Page 46 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“Your name got called,” Anna said.

“That’s the second best thing.”

Bernie was in the good chair by the window because he had been put there. He had a plate on his knee and had been given the first of everything, which he had accepted without remarking on it.

Tyler came in from the step. “Lindsey’s still at the school. She said not to wait and not to leave her a plate.”

“We’ll leave her a plate,” Margo said.

Margo did not stand up, because she had never once in her life stood up to say anything, and she was not going to start in her own dining room.

She put her glass down on the cloth instead, and they all quieted, as they had always done for her.

“Both of you walked across that stage,” she said, “and I was in the fourth row, and I saw it happen.”

That was all she said.

Anna made a sound into her napkin. Bea said “Margo” in a wobbling voice and Stella did not say anything at all but looked down at her plate. And down at the end of the table, Tyler’s ears went red as a stop sign, and he looked hard at his own plate, and not one person in that room mentioned it.

“Well,” Margo said. “Somebody pass the bread.”

They passed the bread. Bea, who had recovered inside of four seconds, announced that she would like the record to show she had not thrown her cap, and Joey said the record already showed it because he had photographed the entire ceremony in sequence and could produce a timeline. Luke asked whether the timeline was searchable. Joey said not yet.

For a while it was only that—family and a roast and nothing meaning anything.

Then it started with Michael, which surprised her, because Michael did not start things.

“I worked at a hardware store,” Michael said. “After high school. Two years.”

Anna turned her head.

“A register at a hardware store.” He put his fork down. “I was very good at it. I could close out a drawer faster than the manager and I knew the price of everything in the store without looking, and I thought that was the whole of what I was going to be, because nobody had told me the thing I was doing had a name.”

“What happened?” Bea asked.

“They put in a computer.” He picked his fork back up. “And then there wasn’t a register. And I went to a night class because I was annoyed about it, and the man teaching it said the thing I did in my head had a name, and that it was a job.” He ate a piece of roast. “So. Nineteen and out of work and mad about a computer.”

“That’s the best story I’ve ever heard you tell,” Bea said.

Anna was looking at the tablecloth with an expression Margo had seen on her since she was four years old.

“I was terrified,” Anna said. “After graduation.”

“Of what?” Margo asked.

“Of the summer. After. Everybody was going somewhere and I was going to the Shack, and I told everyone it was temporary. I remember standing at the grill in July thinking, if I’m still here at Christmas, something has gone wrong with my life.”

“And then you left,” Meg said, from the counter.

“And then I left. College. Teaching. Half the things I swore I’d do, I did.” She turned her water glass. “And then I came back and chose the grill, which eighteen-year-old me would not have believed.” Anna laughed at herself, once. “Nothing went wrong. That’s the part nobody tells you. You can be terrified of exactly the right thing.”

“I skipped mine and went surfing,” Tyler said, “and I’ve been dining out on it ever since,” and the table said what it always said about that, and Margo did not say the thing she could have said, because she had said it once already this month and the boy’s ears had gone pink and that was enough for one lifetime.

Bea turned in her chair.

“Bernie. What about you? What did you want to be?”

Bernie was at that moment cutting something on his plate. He did not stop.