong here. Key West just works its way into your life. You make friends. You get favorite places. Somebody knows your coffee order. Before long, leaving feels stranger than staying.”
Emma thought about Margarita Max’s and the stool Lloyd moved two inches for her. She thought about Leah knowing when she wanted to talk and Tess arguing whenever Emma tried to pay for something.
She thought about the cottage.
Then she thought about Jake.
“So what you’re saying is the island slowly traps you.”
Patrick grinned. “Exactly.”
“Like a vine around a fence.”
“That’s much prettier than the way I usually explain it.”
“And eventually I’m stuck here.”
“With the rest of us.”
Emma clinked her bottle against his. “I’ll take my chances.”
Maeve had been listening with a smile.
“You know he’s going to repeat that speech every time he sees you now.”
“I gathered that.”
Patrick opened another beer and looked toward the water.
“You two swimming?”
“I didn’t bring a suit.”
“There’s one of mine in the cabin,” Maeve said. “It’s from before I started eating bread again. It’ll fit.”
“That’s very specific.”
“I keep emergency clothing on boats now. Key West has changed me.”
Emma changed in the cabin and came back wearing Maeve’s suit.
Jake looked up from his conversation with Patrick.
His expression made Emma stop.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Jake.”
He smiled. “You look good.”
The compliment was simple, but Emma felt it anyway.
“Thank you.”
Maeve jumped in first. Emma followed.
The water was warmer than she expected. For a while, they swam around the boat and talked about nothing important.
Jake stayed aboard with Patrick.
At one point, Emma looked back and saw the two men sitting near the stern. Their voices were low enough that she couldn’t hear them.
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” she asked.
Maeve glanced toward the boat.
“Patrick could be talking about engines, fishing or the meaning of life. His face looks exactly the same for all three.”
Emma laughed.
Maeve floated onto her back.
Emma did the same.
The water held her easily. She stared at the sky and thought about her mother.
Ruth’s last real vacation had been at a lake in Michigan. Emma had gone for four days because her mother insisted. Every morning, Ruth swam while Emma sat on the dock with coffee and watched.
At the time, Emma thought her mother was showing off.
Ruth had been fifty-nine.
She had two years left.
Emma was thirty-five now. Until this moment, she had never considered how young fifty-nine sounded.
Her mother had known she was sick. Emma hadn’t understood how sick.
Still, Ruth had gone swimming every morning.
Emma remembered the pleasure on her mother’s face when she came out of the water. Emma understood something she hadn’t been old enough to see then. Her father hadn’t simply loved her mother, he had delighted in her.
“You okay?” Maeve asked.
Emma turned her head.
“Yeah. I was thinking about my mother.”
“Good memory?”
“I think so.”
Maeve didn’t ask anything else.
Emma appreciated that.
They swam back to the boat.
Patrick handed Emma a towel when she came up the ladder.
“How was it?”
“Wonderful.”
Maeve climbed up behind her and dropped onto the deck in the sun.
“Anybody hungry again?”
“I could eat,” Jake said.
Emma laughed. “Of course you could.”
They finished the chips and most of the bread. Patrick stretched out on the deck with a small pillow beneath his head and closed his eyes.
Jake moved toward the stern and began looking through something Patrick had shown him near the console.
Maeve sat beside Emma.
“You okay?”
“I am.”
“You looked like you had something going on in there.”
Emma smiled. “I’ve been figuring things out for days. I thought eventually I’d be finished.”
“You don’t get finished.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
Maeve tucked one leg beneath her.
“Are you going back to Chicago?”
Emma looked toward Jake.
He was facing the water. If he could hear them, he gave no sign.
“No.”
Maeve waited.
Emma smiled a little. “I told Priya yesterday.”
“And Jake?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Emma thought about Leah’s advice the night before.
Tell him what’s true now.
“I’m going to. I think I needed to say it to myself first.”
Maeve nodded.
“I’m not going back to the life I had,” Emma continued. “There are things I have to deal with in Chicago. My apartment. My job. A lot of practical things. But I don’t want that life anymore.”
“How does it feel saying that?”
Emma considered the question.
“Like I should be more scared than I am.”
Maeve smiled. “That sounds familiar.”
Emma looked at Jake again.
“I don’t want him to think I’m staying because of him.”
“Are you?”
“No.” The answer came easily. “He’s part of why I want to be here, but he isn’t the reason I came. Gloria is. The cottage is. And somewhere along the way, this place started feeling like mine too.”
