Page 53 of The Beach Shack Legacy

“Your mother’s going to ask what happened to the tree.”

“My mother’s in Sydney.”

“She’ll see it in a photograph and she’ll ask.”

Stella laughed, closed a box and squared the lid, which she had gotten from Joey and would probably never lose.

It had been a good day. She had known it at about the third tray, when the rhythm arrived—shells out, curd in, tray in, tray down, and the thing her hands did that she never had to think about and had not been asked to do in a very long time. She had directed and Stella had carried, and somewhere around the middle they had stopped talking except about the work. That was the best part of it.

“You’re sure about tomorrow?” Margo asked.

“Joey’s sure. Joey made a chart.”

“Then we’re all right.”

They loaded the boxes into the truck two at a time because the boxes were pink and flimsy and Margo would not have them stacked. Stella took the last two out, came back for her bag, and stood in the doorway a second.

“That was fun,” she said, as if it surprised her.

“It was.”

Then the truck went off down the hill and the house was quiet and Margo turned around and looked at her kitchen.

She started with the bowls. Then the trays, which had to be done by hand because the good ones didn’t go in the dishwasher, and then the counter, and then the floor by the mixer, and somewhere in the middle of the floor she stopped and stood with the broom and did not do anything with it for a moment.

It took her twice as long as it should have. She did not particularly want to look at why.

When it was done she sat down in the chair by the window with a glass of water to drink before she went and had a shower, and she meant to drink it, and the light moved off the wall behind the stove, and she did not.

She woke up because her phone was going off in her lap.

Her neck had a crick in it that was going to be there tomorrow. There was still flour on the floor by the mixer, in a patch about the size of a dinner plate, which she had swept twice and apparently not swept well at all.

It was a text from Stella.

Gone in two hours, ALL OF THEM. Joey says he has never seen anything like it and he’s writing it up.

And then, underneath.

Mrs. Feldstein had three.

Margo sat in the chair in the fading light with the phone in both hands and read it again, and then a third time, and there was nobody in the house to see her face, and she was glad of it.

Circle was at Eleanor’s. A short walk uphill. Margo walked it, and got there later than she meant to, and did not say why.

They were already out on the porch with the good glasses. Eleanor had made something with olives in it that nobody had asked for. Vivian was in the wicker chair she considered hers by long usage. Nadine had brought crackers and arranged them. Letty had the loud end of the table because Letty always had the loud end of the table.

“There she is,” Letty said. “You look like you’ve been somewhere.”

“I’ve been in my kitchen.”

“Doing what?”

“I made eighty lemon tarts.”

All eyes turned toward her.

“Eighty,” Vivian said.