Then she stopped. The excitement that had been building in her chest hit something—a wall she’d built herself, out of poetry corners and rearranged furniture and every creative idea she’d ever had that started big and landed sideways.
“Actually,” she said. “Maybe not.”
Michael’s pen stopped. “What changed in the last four seconds?”
“Reality.” Anna leaned against the patio railing. “The last time I tried something creative at this restaurant, Meg had to drag all the furniture back to where it was. The time before that,I set up a poetry corner with a microphone and a stool and nobody came for a month.” She set her coffee on the railing. “I get excited. I jump in. I don’t always see how it’s going to land. And the Shack can’t afford another one of my creative experiments.”
The back door opened. Joey appeared carrying a box of muffins and wearing the expression he wore when he had somewhere to be and was going to be late because the Shack always came first.
“Weekend supply,” he said, heading for the kitchen. “I’m dropping these off and leaving immediately. I have a study group in—” He stopped in the doorway, looking at them on the patio. “What’s happening?”
“Anna had a good idea and is now talking herself out of it,” Michael said.
“That’s very Anna.” Joey set the muffin box on the counter. “What’s the idea?”
“Art nights,” Anna said. “On the patio. People paint the sunset.”
Joey looked at the patio. At the sunset. At Anna. “That’s a great idea.”
“The last time I?—”
Joey set the muffin box on the counter. “The poetry corner was a bad microphone in a bad location. The Florence Method was furniture. This is you with aneasel. That’s completely different.”
“How is it different?”
“Because you taught me that a napkin fold can change how a person experiences an entire meal. In one afternoon. With one napkin. And it’s been life-changing.” He picked up the muffin box and headed for the kitchen. “Do the art night.”
He disappeared into the kitchen. Anna heard the walk-in open and close, the muffin box slide onto the shelf, the back door, Joey’s car starting.
Michael was still on the patio. His pen was still out.
“He’s not wrong,” Michael said.
“He’s very dramatic.”
“He’s not wrong about any of it.” Michael looked at her. “You’re creative. That’s not a liability. The dinner service was the wrong creative idea applied to the wrong problem. This is the right one applied to the right space.”
Anna looked at the patio. At the easel-shaped spaces along the railing she could already see in her mind. At the sunset and the ocean and the light her grandfather had chosen fifty years ago.
“I don’t want to tell the family,” she said. “Not yet. Not until I know it works. If Meg hears I’m setting up easels on the patio after the poetry corner and the Florence Method, she’ll?—”
“She’ll worry.”
“She’llmanage. She’ll make a spreadsheet for the easels and a marketing plan for the paint and a committee for the sunset.” Anna almost smiled. “I want to do this one myself. Quietly. If it works, they’ll see it.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then nobody needs to know about another Anna experiment that went sideways.”
“It won’t go sideways.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know the space. I know the demand. And I know you.” His pen clicked. “How much would you charge?”
And they were back to numbers. The fear was still there—sitting in Anna’s chest like a stone—but Michael’s pen was moving and the numbers were taking shape, and the sunset wasdoing extraordinary things with the light and somewhere in the math, the stone got smaller.
“At thirty-five dollars with twenty participants, that’s seven hundred gross per event. Subtract materials—call it fifty—and you’re at six-fifty net.” He looked up. “Do that twice a week and you’ve covered a third of the scholarship gap.”