“That sounds like a pretty good reason to stay.”
“It does.”
Emma watched Jake laugh at something Patrick said.
“The part I haven’t figured out is him.”
Maeve followed her gaze.
“You don’t have to figure him out by yourself.”
“I know.”
“You could talk to him.”
Emma laughed softly. “You and Leah have been comparing notes.”
“I like Leah.”
“Of course you do.”
Maeve smiled.
Emma leaned back on her hands.
She had spent most of her adult life believing that if she thought long enough, planned carefully enough and gathered enough information, she could make the right decision before taking the first step.
Nothing about Key West had worked that way.
Maybe that was part of why she loved it.
Later, Maeve started the engine and turned the boat toward home. Patrick took the wheel after a few minutes, and Maeve came aft to sit with Emma and Jake.
“Come out with us again,” she said. “Next time, Jake, you’re getting in the water.”
“Was I very uncooperative?”
“Extremely.”
“I was having an important conversation.”
Emma looked at him. “About what?”
Jake glanced at Patrick.
“Wood.”
Patrick coughed into his hand.
Emma narrowed her eyes. “That sounded convincing.”
Jake smiled. “It was mostly wood.”
Emma let it go, although she made a note to ask him later.
They returned to the marina in the late afternoon. The pelican was still on its piling.
Patrick brought No Worries alongside the dock and tied off with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times.
“Thank you,” Emma said when they stepped onto the dock. “This was a wonderful day.”
Maeve hugged her.
Jake shook Patrick’s hand.
“We had a great time,” he said.
Patrick hugged Emma next.
“Remember what I told you. Stay too long and it’ll be too late. You’ll be stuck here with the rest of us.”
Emma smiled.
“I’ll risk it.”
This time, she didn’t have to think before saying it.
Jake drove her back to the cottage.
Emma rested her head against the window and watched the mangroves pass. Her hair was stiff with salt, and her shoulders felt warm from the sun.
She was tired in the best possible way.
At the cottage, Jake made tea in the blue enamel kettle. They carried their mugs to the porch and sat on the step.
For a while, Emma listened to the sounds of the neighborhood settling into evening.
She had been thinking about this conversation since the night before.
“Jake.”
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”
He turned toward her.
Emma held the mug between both hands.
“I’m not going back to Chicago.”
Jake didn’t answer immediately.
“I mean, I have to go back,” she continued. “I have an apartment and a job I need to deal with. I can’t just disappear. But I’m not going back to stay.”
Jake looked at her. “You’re sure?”
“I am.”
She expected the words to feel enormous once she said them to him.
They didn’t.
They felt true.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. That’s the part I’m trying not to panic about.”
Jake smiled.
“I’ll probably resign. I’ll have to decide what to do with the apartment and figure out whether I want to work here or do something remotely. I have no idea what any of that looks like yet.”
“You don’t have to know tonight.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“Maybe everyone’s right.”
Emma leaned her shoulder against his.
“There’s something else.”
Jake waited.
“I don’t want you to think I’m staying because of you.”
His face changed, but he didn’t look hurt.
“I know you’re not.”
“You do?”
“You had reasons to stay before you and I became whatever this is.”
Emma smiled. “Whatever this is?”
“I was trying not to make assumptions.”
“Very cautious of you.”
“I have a reputation.”
Emma looked down at her tea.
“You’re part of it, though.”
“Part of what?”
“The life I want here.”
Jake went very still.
Emma could hear her own heartbeat, which annoyed her. She had spoken in boardrooms filled with people who wanted her to fail and never felt this nervous.
“I don’t know exactly what happens with us,” she said. “I don’t think either of us can know that yet. But I know I want to find out.”
Jake set his mug on the step.
“So do I.”
Emma looked at him.
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a little more enthusiasm.”
Jake laughed and reached for her.
Emma went willingly.
He kissed her slowly. One hand settled against the side of her face, and Emma forgot all about the speech she had been preparing since Saturday night.
When they finally pulled apart, Jake rested his forehead against hers.
“I’m very enthusiastic.”
Emma smiled. “Better.”
He kissed her again.
Later, they sat with their shoulders touching while the light faded over the garden.
For years, Emma had believed a good life was something you built by making the right decisions in the right order.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
Maybe sometimes a life appeared slowly while you were busy looking somewhere else. Then one day you noticed the people beside you and the place you kept returning to.
Emma rested her head against Jake’s shoulder.
She didn’t know every detail of what came next, and that was fine with her.