Page 184 of Key West Homecoming

“It probably is.”

Emma laughed and rested her forehead against his shoulder.

On the way to Hibiscus Lane, she took the envelope from her bag and read Gloria's list again.

This time she didn't linger on the question at the bottom.

She already knew the answer.

At the cottage, Emma opened Gloria's leather notebook and slipped the envelope between the last written page and the first blank one.

It seemed like the right place for it.

Gloria's lists belonged with Gloria's words. One day, Emma would open the notebook again and find the envelope there. She would remember the things her grandmother had wanted to tell her and the question she'd wanted to ask.

And Emma would remember that she'd finally been able to answer it.

CHAPTER 29

The first week of July came in hot and stayed that way. By eight o’clock Thursday night, the fans at Margarita Max’s were moving warm air around the room without doing much to cool it.

The place was two-thirds full. Joey played near the front, and every few songs someone got up to dance. Connie stood at the register where she could see the whole room and let everybody else do the work.

Emma had been at the bar for about twenty minutes when Tess dropped a rack of glasses.

Nothing had been in her way. She had carried the rack with both hands when it slipped and hit the floor.

Leah didn’t even turn around.

“That’s the third one this week,” she said.

Emma looked toward the kitchen. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s been fine since Sunday, and she’ll go on being fine until she isn’t.”

Tess came back with another rack and set it down. Then she started telling Leah about the ice machine but was clearly distracted. Halfway through the story, she looked toward the screen door.

“Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nobody’s going to tell you anything because there’s nothing to tell.” Leah put Emma’s soup in front of her without breaking stride. “And if there were, I’d have told you. I’d like that on the record before this evening goes any further.”

“All right. My goodness, you don’t have to be so snippy.”

From the end of the bar, Lloyd spoke without turning his head.

“In forty-six years, I’ve never seen a woman drop a tray on flat ground who wasn’t keeping some kind of secret.”

Leah pointed at his beer. “Drink that.”

At a quarter past eight, Joey stopped in the middle of a song.

He put one hand across the strings and leaned toward the microphone he rarely used.

“Somebody’s coming up the street,” he said. “I’ve been told to say so when they do.”

Tess froze.

The screen door opened.