Page 182 of Key West Homecoming

For years, she had remembered those phone calls by what hadn't been said. She remembered the awkward pauses and the way Gloria sometimes lost her place in a conversation. Emma had blamed distance and work and everything else that had made it too easy to promise herself she'd call again in a few days.

Now she looked at the list and saw something different.

Gloria had been trying.

Her grandmother had written down a cardinal, a book, a photograph, Emma's terrible pelican joke and a lime tree because she wanted things to tell her granddaughter the next time they talked.

Then she'd written down the one thing she most wanted to know.

Emma turned the envelope over and looked at Gloria's name through the window.

“You can answer it,” Edmund said.

Emma looked up.

“If you want to. The question's still there.”

She almost laughed at the idea of answering an old electric bill on a veranda in Key West.

Instead, Emma held the envelope in her lap and looked toward the fig tree.

A month ago, she wasn't sure what she would have said. She had been successful. She had a good job and a beautiful apartment. She had Priya and a life that looked exactly the way she'd once believed it should.

But happy?

Emma thought about the cottage and the little model her father had built. She thought about Margarita Max's and the people who expected her to walk through the door. Most of all, she thought about Jake.

The answer came easily. “I am,” she said softly. “Grandma, I'm happy.”

Edmund looked toward the fig tree and gave her the privacy of pretending he hadn't seen her wipe her eyes. Emma appreciated it, but it wasn’t necessary. Edmund was as much her family as her grandmother.

They left at one o'clock.

Rebecca drove because she was flying north with Edmund and coming back Thursday. She had strong opinions about the airport and shared most of them while they stood in the driveway.

Jake put a paper bag from the bakery on Petronia in the back seat. He'd added two bottles of water and a sleeve of Yolanda's shortbread that he'd gone back for without telling anyone.

Emma watched him tuck everything beside Edmund's bag.

It was exactly the sort of thing Jake did. He noticed what someone might need and took care of it without making a production out of being thoughtful.

Edmund stood beside the open car door in a linen jacket despite the ninety-degree heat.

“You know they have air-conditioning where you're going,” Emma said.

“I've been wearing linen in Florida for forty years. I'm not changing now.”

“That wasn't what I meant.”

“I know.”

He turned to Jake and held out his hand.

Jake shook it.

Edmund said something too quietly for Emma to hear. Whatever it was made Jake glance at him and nod.

Emma immediately wanted to know.