Page 23 of The Beach Shack Legacy

Bea came up the front walk in her cap and gown, the zipper undone, the gown flowing behind her—navy blue over cutoffs, tassel swinging, backpack over one shoulder, crossing a residential street in the middle of a weekday afternoon like a woman on her way to receive an honorary doctorate.

Stella opened the door before she could knock.

“How long have you been wearing that?”

“Since yesterday. Not the whole time. I took it off to sleep.” Bea came in past her and dropped the backpack on the couch. “Where’s yours?”

“Somewhere.”

“Where’s yours, Stella?”

“I put it in the closet.”

Bea stopped moving.

“That’s where things go. It’s a closet.”

“It’s where you put something when you don’t want to look at it.” But Bea was already down the hall, and came back with it anyway—hanger and all, plastic still on—and held it up against Stella with enormous satisfaction until Stella gave in and put it on, to make her stop, probably, but a win was a win. They ended up on the floor with their backs against the couch afterward, both of them still in the gowns, because taking them off had somehow not happened, crackers between them that Stella had found in the kitchen.

“My mom’s lost the kitchen table,” Bea said. “I’ve got three piles on it. Coming With Me, Staying, To Be Determined.” She reached for another cracker. “Coming With Me is the smallest pile. That surprised me. Four sketchbooks, the good brushes, the tablet, the photo of everybody on the patio from the wedding. Eighteen years and it’s all in a crate.”

“I got here with about the same,” Stella said.

Bea stopped with her hand out for the crackers.

“That’s different.”

“Not really.” Stella gave her the box back.

“I’ve assigned visit weekends,” Bea said, and pulled a folded campus map from her backpack.

“You’ve what?”

“Assigned. Week one is Mom, obviously. Margo and Bernie get October, when it’s cooler, and Tyler and Meg can fight over November. Joey gets a day trip in the spring and he can build the itinerary.”

“He’ll laminate the itinerary.”

“He will.” Bea smoothed the map flat on the carpet between them. “And you get whatever you want. Open invitation, no weekend. You can turn up on a Tuesday.”

“What did everybody else do wrong?”

“Nothing.” Bea kept her eyes on the map. “You’re just you.”

Stella looked at the map and didn’t say anything.

“Are you nervous?” Bea asked. “About the walking part.”

“No, I’m not nervous.” Stella pulled a thread loose from the carpet. “I’m just going to be standing there with everybody’s parents watching and a piece of paper that says I finished something, and then I’m going to walk off the other side of the stage and I don’t know what happens after that. That’s not nerves. That’s just the actual situation.”

The phone buzzed on the carpet between them. Bea did not look at it.

She did not say it’s okay not to know. She had said it in the car outside the school and it had landed wrong, and she had filed it. So she let it alone—which sat there being worse than saying it—and reached for the next thing instead.

“What’s the project on?” she asked. “For real. You keep saying ‘the Shack’ like that’s a topic.”

“It is a topic.” Stella got up, went down the hall, and came back with a box—an actual box now, not the folder it had started as—and set it on the carpet between them and took the lid off like it was nothing, which meant it was not nothing.

Inside were prints. Stacks of them, and cards, and what looked like old menus gone soft and yellow. Bea pulled the gown up out of her way and got in close, which was the only way Bea knew how to look at anything.