Page 58 of The Beach Shack Legacy

Joey looked at the jar. “There’s no—Ruth, there’s no plan. There’s nothing to fund. You’d be putting money toward something that doesn’t exist, and I’d be uncomfortable letting it sit there and imply⁠—”

“So label it.”

He looked at her. Then he went to the office and came back with the label maker, and stood clicking the wheel under his thumb, and it came out in crisp white caps on clear tape. He pressed it to the glass and smoothed it flat with his thumbnail so there were no bubbles.

PLEASE BE AWARE THERE ARE NO PLANS TO DO THIS.

“There,” Joey said. “Now it’s honest.”

Ruth read it and laughed, and dropped her own coins in on top of the bills so they rang against the glass. Bea, at the end of the counter, said it was the best thing she’d ever watched him make, and Joey said it was accurate, and set the jar by the register and squared it to the edge of the counter.

Letty came at the end of the afternoon.

She came in slow, with the cane she used on the bad days, and got herself onto a stool with both elbows and no help offered, because you did not offer Letty help. She set her right hand on the counter, wrist up for a second, and put it back.

“I need a favor and I’m going to be shameless about it,” Letty said. “My granddaughter’s shower is Sunday. I always make the rugelach. I’ve made it for every shower in this family since before your mothers were born.” She turned the wrist over once and flattened it on the counter. “And I can’t roll anymore. Not since the winter. I can pipe, I can fill, I can do a great many things sitting down with my elbows in. I cannot roll a rugelach, and I won’t put a bought one on the table at my own granddaughter’s shower. I’d sooner stay home.”

Stella came up from the case. Joey was already at the counter. Letty looked between the two of them, and past them, at the wall of names.

“Margo says you’re the ones to ask now,” Letty said. “So I’m asking.”

Stella caught Joey’s eye. They’d told Ruth no an hour ago. One loaf, no next week, we’re making everything twice and it’s gone by lunch. Ruth’s loaf, the one that started the wall, and they’d said no.

We just said no to Ruth, was the thing in Stella’s head, plain as that. And under it, just as plain, Ruth’s loaf isn’t Letty.

“When’s Sunday,” Joey said.

“Sunday’s Sunday.”

“We’ll come in early,” Stella said. “Tomorrow and Sunday both. We can do it.”

Letty pressed her hand flat on the counter. “You’re good children,” she said, and got herself down off the stool with both elbows, and went.

Joey wrote LETTY, RUGELACH, SUNDAY on a fresh card in his blue capitals, and then stood with it, because the binder had gone up on the wall, every card in it copied and pinned, and there was nowhere to file a new one. So he propped it against the sugar canister, facing the room, next to the jar that said there were no plans to do this.

Stella looked at the two of them there, the card and the jar. It looked like the best day they’d had. She got the camera and shot the counter in the last of the window light—the card, the jar, the flour, the wall of names going soft behind it—and it was a good frame, and she took it because it was a good frame, and set the camera down, and went to help Joey work out where the rugelach was going to fit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was Meg who realized it, the next morning, with the party still ahead of them and the patio half-set behind her.

Stella was rolling the first trays of Letty’s rugelach—started too late, going too fast—when Meg came out of the walk-in with her clipboard and a look Stella hadn’t seen before.

“Where’s the quince?”

“The what?” Joey asked.

“The quince. Case of it. It was on the order, it came in two days ago.” Meg was very still, which from Meg was louder than shouting. “The Pappas’ party. The grandmother. She’s out from Greece for the graduation and she asked for a quince tart, her mother’s, and I told them yes. I told them we could do it. That’s why they booked the patio and not the place in the village—because I said we had someone who could make the grandmother’s quince tart.” She looked at the two of them. “I ordered it special. It came in two days ago. Where is it?”

And Stella felt that whole day rearrange itself behind her eyes—the crate on the counter, Roberto standing there with it while the rush ran, Joey saying take it back with the empties, and her ten feet away with a tray in her hands, hearing all of it and thinking nothing of it at all.

“There was no name on the slip,” Joey said.

“There was no name on the slip,” Meg said. “Because it was a special order and it goes under the event, not the daily. You’d know that if—” She stopped herself. “Where is it, Joey.”

“We sent it back.” Stella said it, because Joey had said the words but she’d been standing right there, close enough to ask what it was and busy enough not to. “We sent it back with Roberto. We didn’t know. It was in the way and we didn’t know what it was and we sent it back.”

Nobody said anything. Out on the patio somebody dropped a stack of chairs and swore and picked them up.