The dinner service had thinned to one table and Michael.
Anna wiped down the counter for the third time and looked at the clock. Seven-forty. The couple by the window were finishing their soup, taking their time, watching the last light die over the ocean. Michael sat at his usual spot with a plate of focaccia and an empty gazpacho bowl and his notebook open, pen moving in that precise handwriting.
Two weeks of this. Two weeks of breakfast at seven and lunch at ten and dinner at five, and the dinner service was the part that wasn’t working. Not failing—just not filling. Three tables on a good night. Five on the weekend. The view brought people in. The menu didn’t keep them.
Bea had gone home at seven—calculus test tomorrow, no arguments allowed. Stella had left at six-thirty with her camera and a look that said she had opinions about Anna’s schedule but was choosing not to voice them. Dante had survived another shift and left at seven-thirty because it was slow with a wave and a look that said he was still surprised he hadn’t been fired.
The couple finished their soup, paid, told Anna the focaccia was excellent, and left. The door swung shut behind them.
Anna and Michael. The Shack. The ocean going dark.
“You don’t have to stay,” Anna said, reaching for their bowls.
“I know.” He didn’t look up from his notebook.
“We close in twenty minutes.”
“I know that too.”
She carried the bowls to the kitchen and started washing up. The closing routine had become automatic—grill off, register closed, counters wiped, walk-in checked. She could do it in her sleep, which was good because she was close to sleeping on her feet most nights.
Michael closed his notebook and stood. “Can I help?”
Anna turned from the sink. In two weeks of dinner service, he’d never offered to help. He’d sat, he’d eaten, he’d tracked numbers, and he’d left when she locked the door. This was new.
“You don’t have to?—”
“I know I don’t have to.” He took off his watch and set it on the counter — the first time she’d seen him remove anything. He rolled his sleeves up, which she’d been trying not to notice since that first evening. “What needs doing?”
“Tables. Chairs up.”
He wiped tables. She washed dishes. They worked in the kind of quiet that happens when two people are comfortable enough not to fill it, which was strange because Anna hadn’t known they were comfortable. But they were. Somewhere between the spreadsheets and the focaccia on Thursday nights, the silence had stopped being awkward.
He finished the tables and came to the kitchen doorway. “What else?”
“That’s it. I just need to—“ She gestured at the remaining dishes. “You can go.”
He didn’t go. He leaned against the doorframe and watched her wash dishes, which should have been strange and wasn’t.
“The dinner numbers,” he said.
“I know.”
“They’re not?—”
“I know, Michael.”
He stopped. She kept washing. A pot. A ladle. The gazpacho bowl he’d eaten from every night for two weeks.
“The lunch numbers are strong,” he said. “The breakfast is building. The dinner service is?—”
“Lunch wearing a different hat. I know.” She set the last bowl in the rack and dried her hands. “I don’t know what to do about it. I’m not a dinner chef. I’m barely a lunch chef. Margo’s recipes carry the daytime and I can stretch them into evening but I can’t make grilled cheese feel like a dinner destination.”
“No.”
“No.” She leaned against the counter across from him. The kitchen between them. The grill cooling. The quiet. “So, what do I do?”
Michael was quiet for a long time. Then he pushed off the doorframe and walked into the kitchen—past the prep counter, past the grill, to the back corner where he’d left a bag. He unzipped it and took out something heavy, wrapped in a cloth.
