“Tyler’s eggs held.”
A pause. Anna could hear Margo breathing, and underneath it the quiet of someone sitting alone, receiving good news.
“Good,” Margo said. “That’s good.”
“It is.”
“And the dinner?”
“Quiet. But people came. Michael came.”
“The auditor came to dinner?”
“He said he wanted to see how it went.” Anna paused. “He stayed until close.”
Another silence. Then Margo, softer.
“Tell Tyler I’m proud of his eggs.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And tell yourself I’m proud of you.”
Anna’s hand tightened on the phone. The sidewalk blurred. She blinked and kept walking. Bea was a few steps ahead, giving her space, because Bea always knew when to give space.
Fourteen hours. Six-thirty to close. Breakfast and lunch and dinner and a jogger who said “are you open” and Tyler’s eggs holding and Michael at the counter without a briefcase and her grandmother’s voice on the phone saying the thing she didn’t know she needed to hear.
“Goodnight, Margo,” she said, and her voice cracked on the second word, just slightly, just enough that Margo would hear it and know what it meant.
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
Anna hung up and walked home through the October dark, Bea beside her, the Shack behind her, the day done.
Tomorrow they’d do it again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The alarm went off at five-fifteen and Tyler’s first thought was that he’d only been asleep for an hour. His second thought was that this was mathematically unlikely but emotionally accurate.
He’d been at the Shack until nine last night. Home by nine-thirty. Ate something standing up—he couldn’t remember what, possibly cheese on bread, possibly just bread. Fell asleep on the couch editing photos he’d shot three days ago and hadn’t had time to process. Stella had put a blanket over him at some point. He’d found it when the couch woke him at two AM and he’d shuffled to bed.
Five-fifteen. The grill needed him by six.
He pulled on jeans and a shirt that may or may not have been the same shirt as yesterday — the sniff test was inconclusive and he didn’t care — and stood in the bathroom mirror. The face looking back at him had bags under its eyes and a jawline that needed shaving. He splashed water on his face. It didn’t help. He splashed more. Still didn’t help.
His camera bag sat in the corner of the bedroom where it had been sitting for four days. He had two shoots booked this week — a surfer portrait session and a real estate listing for a house onBluebird Canyon — and he’d canceled both. The surfer had been understanding. The real estate agent less so. She’d sent a follow-up email with the subject line “Reliability Concerns” which Tyler had read, closed, and not opened again.
“You’re losing clients,” Stella had told him last night, not unkindly. Just factually.
“I’m keeping us fed.”
“You’re keepingotherpeople fed. We’re eating cereal again.”
She wasn’t wrong. The eggs Benedict had become his identity at the Shack—Tyler at the breakfast station, poaching and plating, getting better every day. The regulars liked it. The boardwalk crowd came back. Joey’s muffins and Tyler’s eggs and Meg’s hollandaise—the breakfast menu was working.
But the hours were eating him alive. Up before dawn, at the Shack by six, cooking until noon, then straight to dinner service because they didn’t have enough staff to cover evenings without family. His photography—the thing he’d built a career on, the thing that paid actual money—sat in a camera bag gathering dust.
He made coffee. Stella’s door was closed. She’d been up late doing homework she hadn’t had time for during the week because she’d been helping with dinner service after school. He let her sleep.
