Page 76 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“Answer it,” Bea said, barely voicing it.

“I’m going to.”

“Answer it, Stella⁠—”

“I’m going to—” Stella’s thumb wasn’t quite steady. Out on the floor the Shack ran on, oblivious. The family closed down the day with no idea. Three feet away, in the cold by the cooler.

She answered it.

“Michael,” she said. “Hi. Yeah—we’re all three of us, hang on.” She put it on speaker, low, and held it in the middle of them. Three heads bent down over one phone in the dark by the walk-in.

“Numbers check out,” Michael said, no preamble. “Every column. I ran it twice.”

Nobody breathed.

“That’s a yes,” Michael said, when nobody said anything. “From me. You’ll have a great plan to pitch the family.”

Bea’s hand found Stella’s arm and gripped it hard enough to leave a mark. Joey made a sound Stella had never heard before—something that had been sitting in him since October, finally let go. None of it was bad.

“Okay,” Stella said, to Michael, to the cooler, to the two of them crowded in with her in the cold. “Okay. Thank you.”

Out on the floor, Anna called an order, and the grill ticked, and the Shack ran on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

She asked him to go shooting, and Tyler said yes before she’d finished the sentence, because when your daughter asks you somewhere alone, you don’t make her ask twice.

They drove down with the windows cracked and didn’t talk much. Tyler had learned this year not to fill a silence like that one.

They set up at the overlook where the trail bent, the whole curve of the coast going hazy to the south. Tyler started shooting, because that was the cover, and the light really was good. Stella lifted her camera and didn’t. Lifted it and didn’t. He kept his eyes on his own viewfinder and let her get there on her own time.

“So,” she said, finally, to the ocean, not to him. “Something happened.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a good something. I think.” She lowered the camera. “Joey and I want to open a bakery. A real one.” And then it came out in a rush once it started. “Bernie’s offering us the newsstand to do it in—the whole building, he wants us to have it. Margo’s in. Michael says the money works. We’ve been inside it, Dad—it smells like newsprint and dust and it’s ours if we want it.” She barely stopped to take a breath. “Michael ran the numbers, found the one thing that would’ve sunk it, and we fixed it. We’ve been in there. Bea’s already designing the sign.” She stopped, started again. “I want it, Dad. I really want it. I’ve never wanted anything like this and it scares me how much.”

Tyler set his camera down in the sand, careful, like it might go off.

“Say that again.”

She said it again, slower, and this time he let her get all the way through before he said anything.

“Bernie’s newsstand,” he said.

“Bernie’s newsstand.”

“The whole building?”

“The whole building.”

He looked out at the water for a while. When he looked back his eyes were doing something he didn’t try to hide, which for Tyler was its own kind of statement.

“I don’t—” He stopped, started over. “I’m proud of you. That’s the whole sentence. I don’t have a longer one today.”

She looked at him, and her own eyes did something too, and she looked back out at the water fast so he wouldn’t see it. He let her, because that was the deal.

“I want to build it,” Tyler said, eventually. “The door through the wall, whatever it needs. I want to be the one who does it.”