It didn’t go away. He kept smiling. He kept playing. And the whole patio was still.
Then, from the beach—Meg and Luke.
They came up the wooden steps from the sand. Barefoot. Heads together. Meg in the ivory dress, simple, no beading, moving when she moved. Luke in a white shirt and rolled khakis with sand on his ankles. They weren’t walking in any formal way. They were just walking up from the water together, the way they’d probably been walking together since they’d found each other, toward the family that was waiting for them.
Meg heard the guitar. Stella watched her face change—surprise first, then recognition, then something that broke through whatever composure she’d been holding onto all day. She pressed her fingers against her eyes with one hand and held Luke’s hand with the other and kept walking.
Luke looked at her. Steady. Stella had photographed a lot of people. Luke was the steadiest.
They reached the patio. The officiant smiled. The ceremony was short—simple vows, the ocean behind them, the light going gold. Meg cried. Luke didn’t, but his hands shook when he put the ring on. Tyler stood beside them as witness, ears pink, grinning so hard it looked like it hurt. Anna stood on Meg’s other side, holding flowers she’d pulled from one of Paige’s arrangements when nobody was looking, because Anna always needed something in her hands.
Michael played through the vows. Quiet now. Just the guitar underneath the words.
They kissed. Everyone cheered. Joey’s walkie-talkie crackled with static that had no source. The stray cat appeared from under a table and jumped onto a chair in the front row like he’d had a reservation.
Stella shot everything. The kiss. The cat. Tyler wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and pretending he wasn’t. Margo in her chair, perfectly still. Bernie beside her, hands in his lap, watching.
Click. Click. Click.
The best frames of her life. And she knew it while she was taking them, which almost never happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The patio became a party.
Paige’s DJ started the playlist—something warm and easy, the kind of music that made people drift toward each other. Michael had set the guitar aside and come to stand near Anna, and the transition from playing to standing beside her was so smooth that she almost missed the moment he arrived. But she didn’t miss it. She’d stopped missing his moments weeks ago.
“You play guitar,” she said.
“My mother taught me,” he told her again.
“You play guitar and you didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Who asks that? Who walks up to someone and says ‘do you secretly play beautiful guitar?’”
“It’s not a secret. It’s just not relevant to most conversations.”
“Yousmiled, Michael.”
He looked at her. The almost-smile was back—but different now. Warmer. Closer to the real one she’d seen on the patio with the guitar in his hands.
“I smile,” he said.
“You don’t. You recalibrate. You adjust. Tonight yousmiledand everyone saw it and I’m never going to recover from this.”
He looked at the ocean. The smile was still there.
The first wine was poured. Anna did it—standing behind the counter, the same counter where she’d served coffee and lemonade, and now she opened a bottle of white and filled a stemless glass and handed it to Meg.
“First wine ever served at the Beach Shack,” Anna said.
Meg took the glass. Looked at it. Looked at the restaurant—the shells on the ceiling, the counter, the grill, the family scattered across the patio in the string lights and the November dark.
People ate. Grilled cheese trays circulated. Tyler’s eggs Benedict appetizers disappeared in twelve minutes, which Tyler counted. Rosa’s salsa on every table—bright, sharp, alive. Anna caught Michael looking at the salsa bowls. His face was quiet. Still. The face of a man seeing his mother’s recipe in a place it belonged.
Rick found her near the food station. He had a glass of wine in one hand and his phone in the other and he’d been quiet all evening the way Rick was always quiet—watching, calculating, filing things away.
