“He fell asleep. It happens.”
“On a cutting board. At two-thirty. That doesn’t ‘happen.’ That’s a system failing.” Meg looked at Anna, the way she looked at a client presentation that wasn’t working. The exhaustion. The too-clean counter. The way Anna’s hands went straight to the rag, wringing it, wiping surfaces that had already been wiped. “You look terrible too.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not being unkind. I’m being accurate.” Meg pulled out a stool and sat. “How are the girls doing?”
Anna set the produce box down. “They’re fine.”
“Don’t ‘it’s fine’ me, Anna. I have heard ‘it’s fine’ from you every morning for three weeks. Tyler is asleep on a cutting board. Nothing in this building is fine.”
“Stella’s calc grade dropped a little.”
“Dropped to what?”
“C. From a B-plus.”
“In three weeks.” Meg’s arms stayed folded. “And Bea?”
Anna picked up the rag again. “She missed the RISD preliminary deadline.”
Meg’s stomach dropped. Bea—who had color-coded sticky notes for her color-coded sticky notes, who had been planning her portfolio since Florence, who carried college brochures arranged like tarot cards—missed a deadline. Because she was here. Plating focaccia.
“And Joey?”
“He’s been skipping his Thursday study group. To check on the muffin inventory.”
“His scholarship study group.”
“Yes.”
Meg stood up from the stool and walked to the kitchen window and looked at the ocean. The ocean didn’t care. The ocean had been doing this for millions of years without a business plan and it was actually doing fine. Not pretend fine.
She turned back to her brother and her sister. Tyler on the stool, barely awake. Anna wringing the rag. Two people who had been grinding for three weeks while Meg stopped by during the rush and told herself everything looked fine because during the rush itdidlook fine. The rush was a performance. This was the truth.
“You’re eating your children,” she said. “My nieces.”
Tyler’s head came up.
“Stella is having trouble in calculus because she’s working dinner shifts at a grilled cheese restaurant. Bea missed a deadline for the school she’s been dreaming about since she was fifteen. Joey is jeopardizing the scholarship that our familycreated—” Meg’s voice went tight and she stopped and breathed. “This can’t continue.”
“The numbers are up,” Anna said.
“I don’t care if the numbers are up. The numbers don’t matter if Bea doesn’t get into art school.” Meg picked up her phone. “We’re calling Michael. Tonight. Everyone sits down and we look at what’s actually working and what isn’t and we figure out what to cut.”
“We don’t need to?—”
“We do need to.We—this family—needs someone to show us data instead of feelings, because the feelings are telling you to keep grinding and the data might tell you something different.” Meg scrolled to Michael’s contact. “I’ve been showing up at seven AM and hearing ‘it’s fine’ and driving to San Clemente and believing it. I’m done believing it.”
“Meg, you have three clients?—”
“And a wedding I haven’t planned and a florist I still haven’t called and none of that matters right now.” She pressed the phone to her ear. “Michael? It’s Meg Walsh. We need to talk about the expanded hours.” A pause. “Tonight. The Shack. Five-thirty.” Another pause. “Bring everything. The daily breakdowns, the dinner covers, the projections. All of it.”
She hung up. Set the phone on the counter.
“Done,” she said.
Tyler looked at Anna. Anna looked at the rag in her hand. The kitchen was quiet except for the ocean through the windows and the grill ticking as it cooled.
