“I’m saying you need to figure it out. Together.” Margo sat back. “Maybe what this place needs isn’t me doing everything. Maybe it’s all of you doing it together. Finding your own groove. Your own version of what I built.”
Anna was quiet for a long moment. “I love this place.”
“I know,” Margo said.
“I’ve been thinking about going half-time. At the school.” Anna glanced at her siblings. “I wasn’t sure if it made sense. But if the Shack needs someone here more consistently?—”
“Anna,” Meg interrupted. “You love teaching.”
“I love a lot of things. I love this place too.” Anna’s voice was steady. “And maybe I’ve been treating it like something that would always just... be here. Waiting for me to have time for it.”
This. This was what she’d been hoping for.
“If the grilled cheese doesn’t taste the same without you making it, maybe we need to find something that’s ours. In addition. I’ve been working on some things,” Meg said slowly. “Menu ideas. Things that might help bring people in. But I wasn’t sure if...” She trailed off.
“If what?”
“If I was allowed. If it was my place to change things.”
“Margaret Walsh.” Margo’s voice was sharp. “This place has your name on the trust documents. When has anything ever not been your place?”
Meg’s cheeks flushed. “It just felt like... you built something perfect. And I didn’t want to mess it up.”
“Perfect.” Margo laughed, surprising herself. “Honey, I’ve been messing things up here for fiftyyears. Tried a fish taco in 1987 that nearly put us out of business. Added a soup of the day that nobody wanted. Changed the coffee three times before Bernie threatened to stage a revolt.” She shook her head. “Perfect is a myth. What matters is trying. Caring enough to try.”
Tyler had been quiet through all of this. Now he spoke.
“So what do we do? Practically?”
“That’s for you three to figure out.” Margo slid out of the booth. “I’m going home to paint. But I’ll tell you what I told Joey— this place needs a true heart and soul. Fifty years of it. You can’t fake that. You can’t schedule it. Someone has to be here, really here, making people feel like they matter.” She looked at each of them. “Maybe that’s one of you. Maybe it’s all of you, taking turns. Maybe it’s something I can’t even imagine. But it has to be something.”
She picked up her purse.
“Figure it out. Together. That’s what family does.”
The sun was lower when Margo stepped outside, the light going golden the way it did this time of year. She could hear them through the window—voices rising and falling, the sound of her grandchildren actually talking to each other, planning, maybe fighting a little.
Good.
Bernie caught her eye through the glass, raised his coffee cup. She nodded back.
She had a lot to think about. But for the first time in weeks, she felt like maybe things were moving in the right direction.
Margo smiled and kept walking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The knock on Fiona’s door felt like the hardest thing Stella had ever done.
Harder than the phone call. Harder than the fight. Harder than sitting on Margo’s garden wall waiting for Tyler to come get her.
Because this wasn’t fighting. This was something scarier.
This was showing.
Tyler had said “now we wait.” Stella had made it approximately twenty-four hours before deciding she was done waiting.
“Come in,” Fiona called.
