He disappeared into the walk-in. Anna stood at the counter and looked at the morning. The grill ticking as it heated. The ocean through the windows. The Shack waking up the way it always did—slowly, piece by piece, coffee and clean surfaces and the smell of fifty years of grilled cheese baked into the walls.
The days were getting shorter. She could feel it in the light—the way it came in lower through the front windows, the way the afternoons ended sooner, the way November was already starting to feel like a door closing toward winter. And somewhere in there, Anna would have to figure out what Michael was. Not to the Shack. Not to the numbers. To her.
But not today. Today the grill was hot and the cheese was out and the Shack was opening in an hour.
She tied her apron and went to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Paige was back.
One of Meg’s high school best friends had spent three months in Europe—destination weddings in Tuscany, a corporate retreat on Lake Como, something involving a castle in the south of France that Paige had described in a single text as “nightmare clients, gorgeous venue, never again.” She’d landed at LAX two days ago and Natalie had set up coffee before the jet lag wore off, because Natalie understood that some reunions couldn’t wait.
They sat at the corner table at the place on Forest Avenue—the same booth they’d claimed since college. Meg had her laptop open. Paige had an espresso. Natalie had a chai and the quiet attention she brought to everything—fifteen years of teaching high schoolers had given her a talent for listening to what people weren’t saying.
“Show me,” Paige said, nodding at the laptop.
“Show you what?”
“The list. Natalie told me.”
Natalie shrugged. “I warned her.”
Meg turned the laptop toward Paige. Three pages. The caterer was canceled. The venue was undecided. There wereseventeen chair options, no florist, no officiant, no cake, and at the bottom in bold: SUNSET WINDOW — TWO WEEKS.
Paige read the whole thing with the speed of someone who’d spent fifteen years scanning event proposals. Her eyebrows went up once. She reached the bottom and looked at Meg.
“You have seventeen chair options.”
“Chairs matter.”
“Meg. I’ve been planning events for fifteen years. Chairs do not matter.” She scrolled back up. “The caterer canceled?”
“Double-booked.”
“And you didn’t call me.”
“You were in a castle in France.”
“With full cell service and a client who drove me so crazy I would have welcomed a distraction.” Paige closed the laptop. The decisive close of someone who had seen enough. “Where is this happening?”
“That’s the problem. The Dana Point venue wants a deposit by Friday and the parking situation?—”
“She’s mentioned the parking twice,” Natalie said to Paige. “In the last ten minutes.”
“What about the Shack?” Paige asked.
Meg looked at her.
“Anna’s been talking about it,” Natalie said. Her voice was gentle—the same tone Meg had heard her use with nervous students, the one that made hard truths feel safe. “The patio. The sunset. It keeps coming up, Meg. From everyone. Not just Anna.”
“It’s a grilled cheese restaurant.”
"Tell me about the patio," Paige said. Professional now. The voice she used when she was assessing a venue, not visiting a friend.
"You've been there a hundred times, Paige."
"Not like this, at night.”
