“I will not describe the noise.”
“Describe the noise.”
Vivian sat up straighter. “Absolutely not.”
Letty leaned forward. “Was it more of an ‘ohhh’ or more of a—” She made a low groaning sound that was somewhere between pain and something else entirely. Nadine choked on her cracker.
“It was NOT that,” Vivian said, her face going pink. “It was a dignified sound of physical relief.”
Eleanor reached for the cheese knife and cut herself another slice. “That’s not what it sounds like.”
“It was therapeutic.”
“Vivian,” Letty said, still smiling, “I’ve had the same therapist for six years. Nobody makes a dignified sound when someone finds the knot.”
“I am switching practices and I am not discussing this further.”
“You brought it up,” Nadine said.
The conversation loosened, and the wine went around once more, and Margo laughed when there was a laugh. She took a lemon bar off Letty’s tin. It was tart and sweet and exactly what a lemon bar should be.
On her way home, the street was quieter than it had been on the way over. The lamps along the curb made their small yellow circles and she walked through them one at a time.
She thought about Anna at eight, setting the table at the Shack because Sam was supposed to and Sam wasn’t there. Anna had set it the way Margo had taught her—forks on the left, knives on the right, glasses above the knives. Nobody had asked her to learn. She had learned because it was happening in front of her and she was paying attention.
She let herself in. Hung her coat. Put the Tupperware on the counter—Eleanor had sent her home with the leftover cheese triangles, because Eleanor always returned Tupperware.
Anna is what you made.
She lay in the dark with her eyes open and let the sentence sit where the Circle had put it, and she did not move, because she didn’t know what to do with it, and because Eleanor had said she didn’t have to do anything with it.
She had only to hear it.
She was trying.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anna had the flu or something like the flu and Meg was in San Francisco and Tyler had taken Lindsey to a thing, so at five o’clock Margo had put on her apron and worked the grill for three and a half hours, which she hadn’t done on a Friday night in the entire time they’d even had dinner hours. There were enough customers to make it worth it. One of them a man who’d sent back his grilled cheese because the bread was “too browned,” which Margo had accepted without comment and then, when Joey wasn’t looking, browned the replacement exactly the same and sent it back out with a fresh pickle because the man deserved a nice pickle with his identical sandwich.
He cleaned his plate and told Joey it was much better this time. Joey gave Margo a look across the pass that she returned with the smallest possible shrug. Some things didn’t need explaining.
Bernie was still at his booth.
He’d been there through the whole shift, which wasn’t unusual on a Friday—Bernie came for weekend dinner if the Shack was open for dinner, which it now was, two nights a week. What was mildly unusual was that he was still there at nine-thirty, when Joey had flipped the sign and Margo was finishing the till. The heater ticked. The ocean filled the room.
“You can leave any time, Bernard,” she said, tearing off a strip of register tape and setting it on the counter.
Bernie rattled the last of his ice—she could have identified it from three rooms away. “I’m aware.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Joey’s still here. I’m keeping him company.” He tilted his head toward the back office, where the laminator had been running for twenty minutes.
“Joey has a project. He’s fine.”
As if summoned, Joey came out of the back office holding a freshly laminated page up to the pendant light, turning it left and right. He nodded once, slid it into his backpack, and pulled on his jacket.
“Goodnight, Margo. Goodnight, Mr. Klein.” He paused at the door.
