Chapter 27
The little beach at the end of Hibiscus Lane was barely forty feet of sand and broken shell. A mangrove stood at either end.
Emma remembered it differently.
When she was little, the beach had seemed enormous. Her father had taught her to swim there with one hand beneath her stomach while he told her she was doing great. She could still hear his voice.
Since coming back to Key West, Emma had walked down here twice. Both times, she stopped at the mangroves and turned around.
On Monday morning, she went all the way to the water with Jake beside her.
A heron stood several yards offshore, perfectly still as it watched the shallows.
“I booked my flight,” Emma said. “Thursday morning.”
Jake nodded. “You’re still coming back the following Thursday?”
“That’s the plan. Rachel wants an hour with me before I go. Then I have to resign properly, empty at least part of my apartment and deal with a storage unit on Clybourn I haven’t opened in nine years.”
“What’s in the storage unit?”
“My mother’s things. Some furniture. Boxes I couldn’t deal with after she died.” Emma looked out at the water. “I’ve been paying forty-one dollars a month to avoid opening the door.”
Jake smiled a little. “That’s a very specific form of avoidance.”
“I’m excellent at organized avoidance.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Emma nudged him with her shoulder.
She had already told Jake she wasn’t returning to Chicago to stay. Saying it on the porch the night before had been easier than she’d expected. Talking about leaving for a week felt strangely harder.
“I don’t want to go.”
“I know.”
“That surprises me. I mean, it’s only a week, but Chicago has been home for twelve years.
I have a job there, an apartment and a best friend.
I know exactly which train to take and where to buy groceries at ten o’clock at night.
” Emma pushed her hair away from her face.
“But when I think about getting on that plane, it feels like I’m leaving home instead of going to it. ”
“Maybe that tells you something.”
“It tells me a lot.”
The heron moved a few inches and stopped again.
Jake put his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been thinking about something since Saturday morning.”
Emma looked at him. “That sounds serious.”
“It might be.”
She waited.
“There’s something I want to tell you, but not today.”
Emma thought of Leah telling her to say what was true instead of trying to work out the next five years. She had done that last night. Jake deserved the same freedom.
“All right.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
He studied her face. “You’re not going to ask?”
“I want to.”
Jake laughed.
“I want to very badly, actually, but I’m not going to.”
“That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever done for me.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
They started back toward the lane.
Halfway to her car, Emma stopped.
“I do need one thing before Thursday.”
“What?”
She smiled. “Would you kiss me?”
Jake was already reaching for her.
His mouth found hers, and Emma slipped her arms around his neck. When he pulled back, he stayed close enough that his lips brushed hers when he spoke.
“You never have to ask me that, Emma.”
“That’s good to know.”
She kissed him again.
Rachel had four pages of estate inventory squared neatly on the desk.
She went through the recovery items one at a time while Emma took notes she probably wouldn’t need. The estate had several paths for recovering money and property. None of them would happen quickly.
“Before you ask me again, think months, not weeks,” Rachel said. “Some of this could take close to a year. I know you want it finished, but wanting it finished doesn’t make the process move faster.”
“I’ve only asked twice.”
“Three times.”
Emma smiled. “Fine. Three.”
Rachel turned the page.
“Now we need to talk about something you’re not going to like. Gloria’s will leaves Arthur three things. Her mother’s china, two pieces of jewelry from your grandfather’s side and whatever remains in her checking account after the medical bills. That should be around eleven hundred dollars.”
“So he gets them.”
“Under the will, yes. Because of what he owes the estate, I could ask the court to offset those bequests against the debt. I think we’d have a strong argument.”
Outside the tall window, the fig tree moved in the side garden.
Emma didn’t need time to think about it.
“Don’t file anything. Give him the china and the jewelry. Give him the eleven hundred dollars.”
Rachel looked up. “I want to be sure you’re making that decision because it’s what you want, not because you’re tired of all of this.”
“It isn’t forgiveness. I’m not going to see him or write to him. If the state attorney charges him, I’m not asking anyone to go easy on him.”
Emma rested her hands in her lap.
“But Grandma sat down and decided who should have her mother’s china.
She knew Arthur when she wrote that will.
She knew his faults better than anyone, and she put his name there anyway.
” Emma looked at Rachel. “Those things were hers to give. I’m not going to change her last decision because I’m angry with him. ”
“You’re still angry?”
