“It’s survivable,” Michael said. “Not solved.”
Anna walked to the kitchen window and looked out at the patio. The evening light was doing its thing—the gold, the ocean, the sky turning colors. The patio sat empty, chairs stacked, string lights dark.
She’d been looking at that patio for three weeks and seeing a failed dinner restaurant. She’d been defending it and staffing it and grinding through it and refusing to let it go.
She let it go.
“One good thing about dinner service,” she said, still looking at the view. “I never knew how beautiful it is here at sunset. All these years of closing at three, and I had no idea what we were missing.”
Meg looked at the patio—amber and pink and the ocean catching the last of it. “It is beautiful.”
“Could host anything out there,” Luke said. “Rehearsal dinners, birthdays...”
Meg looked at him. “Don’t.”
“I’m just saying. The patio at sunset.”
“One crisis at a time, Luke.”
Tyler grinned. The first real grin Anna had seen from him in weeks. His ears were still pink. He rubbed the burn on his wrist—the mark of three weeks of five AM mornings that the data said were marginal and Tyler knew were the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Meg pressed her fingers against her eyes. Luke put his arm around her shoulders. “We don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“Good. Because I have enough to decide.” But she was leaning into him, and the tension in her jaw had loosened. “Can we just—one crisis at a time?”
“One crisis at a time,” Tyler agreed.
Anna turned from the window. She looked at Meg. “I’m not Sam.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I stay. That’s the difference. Sam leaves. I stay.”
“I know.” Meg’s eyes were full. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
“You needed to say it.” Anna picked up her coffee. Cold. She drank it anyway. “Just don’t say it again.”
“Deal.”
They cleaned up the meeting—Michael’s laptop closed, Luke’s notes folded into his pocket, the coffees finished. The Shack settled into its evening quiet. Tyler put his camera bag over his shoulder and headed for the door, then stopped.
“Anna.”
“Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth, my eggs are excellent.”
“Your eggs are excellent, Tyler.”
“Thank you.” He left. Anna heard the truck start—the sound of someone driving home to shoot a sunset and text his girlfriend, which was what Tyler should have been doing all along instead of standing over a pot of vinegar water at dawn.
Michael was last to leave. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the prep counter where the spreadsheet had been.
“Anna.”
She looked up from wiping the grill.
“The forty percent,” he said. “We’ll find it.”
