“Thanks, kid.”
That night, Stella texted Bea from her bed.
Lindsey met the family today.
Bea responded fast.
How’d it go?
Good. She ate a grilled cheese, asked real questions, didn’t flinch at Margo. Tyler’s ears may never recover.
Ha. Good for Tyler.
Stella looked at the text. Good for Tyler. The right words. The right sentiment. But she heard Bea’s voice underneath them the way she’d been hearing it since the Friday dinner three weeks ago, when she’d pointed out the Florence laugh and the olive oil ramekin and Bea had gone quiet and said “that’s a LOT” and asked for a minute.
Three weeks. Good for Tyler. Not good for Anna. Not good for anyone dating anyone. Good for Tyler, specifically, as if Tyler’s situation and Anna’s situation were completely different, which they were and they weren’t.
Stella had pushed Tyler toward Lindsey and it had gone well. She’d told Bea about Anna and Michael and it was going — somewhere. Somewhere Bea wasn’t ready to follow.
Same instinct. See the truth, say it out loud. Two different landings.
She typed: Art night Wednesday. You coming?
I’m working the paint station.
That’s not what I asked.
Long pause.
I’ll be there. I’m fine.
Fine. Bea’s word for everything since September. Fine like Anna was fine with the audit. Fine like things were fine when they weren’t.
Stella put the phone down and looked at the ceiling. Tyler was watching something on TV. Outside, the ocean did its thing — steady, the same sound through fifty years of Walsh family everything.
Tyler was happy. It had been easy. Lindsey had walked in and the family had opened up and that was that.
Bea was fine. It was not going to be easy. And Stella was the one who’d lit the fuse.
She turned off the light and let tomorrow be tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The first Sunday brunch sold out in forty minutes.
Anna had posted it on Thursday—“Weekend Brunch at the Beach Shack. Tyler’s Eggs Benedict. Joey’s Muffins. Ocean View. $25/person. Limited to 30.” By Friday morning the slots were gone. She’d had to turn away a woman who called three times asking if there was a waitlist, and Joey had texted her seventeen messages about muffin quantities, each one more urgent than the last.
Now it was Sunday morning, and Tyler was at his station with a fresh pot of simmering water and the kind of focus she’d only seen him bring to photography. His technique had gotten good—not Margo good, but confident. The eggs came out round and smooth and he plated them with the Canadian bacon and Meg’s hollandaise and a sprig of something green that Joey had insisted on because “presentation matters, Tyler, this isn’t a cafeteria.”
Thirty people on the patio, eating eggs Benedict in the November sun. The ocean flat and bright behind them. Stella with her camera, moving between tables. Meg’s hollandaise, delivered at six-thirty in an insulated container with a stickynote that read PERFECT BATCH. KEEP WARM. DO NOT REHEAT. I MEAN IT.
“This is working,” Anna said to no one in particular.
“The ticket revenue is forty percent above the projected baseline,” Michael said from his counter spot.
“I was having a moment, Michael.”
“The moment is supported by data.”