“Of course I am.”
Rachel smiled faintly. “Good. I was starting to worry Key West had turned you into a saint.”
“Not even close.”
Rachel wrote a note on the inventory.
“Then that’s what the estate will do.”
Yolanda appeared in the doorway carrying a stack of folders. She had apparently heard enough of the conversation to understand.
“Good,” she said.
She put the folders down and left again.
Emma laughed.
“I’m going to miss her.”
“You’re not allowed to take her.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was.”
Chicago was seventy-one degrees and gray.
Emma stepped into her apartment Thursday afternoon with her bag still over one shoulder. The place smelled faintly stale, as though no one had cooked or opened a window in a month.
Nothing had changed.
That was the strangest part.
The books were still on the shelves. A stack of mail waited on the kitchen counter, and the blue bowl beside the door held two sets of keys and a handful of coins. Eleven hundred square feet of a life she had assembled over twelve years sat exactly where she had left it.
Emma waited for grief.
What came instead was recognition.
The apartment felt like a hotel room she had stayed in much too long.
She slept there Thursday night because she had nowhere else to sleep. Friday morning, she put on the gray blazer and took the Brown Line downtown at a quarter to nine.
She had made that trip thousands of times.
For years, the routine had comforted her. That morning, she watched people get on and off with coffee cups and work bags and wondered how many of them were living a life they had chosen and how many had simply kept showing up.
The thirty-second floor hadn’t changed either.
Emma stepped into her office and stopped.
The plant on her windowsill was alive.
She was still staring at it when Marcy came around the partition.
“I watered it.”
Emma turned.
“Every Tuesday for six years. Whether you were here or not.”
“You did?”
“You never noticed, which is fine. The plant noticed.”
Emma crossed the space between them and hugged her.
They had never hugged in six years.
Marcy allowed it for approximately four seconds before patting Emma twice on the back.
“That’s enough of that.”
Emma laughed and let her go.
“Frank is ready for you.”
“The question is whether I’m ready for Frank.”
“You are.”
Frank Reyes closed his office door behind Emma, which he rarely did. Instead of taking his usual place behind the desk, he sat in the chair beside hers.
“You look different.”
“I’ve been outside.”
“That’ll do it.”
Emma smiled.
“I told you on the phone I wanted to hear what happened,” Frank said. “I meant it.”
So Emma told him.
She started with the call from the broker in Naples and the cottage that was supposed to be falling down but wasn’t.
She told him about Jake, although she kept that part mostly to herself.
Then she explained the will, the safe deposit box and Edmund carrying Gloria’s letter for a year because he had been too ill to deliver it.
By the time she reached the hearing, Emma realized she was no longer telling the story as something that had happened to her.
It was simply part of her life now.
She finished with Arthur standing at the water cooler in a suit that no longer fit.
Frank had barely moved while she talked.
“How much does Rachel expect the estate to recover?”
“Several hundred thousand for certain. Potentially more, depending on what can actually be collected. She says it’ll take time.”
Frank nodded and looked at the carpet.
“You’re not staying.”
“No.”
“I knew that in the first five minutes. I let you finish because you would’ve felt cheated otherwise.”
Emma smiled.
“So here’s the managing partner answer. Your accounts are clean. Marcy has handled everything properly, and you can leave here with nobody’s opinion of you changed by a degree. I’ll write whatever you ever need me to write.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you going to do in Key West?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Frank waited.
Emma smiled. “And right now, that feels good.”
He laughed once.
In twelve years, Emma had heard Frank laugh that way maybe three times.
“I’ve asked about your plan in every review I’ve ever given you. You always had one. Every plan was sensible, and I approved every one of them.” He shook his head. “That may be the best answer you’ve ever given me in this office.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Don’t analyze it. Take the compliment.”
“I’ll try.”
Frank stood, which usually meant a meeting was over.
“One thing.”
Emma waited.
“When you know what you want to do, if there’s a version where you take work from us on your own terms, call me first. I don’t care where you live or what hours you keep. We can talk about what makes sense.”
Emma hadn’t expected that.
“I appreciate it.”
“I’m not trying to keep you.”
“I know.”
“I just don’t want to buy that brain back from somebody else in three years.”
Emma laughed.
“Thanks, Frank.”