Page 77 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“Dad, you don’t have to⁠—”

“I’m not doing it for money. Don’t even say the word to me.”

“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say thank you.”

“Say that instead, then.” He picked his camera back up, framed a shot he didn’t take. “I’ve spent a year taking pictures of you becoming somebody. I’d like to build something too.”

She smiled at the water.

They packed up when the fog got serious about coming in, and Tyler drove them up to the little stand on the highway, the one with the flaking blue paint and the picnic table nobody used because of the ants.

“Bad news place,” he said, pulling in. “You know that’s the rule.”

“I know it’s the rule.”

“This isn’t bad news.”

“No,” Stella said. “Let’s not tell the ice cream that.”

Tyler ordered a sugar cone, mint chocolate chip, the way he’d ordered it at every stand on two continents. Stella ordered hers in a cup, same flavor, because a cone was—she’d maintained this since she was seven and would maintain it at ninety—a structurally unsound food delivery system.

“You’ve never once wavered on that.”

“I’ve never once been wrong about it.”

They sat on the tailgate with their ice cream, the ocean going dark past the parking lot.

“Do you have a name yet?” he asked. “For the place.”

“No.”

“None?”

“Bea’s designed the whole sign around a blank. She’s furious about it.” Stella took a bite from the cup. “We keep almost having one, and then not.”

Tyler smiled and took a bite of his cone. He crunched it extra loud on purpose.

“It’s not just the baking,” Stella said, somewhere in the middle of her cup. “I mean it is. But it’s the cards. People keep bringing us their people, Dad. Somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s wife’s mother, and nobody else is ever going to make those things again, and we can. Joey and I want to do a request each week—rotate through as many as we can get to. People want to remember their people.”

Tyler looked at his daughter for a while. “That’s the whole business plan right there,” he said, finally. “The rest is ovens.”

Stella smiled at him and rested her head on his shoulder for a second. “I suppose it is.”

“You and Joey,” Tyler said, somewhere in the second half of the cone. “You’re sure? I mean…he’s Joey.”

Stella didn’t answer right away, which he liked.

“He made the apricot slice twice before the graduation dinner,” she said. “Two failed pans. Told nobody. Just quietly bought a different pan size and got it right, and the only reason I know is I found the receipt.” She dug at the cup. “He’s the only person I’ve ever met who practices for things nobody’s watching. That’s who you want holding the other half of something.”

Tyler thought about it. “Good answer.”

“I know.”

“Don’t do that.”

“You walked into it.”

He laughed and looked at his daughter.“You’re lit up.”