Page 81 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“Two?” Lindsey asked, eyeing the caper jars with her eyebrows raised.

“Insurance.”

“Against what?”

“Caper failure.” He set them side by side. “It’s rare, but not unheard of.”

She came around the counter for the wine bottle and stood closer than the task required, reading the label on the capers over his arm. “You’re managing something,” she said. “You over-prepare when you’re managing something. I’ve watched you do it.”

“I’m cooking dinner.”

“You brought a backup jar of capers to cook dinner.” She didn’t move away. “Try again.”

His phone came out of his pocket last and went face-down by the salt. Lindsey looked at it, and then at him.

“No word yet?”

“Nope. Rick’s back in a few days.” He got the cutting board down. “Margo says we do it properly.”

“And properly takes days.”

“Yes, apparently.”

“Okay.” She turned her glass once on the counter. “Then we’re not talking about it. You’ll check that phone every four minutes and burn the butter, and I’ve seen you wait for things, Tyler. You’re good at it through a camera and terrible at it everywhere else.”

He considered being offended. She was right, though, so he floured the chicken instead, and she stayed where she was, hip against the counter, close enough that he had to work around her and didn’t ask her to move.

He’d pounded the cutlets at home, because pounding wasn’t a spectator sport. What was left was the part with an audience—the dredge, the pan, the part with rules. “Stella says there was a practice run,” Lindsey said.

“There was a development phase. And it took a while to get through it. The recipe was on one of those cooking websites with stories. A long one, about a woman’s grandmother and her village and her feelings about lemons.”

Lindsey laughed. “She says I should ask about the pickles.”

“The development phase is sealed.” He laid the first cutlet in, and the butter made the sound he’d been waiting on all day. “You get the real thing. That was the deal from the start.”

She let him work for a while. The breeze came through her window and the scent of the neighbor’s jasmine settled in with the aroma of the lemons. The sun was setting in the distance and he adjusted for the light without thinking about it, the way he adjusted for light everywhere.

“So tell me about the dinner,” she said. “That part already happened. That part’s allowed.”

That part was allowed. He told her about Joey dealing out the pizzas like a card trick—everybody’s exact order, no notes, no discussion. About the chicken thing that got planned and wisely abandoned. About the tart, and what the tart was for, and Anna’s face when they set it down. About two kids laying out a real plan while a man in a collared shirt made the numbers stand up straight.

“And nobody said yes,” Lindsey said.

“Everybody said yes. Anna just said it in paperwork.” He turned the cutlet he’d been leaving alone. “It’s so far from a no, it’s got a filing system.”

“You know this town’s going to lose its mind.” She shook her head slowly. “A bakery through a door in the Shack. People are going to walk down the hill for that on principle alone.”

“That’s the theory,” Tyler said. He plated the chicken and spooned the sauce over it the way the woman with the grandmother had been very firm about, and carried both plates to her small table like they might go off.

Lindsey ate two bites, told him it was delicious, set her fork down, and looked at him.

“Okay. I’ve been sitting on something all week, and I wanted your actual face when I said it, not the back of your head over a pan.”

“Okay.”

“Reeves keeps a file. Projects he shows the new seniors on the first day—this is what the senior assignment can be, aim here.” She put her hand flat on the table. “He told me, in the copy room, dead serious, that The Beach Shack Legacy is the best senior project he has ever seen. Ever. He wants it in the file. He asked me to ask her permission—he wants to open the class with it. Every year.”

Tyler put his fork down.