“Mom. The olive oil. The humming. The focaccia you started making every Thursday even though we had plenty.” Bea almost smiled. Almost. “Stella told me about the Florence laugh.”
“The Florence laugh.”
“Apparently you have a different laugh when something matters to you. Stella noticed. She notices everything.” Bea set her spoon down. “I’ve known for weeks. I just didn’t want to know it out loud.”
Anna sat with that. Her daughter had been watching her fall for someone and holding it alone, being mature, being fine, and Anna hadn’t seen it because she’d been too busy hiding the same thing.
“I’m not going to make it hard for you,” Bea said. “I told Stella that last night. And Tyler.”
“You went to Tyler’s.”
“He made terrible tea. Then we got ice cream.”
“Ice cream.”
Bea picked up her spoon again. “Salted caramel. It helped.”
Anna wanted to reach across the table and hold her daughter’s hand. She didn’t. Bea wasn’t ready for that yet. The coffee and the cereal and the conversation were already more than Anna had expected this morning.
“Are we okay?” Anna asked.
Bea looked at her. Sixteen years old. Sam’s eyes, Anna’s jaw, a face that was learning to hold complicated things without dropping them.
“We’re notnotokay,” Bea said. “That’s the best I’ve got right now.”
“I’ll take it.”
“And next time you want to invite someone to dinner, tell me first. Like a normal person.”
“Like a normal person.”
Bea finished her cereal, rinsed the bowl, and picked up her backpack from the chair by the door. The routine. The schedule. The steady forward motion of a sixteen-year-old who had school in forty minutes and a life that was rearranging itself around her.
She stopped in the doorway.
“The pasta was good, by the way.”
“What?”
“I tried it. Last night. When I got home. There was some left in the pot.” She shifted her backpack. “It was really good.”
She left. The front door closed. Anna sat at the kitchen table with her coffee and the November light coming in stronger now, the grey turning to something warmer. The house was quiet again — but a different quiet than yesterday. Yesterday’s quiet had weight. This one had room in it.
Not fixed. But honest. She’d take honest.
The Shack opened at ten. Anna had the grill heating and the cheese unwrapped and the coffee going when her phone buzzed on the counter. Meg.
“The caterer canceled,” Meg said. No hello. No preamble. Meg in crisis started mid-sentence. “The caterer Luke found—they double-booked our date and they justnowtold me, like that’s an acceptable timeline for?—”
“Meg. Breathe.”
“I’m breathing. I’m breathing and panicking. I can do both.” More typing in the background. Meg was always typing. “So now I have no caterer, no venue, the chair rental people want a decision by Friday, and if we push this past November the sunset’s at four-thirty and nobody’s having a sunset wedding in the dark, Anna.”
“So don’t push it past November.”
“That’s two weeks. You can’t plan a wedding in two weeks.”
“You can if you stop planning and just do it.” Anna leaned against the counter and looked at the patio through the kitchen window. Morning light. The ocean flat and bright. The chairsstacked from last night’s art event, the string lights still up because Anna had been too tired to take them down. “Have it at the Shack, Meg.”
