Luke typed that too, kissed Anna on the cheek, waved to the room, and left. His phone buzzed before he reached the door. He checked it, shook his head, and walked out smiling.
Stella looked at Bea. Bea hadn’t touched her focaccia. Her calculus textbook was open, but she wasn’t reading it. She was looking at the hallway where Michael had appeared and disappeared.
“You okay?” Stella asked.
“Fine.” Bea picked up her pen. Put it down. Picked it up again. “He’s just very... there. In the office. With all of Margo’s files.”
“Anna’s files.”
“They were Margo’s first.” Bea opened the textbook to a random page. “It’s weird. Someone you don’t know going through everything.”
Stella watched her for a moment. Bea’s jaw was set the way it got when she was processing something she wasn’t ready to talkabout—not angry, not scared, just braced. Like she could feel weather coming and didn’t know yet if it was rain or just clouds.
“Anna seems fine with it,” Stella said.
“Anna seems fine with everything.” Bea found her place in the textbook. “That’s not the same as being fine.”
Joey materialized through the back door—he must have come through the kitchen entrance—carrying a small paper bag and heading straight for the hallway without stopping.
“Joey,” Anna said. “What’s in the bag?”
“Research.”
“What kind of research?”
“Dairy-free research. I’m expanding the options.” He kept walking. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I worry about everything you do.”
“That’s fair.” He disappeared down the hall. Stella heard a brief exchange she couldn’t make out — Joey’s voice, animated, and then Michael’s, three words at most—and Joey reappeared, bag still in hand, looking undaunted.
“He said he’s not hungry.”
“He always says that,” Anna said.
“I left it anyway.” Joey adjusted a napkin on the nearest table, checked the condiment bottles, and looked at the clock. “I have to get back to campus. Tell him the gazpacho is better than last time. I adjusted the cilantro.”
He was gone before Anna could respond. The door swung shut. A napkin settled into place.
Bernie made one final note on his tablet, tucked it under his arm, and eased himself up from the booth. He paused at the counter on his way out.
“Interesting afternoon,” he said to no one in particular.
“Is it?” Anna asked.
“Mm.” He looked at the hallway, then at Anna, then at the hallway again. “Same time tomorrow.”
The Shack emptied out. Mrs. Patterson finished her crossword, left her usual tip folded under the salt shaker, and told Anna the grilled cheese was perfect, as she did every time, as if it might one day not be and she wanted to be on record.
Stella sat in her booth with her camera in her lap and watched Anna start closing up — wiping counters, checking the grill, counting the register. Down the hall, the typing had resumed. Bea was doing calculus problems, but her pen kept stalling.
Stella raised her camera and framed the shot—Anna at the counter, rag in hand, the hallway behind her where the typing kept going. The Shack at the end of the day, everything in its place except for the sound that didn’t belong there. The steady, precise, unfamiliar rhythm of someone counting what they’d built.
She didn’t take the picture. Some things needed another day to come into focus.
CHAPTER SIX
Michael Torres had been in the back office for three days, and Anna had learned exactly five things about him.
