Page 164 of Key West Homecoming

“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?”