Page 32 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“That’s not possible.”

“All right.”

“It isn’t possible, Bernard. You’re remembering a different thing. You’re remembering being young and the whole street coming down the hill and my grandmother’s recipe in my hands and Richard—” She stopped and straightened the twine on the table where it had fallen. “You’re remembering the room. Not the biscuit.”

“Could be.” He picked the other half up and ate it. “They’re still as good as I remember.”

Margo took one herself, finally, because there was no way around it now.

It was the shortbread. That was the trouble with it. Not close, not a nice attempt, not a young person’s version. It was the thing itself, made by hands that had never met the woman whose hands it came from, and it tasted like a Saturday in a kitchen that did not exist anymore.

She set it down half-eaten, same as he had.

“She wanted to know if it was right,” Margo said.

“Stella?”

“She stood there with flour on both wrists and asked me if she’d got it right. And Joey had the box already, because Joey had a box, because of course Joey had a box.” Margo put her hands in her lap. “And I said it looked lovely.”

“It looked lovely.”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s not an answer to what she asked.”

“No,” Margo said. “It isn’t.”

Bernie brushed the crumbs off his fingers over the box and didn’t say anything else. That was worse.

“I couldn’t do it in the room,” she said. “There were four people in the room and one of them was Anna, and if I’d stood at that counter and eaten my grandmother’s shortbread out of a pink box in front of all of them, I’d have—” She stopped. “I’d have needed a minute. And there isn’t a minute at eleven o’clock with a rush coming.”

“So you took it home.”

“So I took it home and cleaned the kitchen twice.”

Bernie let that sit.

On the wall by the doorway, where it had hung so long she genuinely did not see it most days, was Richard behind the counter in an apron, caught mid-sentence with a spatula in one hand, the photograph gone warm and orange the way they all went. She’d walked past it that morning four times.

She went over and took it off the wall and looked at it, which she had not done in years, and put it back on its nail, and had to adjust it twice to get it straight.

“Stella’s got the trunk,” she said, with her back to him. “The actual recipe box came home, but she’s got the trunk. The menus are in it. The ones we drew at the table. She’s photographed every page and she’s asked me about half of them and she’ll ask me about the rest, and I answer her, and every single time I answer her I find out I remember more than I thought I did.” She turned around. “I’d made my peace with not remembering. That was something I’d finished doing.”

“And now you’re not finished.”

“Now I’m not finished.” She sat back down. “Everything’s moving, Bernard. The girls are graduating. Bea’s going right after Labor Day and she’s already gone, really. Meg’s working herself into the ground and won’t be told. Anna’s got—” She made a small gesture at the air. “And I’m here. Where I’ve been. And it’s all going past me a little faster than I can keep track of, and I don’t say that to anyone because it makes me sound like an old woman on a porch.”

“You are an old woman on a porch.”

“I am in a kitchen.”

“You’re in a kitchen with fifty pink boxes coming.”

“Forty-nine.” Margo almost laughed and did not quite. “I have his first.”

Bernie looked at the shortbread. Then at her.

“Well,” he said. “What are you going to do?”