Page 80 of The Beach Shack Legacy

Bea, who had known for weeks and nearly died of it, sat on her hands and let them.

Stella did most of it, and Joey did the parts with numbers, and Michael—who had indeed worn a collar, and who sat with his two pens and a folder squared to the table edge—did the parts where the numbers had to be believed. They laid it out plainly—Bernie’s newsstand, the baking, the window that closed the licensing problem, Stella’s wages, Joey’s scholarship redirected, a real plan, a real thing.

And Anna, listening, felt the funniest sequence of things happen in her chest, one after another, as each worry she’d been carrying got picked up and set down answered before she could even raise it.

They’ll run themselves into the ground like Meg did—and there was Meg, of all people, leaning forward and saying “who’s watching your labor hours, you can’t do this on eighteen-year-old adrenaline,” and Michael saying “I am, it’s built into the plan, look at page four,” and Meg actually looking at page four and going quiet in the specific way Meg went quiet when something was done correctly.

The ordering, the supply, the thing that broke the party—and there was Joey explaining the separate ordering system, the pars, the fail-safes, the thing that meant a quince would never again get sent back because nobody knew whose it was, and Anna realized he’d built the whole system around the exact hole they’d fallen through, that the disaster had become the blueprint.

Stella said, “and it’s attached, that’s the whole point, it’s not somewhere else, there’s a door, we’ll be right there, we’ll be more there, not less,” and Anna felt that one land in her own throat and had to look at her wine.

Bernie spoke once. He waited until the numbers were done, and then he said, into a pause, “The building’s mine. Free and clear, has been since before any of you were born. I’m not asking anybody at this table to buy anything or fund anything. I’m giving it. That part’s already decided, it was decided in my kitchen, and the only reason we’re all sitting here is that these two have too much respect for this family to take something that touches the Shack without asking the family first.” He looked around the table. “Which is the whole reason they should have it. Kids who’d ask.”

Luke’s voice came rough. “Bernie, can I say something?” Anna looked over, and Luke was turning his fork over in his hands. He looked at Joey. “You put your scholarship into it. The fund. Richard’s fund.”

“Yeah,” Joey said.

“That fund put me through school.” Luke said it to the table, plain. “Everybody here knows it, it’s not a secret, but I don’t say it enough. I was a kid with nothing and that fund and this family decided I was worth a bet, and I’m—” He gestured at his whole life, Meg beside him, the chair he’d carried in. “I’m this now. Because of a bet somebody made when I couldn’t have paid it back.” He stopped for a moment and cleared his throat. “You redirecting it isn’t wasting it.” He looked at Joey. “I never met the man. I know him from what his fund did for me, and from the way all of you still talk about him, all these years. And from that—it’s the most Richard thing you could do with it. Passing the bet on.” He paused and looked at Margo. “That’s not nothing.”

And it was Tyler, of all people, who turned to Bernie then and said, “Speaking of Richard—isn’t this how you got the newsstand in the first place? Didn’t he—wasn’t there some story about a horse, or a⁠—”

“There’s a whole story,” Bernie said, “and it’s Richard’s more than mine, and it keeps. Tonight’s about these two.” And he folded his hands, and would not be moved, and let the horse go unmentioned.

Somewhere in there Michael said the thing Anna would remember longest, and he didn’t say it to the room, he said it low, to Anna, while the others were talking over the tart plates, because Anna was closest and because Anna was the one still holding back.

“I checked it three times,” Michael said, quiet, just to her. “I wanted to find the thing that kills it. I always find it. It’s my whole job, finding it.” He aligned his fork with the edge of his plate. “I didn’t find it. And I want you to know—” the mask warmed, went honest—”I wouldn’t have told them it could work if I thought it would fail.”

Nobody said yes right away.

That was the thing—by the end, everyone at the table wanted to, Anna could feel it.

“It’s Rick’s to approve,” Margo said. “Not because he owns a vote the rest of us don’t. Because he keeps the books, and the fund is a legal thing with rules, and Joey’s redirect touches it, and if we do this we do it clean, on paper, the right way, so that nobody years from now can say we handed the family business to children on a summer night because the tart was good.” She looked at Stella. “It was a very good tart. It is still Rick’s to confirm. He’ll be back in a few days. We’ll bring it to him, all of it, and I expect he’ll say yes, because I raised him and he’s not a fool.” A pause. “But we’ll do it right. You did this right—you asked. We’re not going to answer you sloppy.”

“So that’s—” Stella looked around. “That’s not a no?”

“That’s a let us do this properly,” Meg said, “which in this family is basically a marriage proposal.”

“We’ll get back to you,” Margo said. “Soon. Properly. Now somebody cut me another sliver of that tart, a small one, and don’t tell me how many I’ve had.”

And Anna sat back in her chair on her own patio with her family loud and warm around her and two nervous kids finally letting their shoulders down, and understood that she’d walked out here an hour ago braced for the whole thing to be too much, and somewhere between the pizza and the quince she’d started, without deciding to, to hope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Tyler’s first act in Lindsey’s kitchen was reconnaissance.

He set the grocery bag on the counter, unpacked nothing, and walked the room once with his hands in his pockets—stove, window, the ceiling by the hallway. He found the smoke alarm, round and white and minding its own business above the door.

He moved a chair under it. He didn’t say why.

“Should I ask?” Lindsey sat on the stool on the far side of the counter, where she’d been installed with a glass of wine and instructions not to help.

“Standard procedure.”

“Whose standard?”

“Mine, now.”

He unpacked the bag like he was setting up a field hospital. His own lemons. His own flour, in a sandwich bag, labeled. His own pan, which he didn’t explain either. Two jars of capers.