Margo still hadn’t spoken.
The Shack was quiet around them—the kind of quiet that only happens when a place built for noise goes still. Anna could hear the ocean through the propped windows. The hum of the walk-in. The silence of five people and a speakerphone waiting for the person who’d built this place to say something.
Margo reached out and wiped the counter. Once. Slowly. Her hand moving across the surface the way it had ten thousand times before—not cleaning, not checking. Just touching the thing she’d made.
“Margo?” Anna said. “What do you think?”
Margo looked at the prep table. At the printed numbers. At Michael, who met her eyes and held them—she’d give him that much, the man didn’t flinch. At Tyler, whose jaw was set the way it got when he’d already decided. At the phone where Meg had gone quiet.
“I think,” Margo said, “that you should try.”
Not an endorsement. Not enthusiasm. Permission, from someone who’d earned it over fifty years and was handing it over with her hands still on the counter.
“Early and late,” Tyler said. “Doors open at seven for breakfast, dinner service until eight. I’ll take mornings. Anna takes afternoons and evenings.”
“I’ll handle the marketing push from here,” Meg said. “Social media, local press, tourism board. I can build a campaign this week.”
“Joey can cover transition hours if his schedule allows, and Stella and Bea can work after school,” Anna said.
Michael picked up his pen and wrote the plan down. Anna watched him — the set of his jaw, the pen pressing harder than it needed to. He was documenting a decision he disagreed with, and he wasn’t going to say so, and she almost respected him for it.
Almost.
“How long?” Tyler asked.
Anna looked at Michael. “How long before you know if it’s working?”
“Three weeks would give me data. Four would be better.”
“Three weeks.”
Michael capped his pen. “I’ll build a tracking model. If the numbers aren’t moving by week two, we should discuss alternatives.”
“What kind of alternatives?” Tyler asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Michael looked at Anna. “But you’re creative. You’ll think of something.”
She held his gaze. He’d said that before—in the back office, after the scholarship conversation. The first time it had sounded like a challenge. This time it sounded different. Like he meant it.
Margo stood from the stool. Smoothed her blouse. Picked up her bag. She looked at the kitchen one more time—the grill,the prep table, the printed numbers, her grandchildren making plans where she’d kneaded bread for fifty years.
“Monday,” she said. And left.
Michael gathered his papers and slid them into the briefcase. Every motion precise. Laptop, legal pad, pen in the pocket, brass clasps latched.
“You think it’s a mistake,” Anna said.
He paused at the door. “I think the numbers are what they are.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the most accurate one I have.” He shifted the briefcase to his other hand. “Monday. I’ll be here at six.”
“We don’t open until seven.”
“I know.”
He left. Anna stood in the kitchen and looked at the prep table—salt shaker, phone, the ghost of Michael’s printed columns. The grill ticked. The ocean filled the silence.
