Page 157 of Key West Homecoming

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.