Page 62 of The Beach Shack Legacy

They’d made her the hook a while back, her name on the masking tape in the row with all the others, ANNA and MARGO and Joey’s fancy one, and she’d been so honored she’d had to go to the walk-in for a minute so nobody would see her face. She still felt it every time. She wasn’t going to be the one who lost it. That was the whole reason, when it came down to it. You didn’t get a hook with your name on it and then put the thing it was hanging in at risk.

Joey took his off and hung it next to hers.

They turned off the ovens. They checked the ovens twice, because Joey checked things twice, and this time Stella did the second check with him instead of waiting by the door. They turned off the lights. They went out the back, and Stella locked it with the key Anna had given her in the spring like it was nothing, like handing a kid a key to the family’s whole life was something you just did, and pulled the door to make sure it caught.

It caught.

The lot was dark and the ocean was down there doing what it did and neither of them said anything on the way to the cars.

They’d be back in the morning. They’d put the aprons back on. They’d do less than they were good at, and be glad to, because it was still the Shack and it was still theirs to keep whole.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Margo saw her coming up the hill before she heard her. That was the first sign. Stella took those stairs two at a time on a normal day, and today she was taking them like a person going somewhere she didn’t want to arrive.

Margo was on the porch with the crossword and a pencil that needed sharpening. She put both down.

“There’s tea in the pot,” she said, when Stella got to the top. “It’s gone lukewarm but it was good an hour ago.”

“I’m okay.”

She was clearly not okay. She stood at the top of the steps with her bag on one shoulder and did not put it down, the way you don’t put your bag down when you’re not sure you’re staying, and she looked at the porch boards and not at Margo, and Margo let her stand there and did not fill it, because whatever Stella had carried up the hill she was going to have to set down herself.

“Sit,” Margo said, finally. “You’re making the porch nervous.”

Stella sat. On the edge of the other chair, not back in it. Margo waited.

“I came to say sorry,” Stella said, to the boards. “To you especially, but—all of you. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it and there isn’t a good way so I’m just going to say it badly.” She stopped. Started again. “You’ve all been so good to me. Since I got here. You didn’t have to be—I showed up from the other side of the world and you just—made room. And the Shack’s been so good to me. And I took that, and I got—” Her hand came up over her eyes, fingers spread, like she could hold the rest of it back that way. “What I wanted got in the way of what was best for the Shack. Joey and me. We got so far into our own thing we put a hole in the Shack and Meg had to fix it and Anna had that whole party go sideways and it was because of us. Because of what I wanted. And I keep wanting to say it’s because I’m good at it, like that makes it better. I don’t know if it makes it better. And that’s not—you don’t do that to a place that’s been that good to you. So. I’m sorry.”

Margo let the porch hold it a moment. “Stella. I already know all this.”

The hand came down off her eyes. “You⁠—”

“Anna called me the night of the party. Meg called me the morning after, and talked at some length. I’ve had the whole account from two directions, with the times and temperatures included.” Margo picked up her tea. “You climbed my hill to confess something I heard about days ago.”

“Oh my gosh.” Stella put her face in both hands. “Of course they told you. Of course they would.”

“There are no secrets in this family, and there is certainly no secret from me. You may as well take the wrapping off it—I know what’s inside.” She set the tea down. “And most of what you just said is wrong, so I’m glad you came, because I’d sooner fix it here than let you carry it home and keep it.”

“It’s not wrong, though.” Stella’s head came up, and there was some fight in it, which Margo was glad to see. “We did do it. Meg promised a woman her grandmother’s tart and couldn’t deliver it. Anna had a party come apart in front of actual customers. That happened. I’m not being dramatic—it actually happened, because we weren’t paying attention.”

Margo reached over and picked up the plate she’d brought out earlier, the one with the tart on it she’d cut before Stella ever reached the top of the stairs.

“I didn’t come up here to get fed. I came to apologize, I don’t want to just sit here eating a⁠—”

“I didn’t ask what you came for. Take the plate, Stella.”

Stella took the plate. She held it in her lap and didn’t eat it, which Margo allowed, because getting it into her hands was the part that counted.

“Now,” Margo said, and picked her own tea up, then put it down again without drinking it. “Here is what you’ve got wrong. You think if the two of you had been paying attention, none of it would have happened. That the trouble was you.” She looked out at the tree, and back. “You were there for the eighty tarts. You carried them down my hill yourself, and you texted me the score—gone in two hours, Mrs. Feldstein bought three. Eighty. My whole day, both my hands, a lifetime of knowing exactly what I’m doing, and people bought all of them by lunch and wanted more. Don’t tell me the problem was just one oven.” She set her cup down. “The trouble is this town wants more than any one kitchen can make—mine, yours, anybody’s. That’s not a sin, Stella. That’s a problem. Sins you apologize for. Problems you solve.”

Stella was quiet. She looked at the tart in her lap.

“There was a man,” she said, to the tart. “Before any of it went wrong. He wanted his wife’s mother’s poppy seed muffin, and we said no, and he was nice about it, but I can’t stop thinking about him. I don’t know why he’s the part that stays.”

Margo turned her cup on its saucer. A woman had stopped her at a bakery table once, about almond croissants and a husband who used to drive twenty minutes. She did not say so.

Margo let a beat go by, and then asked the question she’d been saving, in the voice she used when she wanted something and didn’t care to have it known that she wanted it.