Meg wanted to ask more about her grandfather, about the financial decisions Rick had mentioned, about the choices that had shaped her family’s dynamics. But something in Margo’s expression suggested this wasn’t the time for complicated questions.
“I should get you home,” Meg said instead. “It’s been a long day.”
Margo nodded, suddenly looking every one of her eighty years. “Yes. And tomorrow the Beach Shack opens again.”
They said goodnight to the remaining guests. Eleanor embraced Meg warmly, extracting a promise that she wouldn’t disappear for another decade.
Vivian, who ran the vintage store on Forest Avenue, pressed her business card into Meg’s hand—“In case you need anything while you’re here, dear.”
As they walked to the parking lot, Margo carrying her birthday gifts in a canvas bag, Meg noticed her grandmother glancing back at the Beach Shack. The string lights still twinkled on the deck, reflected in the dark windows.
“Do you ever get tired of it?” Meg asked impulsively. “The Beach Shack. The same routine every day for fifty years.”
Margo considered the question with surprising seriousness, pausing beside Meg’s car to look back at the weathered building silhouetted against the night sky.
“Sometimes I get tired,” she admitted. “The early mornings, the aching feet, the endless questions about whether we serve anything besides grilled cheese.” She smiled slightly. “But tired of it? No.”
She shifted the bag of gifts to her other arm. “Some things you choose once, and then you keep choosing them every day after. The Shack isn’t just what I do—it’s who I became. The good, the hard, all of it.”
The statement lingered with Meg as she drove Margo to her small cottage, and long after she’d returned to Tyler’s house. As she prepared for bed, her phone lit up with yet another urgent message from Brad, but for once, she didn’t immediately reach for it.
There would be time for crises and client management tomorrow. Tonight had been about celebrating someone who’d built a life worth honoring.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Meg sat cross-legged on Tyler’s futon, wrapped in one of his old sweatshirts and nursing a lukewarm mug of tea that had gone cold somewhere between minute five and minute twenty of trying not to figure out what the heck had happened to her life.
The house was quiet except for the rhythmic pulse of waves outside and the occasional ping of another email landing in her inbox. She didn’t check. She couldn’t. Not yet.
She opened her laptop anyway.
Slack. Nope.
Gmail. Nope.
Her cursor hovered over Brad’s name in her inbox for a second too long before she clicked away.
Instead, she opened Messages.
She scrolled past her marketing team group thread, past her project manager’s daily summaries, until shesaw a name she hadn’t really registered in a while. Anna.
She clicked.
The last message was from Anna, sent a while ago. A photo of a watercolor she’d finished in Cinque Terre. Meg had liked it. She hadn’t replied.
Now, she typed:
Margo says hi. You still painting sunflowers?
She didn’t expect an answer. It was the middle of the night, and Anna was in Florence, and they hadn’t had a real conversation since—what, Tyler’s graduation?
But her laptop pinged almost instantly.
Moved on to lemons. Want to see?
Meg blinked. Smiled a little.
Another ping.Zoom?
