Page 194 of Key West Homecoming

“And you’re only four blocks away.”

“Ten minutes walking.”

“Less if you use your bike.”

Jake brightened. “I’ll be in better shape than ever.”

Emma laughed. “That’s fortunate because I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I have to buy a car. I’m returning the rental before it costs me the price of a small boat.”

Jake considered this.

“How about we buy me a bed and you a car?”

“That is an expensive afternoon.”

“It is.”

Emma took his hand. “I’m right behind you.”

The next evening, Emma checked out of Winslow’s.

Marisol came around the desk and hugged her.

“I knew you weren’t going back to Chicago.”

“You did not.”

“I suspected.”

“That I’ll give you.”

Marisol smiled. “You got your cottage back, and you found someone you love. Key West did all right by you.”

Emma thought about everything that had happened since the day she arrived.

“It did.”

At nine o’clock, the cottage was quiet.

Emma had carried in only what she needed for the night. The rest could wait until morning. Her father’s model sat on the shelf in the front room where the early light would reach it.

Her father had built a tiny version of this house long before Emma understood what the cottage meant to him. Her grandmother had held on to the real one for years so it would someday belong to her granddaughter.

And now Emma was finally home.

Her phone buzzed.

Water the lime tree.

Jake.

Emma smiled and set the phone on the porch step.

The garden was dark except for the lantern she carried with her. Tree frogs called from somewhere beyond the fence. Palm fronds moved in the warm breeze, and she thought she heard a foghorn far off toward the water.