“Yeah,” Stella agreed. “It is.”
She pulled out her phone. Opened the camera. Framed the shot.
Not a portrait of any one person. Not a careful composition. Just the Shack, in all its ordinariness. The light through the windows. The shells on the ceiling. She took the picture.
“Documentation?” Bea asked.
“Evidence,” Stella said. “That this is real. That I’m really here.”
“You’re really here.”
“I know.” Stella looked at the photo on her screen. “But sometimes you have to capture it anyway. So you remember.”
The package was waitingon the doorstep when Stella got home.
Flat, soft, clearly fabric of some kind. The return address was Sydney.
Her heart beat a little faster.
She took it inside, sat on her bed, and carefully peeled back the tape. The brown paper unfolded. And inside?—
An apron.
Worn cotton, faded flowers, frayed edges. The kind of apron that had been washed a thousand times.
Stella knew this apron. She’d seen it in photographs, in memories, in the kitchen of a house in Melbourne where her great-grandmother had taught her grandmother to cook, and her grandmother had taught her mother.
A note fell out.
Stella,
I found this when I was cleaning out Nana’s things. I meant to give it to you when I visited, but I couldn’t find the right moment. There never is a right moment for things like this. So here it is.
Nana would have wanted you to have it. She always said the kitchen is where family happens. I think she would have loved seeing you find your place in one—even if it’s not the kitchen she imagined.
The Anzac biscuits were a hit at the twins’ school bake sale, by the way. They were very impressed.
I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ll see you at Christmas.
Mum
Stella stood. Unfolded the apron. Slipped it over her head, tied the strings behind her back.
Something else was wrapped in the apron’s folds. Small, hard, wrapped in tissue paper.
Stella unwrapped it carefully.
A shell. Pale pink and white, spiral-shaped, worn smooth by years of tumbling in the surf. She’d seen shells like this her whole life, scattered across Bondi Beach, collected in jars on her grandmother’s windowsill.
A second note was tucked inside the tissue.
I found this in Nana’s collection. She picked it up on Bondi the day I told her I was pregnant with you. She said it was good luck.
I thought maybe there’s room on that ceiling for Australia too. If Margo’s willing.
—Mum
Stella held the shell in her palm. Bondi sand, Bondi waves, carried across the ocean to a restaurant ceiling covered in stories.
