Page 51 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“You’re really good at this,” Anna said, and meant it the way she meant things, plainly and once.

“Stella helped,” Joey said, and didn’t take it back.

They all laughed, and the moment loosened, and Stella got up to put the trunk back where it lived.

“I still want the slide show,” Anna said, to her back. “The whole thing. Soundtrack and all.”

“I’ll set it up at the Shack some night,” Stella said, over her shoulder. “Big screen.”

The girls got sent for the coffee and came back arguing about how much to make.

Stella had her camera out. She had been shooting all night, low, from the corner, and at some point she had got behind Bea’s chair and got the whole table in one frame—everybody mid-sentence, nobody looking, two navy caps on the sideboard in the background out of focus.

She checked it, but didn’t show anybody.

Margo went out to the front step for a minute, on her own, because lots of people in a house is lots of people in a house.

The night was warm and the jasmine was going along the fence and the ocean was down there somewhere doing what it did.

Bernie came out a minute later and stood next to her without saying anything, and for a while neither of them filled it.

“I hadn’t seen that photo in years,” Margo said, finally. “You and Richard. I don’t think I even remembered it existed.”

“Neither did I.” Bernie kept his eyes on the water. “Funny thing to find out at somebody else’s graduation.”

“Everything gets found out at somebody else’s something. That’s how families work.”

He didn’t answer that. Behind them, through the door, the family was arguing about whether there was enough coffee for everyone and whether anybody actually wanted coffee at this hour.

“Your lemon tree’s dying,” he said, eventually.

“It is not dying.”

“That whole side’s yellow.”

“That side is always yellow in June. It does it every year, Bernard, and every year you say it’s dying.”

Bernie leaned on the rail. “One year I’ll be right.”

“You’ll be dead.”

“Then I’ll be right posthumously,” Bernie said, and they stood there.

Inside, somebody dropped a spoon and somebody else laughed at whoever dropped it.

Margo looked at the yellow side of the lemon tree, which was not dying. It had been planted for tarts. It had gone on making lemons ever since, whether or not anybody was baking.

Then she went back in, because they’d got the coffee wrong, and she could hear it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Anna couldn’t have said which morning the shortbread first sold out before the lunch rush properly started. Only that it had, and that it kept happening, and that nobody had held a meeting about it.

She got in when she normally got in. The oven was already warm, sheet pans cooling on the rack, Stella at the far end working hard at the mixer. Anna tied her apron and didn’t ask what time Stella had come in. She’d asked once and gotten early, and understood that was the only answer she was going to get.

The board went up full every morning, in Joey’s blue capitals, and came down emptier every afternoon. Date loaf. Shortbread. A lemon tart Stella had finally gotten right on the third try. Anna called the first order to nobody, the way she always had, and the grill ran, and lunch was lunch.

Lunch was fine. That took her a while to see. The grilled cheese never ran out. Mrs. Patterson came in at her time and got her classic with the extra pickles she’d stopped asking for a long time ago, and told Anna it was perfect, same as always, same as every visit, as if one day it might not be and she wanted to be on record.