Page 71 of Key West Homecoming

Emma laughed.

“That’s what I want you to know first,” Edmund said. “Your grandmother laughed a great deal in those last years. She made me laugh too.”

“Thank you for telling me that.” Emma picked up her tea. “I’ve got a story for you too.”

“I’d like that.”

“When I was nine, she taught me gin rummy at the kitchen table in the cottage, and she cheated.”

Edmund set his cup carefully into the saucer.

“She cheated?”

“Every hand. She dealt off the bottom of the deck, and she wasn’t even good at it. She was absolutely certain I couldn’t see what she was doing. When I finally called her on it, she told me the whole point of the game had been to teach me to pay attention and that I’d just passed.”

Edmund stared at her.

“I played cards with that woman all those years, and she never once cheated me.”

“Maybe you weren’t paying attention.”

“Or maybe she’d finished teaching.”

Emma smiled.

For a few moments, they sat with their memories of Gloria between them. Emma had spent so much of the last week learning things that hurt that it felt good to hear something that didn’t. Gloria had been happy. She had laughed and traveled and read books with a man who had loved her. No one could have asked for more.

Edmund finally drank from his tea.

“Now we get to the harder part.”

“All right.”

“Your grandmother and I came to Key West three times together. The first trip was during our second year. The next was two years later, and the last was in our seventh year, before her health began to change.”

Emma listened.

“Every time we planned the trip, she wanted to stay at the cottage. It was hers, and it mattered to her. Her father had built it. Your father had spent his summers there and so had you. Gloria wanted to sit on that porch with me, drink coffee and remember.”

Edmund looked down at his cup.

“We stayed at a small inn in Old Town all three times instead of the cottage.”

Emma knew what was coming before he said it.

“Arthur?”

“Yes.”

She set down her tea.

“The first time, he told her the plumbing was being redone and the cottage wasn’t fit to stay in. On the second trip, he said it was being painted and there were drop cloths everywhere. The last time, he told her the roof was being repaired and the ceiling in the second bedroom had been opened.”

Emma felt something harden inside her.

“She believed him?”

“She did. She’d spent most of her life believing him about small things, Emma. She wasn’t going to suddenly stop in her seventies, especially when he was telling her he was taking care of something for her. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to check on the cottage because my instinct had me doubting Arthur. I didn’t trust him. She died before it was ever convenient for her to go home.”