Page 2 of Key West Homecoming

“Well, I was just about to leave…”

“I’ll be brief. I’m calling about a property at twenty-three Hibiscus Lane, in Key West.”

Emma dropped her bag and returned to her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “Could you say that again?”

“Of course. We’re handling the title search on a pending sale of a cottage at twenty-three Hibiscus Lane. The recorded owner is a Mr. Arthur Kendrick. In the course of our due diligence we came across a document that references you directly, and I wanted to reach you before we go to closing.”

“What document?”

There was a small pause, and the sound of paper being shifted. “It appears to be a will, signed by a Gloria Kendrick. It’s dated roughly two years before her passing, and it names you as the beneficiary of the property.”

Emma didn’t move. She was aware of her hand resting on the receiver and the hum of the ventilation and almost nothing else.

“Ms. Kendrick? Are you still with me?”

“I’m here.”

“I want to be very clear with you, because I think you deserve clarity. This document was never filed with the probate court. The estate went into probate up in Miami-Dade under an earlier will that named Mr. Kendrick as beneficiary, and the court appointed him personal representative. That administration is still open. He’s selling as the estate’s representative under a power of sale in that will, which is ordinary enough that no one in my office looked at it twice. So as far as the public record is concerned, he had the authority to sign. I’m calling because your name is sitting in my file, and I’d rather be thorough than not.”

Emma pulled the legal pad across the desk and wrote the date at the top and underlined it twice.

“You said the property is being sold.”

“It is. We have a buyer, and the closing is scheduled for a week from this Friday.”

“Twelve days.”

“That’s right.”

Emma wrote the number beneath the date and drew a single box around it.

“Tell me about the cottage,” she said.

“It’s a small one. Two bedrooms, original Conch architecture, built in the nineteen forties, and beautifully maintained. The garden’s genuinely something of a feature. There’s been significant landscaping investment over the last several years. Fresh paint, a new roof, the porch was refurbished. Honestly, it’s the kind of property that hardly ever comes on the market, which is why the offer was as strong as it was.”

Emma closed her eyes and saw it immediately, though not the cottage Samantha described. She saw the one from her childhood, the one her father loved. She remembered the lilies standing in a crooked line along the fence, the bougainvillea spilling magenta over the porch railing, and the crushed-shell path that crunched underfoot. Her memory of the screen door that slapped twice against the frame every single time no matter how you tried to catch it, could bring her back to her childhood just by closing her eyes. She could not, for the life of her, make that cottage fit inside the words new roof.

Because her Uncle Arthur had told her that the roof was gone.

He’d called her three times in the year since Gloria died. The first time, a week after the funeral, to say the estate would be settled soon and that there was nothing whatsoever for her to do. She was grateful then, thinking it was a blessing she didn’t have to get involved.

The second, a month or so later, ostensibly to check on how she was holding up, and to mention almost casually that the Key West place was in far worse shape than anybody had realized.

The third, some months after that, another brief and friendly call in which the cottage came up again and was waved away entirely. A small hopeless thing, sweetheart, don’t give it another thought. Each time, Emma had thanked him sincerely. Each time, she had hung up and gone straight back to work. How had she never once asked him a single question?

“Ms. Larson,” she said. “How long has that property been in Mr. Kendrick’s name?”

“A little over a year. It transferred through probate after the previous owner passed.”

“And the will. Where did your office find it?”

“It was recorded in the Monroe County property records as a public document, sometime before the previous owner went into a care facility. Recorded but not filed with the probate court. Some Florida counties still allow that, and Monroe is one of them. We pulled it as part of the chain of title.” She paused briefly. “I want you to hear this part clearly. It’s a real document. It was witnessed and notarized.”

“Notarized where?”

“Miami-Dade County, by a notary who’s still in good standing. I checked personally before I called you.”

All of it Emma wrote on her notepad. Miami-Dade. Two years before. Witnessed and notarized.