Page 74 of Key West Homecoming

“Then Gloria’s plan worked.”

Emma looked down at her hands.

“She left enough behind that if one thing disappeared, something else would still be there.”

Emma looked at him. “She knew her son.”

“To the bone,” Edmund said. “That was part of what made it so painful. She loved Arthur, but she also saw him clearly. Those two things were true at the same time.”

Emma thought about the conversations she’d had with Arthur over the last year. She remembered how easily he’d lied to her and how certain he’d been that she would accept whatever he told her.

Gloria had known that part of him long before Emma did.

The music inside the house changed, and somewhere upstairs a door opened and closed. Rebecca called something up the staircase, a teenage voice answered, and a moment later they both laughed.

Emma smiled.

Edmund reached toward a small table beside his chair.

There was a manila envelope on it that Emma hadn’t noticed when she sat down. It was thicker than she expected, and her name was written across the front in handwriting she recognized immediately.

Edmund held the envelope with both hands before giving it to her.

“She wrote this the same year she changed the will. She told me what was in it before she sealed the envelope because she wanted to know if it said what she meant to say. I told her it said more than she realized. She sealed it that night and gave it to me, and I haven’t opened it since.”

Emma took the envelope.

The paper felt cool and heavier than it looked.

“It’s yours now,” Edmund said. “But I don’t want you to read it here. I thought about this last night.”

Emma looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I want you to take it to the cottage. Sit at the kitchen table where she used to sit and read it there. I think that’s where she would have wanted you to be.”

Emma looked down at her name again.

For the last several days, she had been surrounded by things Gloria had left behind. The cottage, the lilies, the will and now this.

“I’ll read it there.”

Edmund nodded.

“Good.”

Emma rested the envelope in her lap with both hands over it.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Edmund finally reached for the glass of water Rebecca had left on the tray and drank nearly half of it.

Emma smiled.

“Rebecca will be pleased.”

“I’m counting on you to tell her.”

“I will.”