Page 89 of Key West Homecoming

“I figured.”

“I also haven’t eaten since Islamorada.”

Jake frowned. “That was hours ago.”

“I know.”

“Go back to Winslow’s and eat something.”

Emma laughed softly. “Yes, sir.”

He walked her to the gate.

Before she left, Emma looked back toward the unfinished pergola.

“When do you think you’ll finish it?”

“A couple of days.”

“I’d like to see it when it’s done.”

Jake looked at her. “You will.”

She got into the rental car and pulled away.

Jake stayed at the gate until her taillights disappeared at the end of Hibiscus Lane. Then he went back into the garden and sat beneath the lignum vitae for a while.

For three years, the cottage had been the place where Jake came to stop thinking about what came next.

Now, for the first time in a long time, he found himself wondering.

CHAPTER 15

Rachel filed the original will with the Monroe County court by ten the next morning, along with the papers challenging Arthur’s appointment as executor and asking the court to stop the sale of Twenty-Three Hibiscus Lane until the ownership dispute was settled.

Yolanda notarized what needed to be notarized, and Judge Ellsworth’s clerk stamped the packet without comment.

Rachel called Emma fifteen minutes later.

“It’s in.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. The preliminary hearing is a week from Wednesday, and Sunset Conch Holdings’ attorney already has a copy. Nobody can claim they weren’t notified.”

Emma sat back in the chair on her patio at Winslow’s. “So the cottage is safe?”

“For now, yes. The sale can’t quietly go forward while this is in front of the court, but I don’t want you thinking we’re finished. Arthur can fight the will, and I expect him to. There’ll be paperwork, depositions and probably more than one hearing. If he pushes it far enough, there could be a trial.”

Emma looked toward the palms beyond the garden wall. She had known this wasn’t going to end with one trip to Miami, but hearing Rachel say it made the next few weeks feel suddenly real.

“How long do you think I need to stay?”

“I can’t give you an exact answer, but I wouldn’t plan on going back to Chicago next week.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I didn’t think so.” Rachel paused. “There’s something else. I pulled the Miami-Dade probate file from your grandmother’s estate over the weekend. Arthur’s filings, the inventory, what was distributed to him. There’s more there than I expected.”