Page 109 of Key West Homecoming

Jake didn't look down at it, but he didn't move away.

“I called Nora's mother again from the hospital. Her name is Nancy. Nora's father hadn't been around for years, so it was really just the two of them. I told Nancy what had happened while I was standing in a hallway at Jackson Memorial. She didn't say much. She said she'd be on the first flight in the morning and asked if I'd pick her up.”

“I told her I would.”

Emma left her hand where it was.

“I picked her up at Miami International the next day. I was still wearing the shirt I'd put on the morning before. Nancy walked up to me at baggage claim and didn't hug me. She didn't cry either. I drove her to the medical examiner's office, and we identified Nora together.”

Emma swallowed.

“Nancy did most of it. She was her mother. She'd held Nora as a baby. It felt like she had the right to be the one who looked at her.”

The last of the light had disappeared from the yard.

“I left the company within a month. The two doctors who owned it tried to get me to take a sabbatical instead, so I did. I just never went back. I sold my truck because I couldn't stand looking at it. I emptied the apartment Nora and I had shared. I gave Nancy the things she wanted and donated almost everything else.”

Jake looked toward the cottage.

“I put what I had left in a duffel bag and drove south. That was three years ago in July.”

“You signed the lease a week later.”

He nodded.

“I met Arthur in a coffee shop on Duval. I didn't ask enough questions about the paperwork because I wasn't in any condition to ask questions about anything. I signed the lease, paid the first month and moved into a cottage on a lane I'd never heard of.”

A faint smile touched his face.

“Then I started pulling weeds out of a lily bed.”

Emma thought about Gloria's lilies and the years Jake had spent taking care of them without knowing whose hands had planted them.

He was quiet for a while before he spoke again.

“There's something else.”

Emma waited.

“Six months after Nora died, Nancy sent me a check. It came here, to this address.”

“For what?”

“Life insurance. Nora had a policy through the school system, and Nancy was the beneficiary. She sent me a substantial part of it.”

“Why?”

“She wrote that she wasn't going to keep money that came from Nora dying, but she couldn't bring herself to spend it either. She said that as far as she was concerned, it was mine to do with what I wanted.”

Jake's voice grew quieter.

“I cashed the check.”

Emma looked at him.

“I put it in an account, and I haven't touched a dollar of it in three years. I've never told anyone about it.”

“Not even Nancy?”