Then she got up, washed both mugs, dried them, and put them back in the cabinet—the blue one on the left, hers on the right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With the Shack in its afternoon quiet, Stella worked the prep station through lunch—napkins, condiments, the side work Joey had left in a laminated checklist that she followed without admitting she followed it. Anna was in the back doing something with the register tape. Tyler had gone home at noon. Joey was gone but his presence lingered in the form of a sugar packet chart taped to the inside of the cabinet door, organized by color, then by size within each color, with a footnote about the pink ones that read chemical taste — under review.
Stella had taken a photo of the chart. She was going to frame it for Joey’s birthday.
The dining room was empty except for Bernie.
He was in the booth with his tablet propped against the sugar dispenser. Coffee at the angle it always sat—handle at two o’clock. The cane leaned against the wall beside him. The window light fell across his hands the way it did every afternoon at this hour.
She poured herself a glass of water, carried it to the booth, and slid into the seat across from him.
He looked up from the tablet. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Side work’s done. Joey’s checklist is complete. I even restocked the napkins at the angle he specified, which I’m pretty sure is a war crime in some countries.”
“Joey’s angles are important to Joey.”
“Joey’s angles are important to everyone within a thirty-foot radius of Joey.”
Bernie laughed and lifted his mug. “Definitely.”
“You’ve been in a lot lately,” she said, taking a sip of water.
“I like the crowd.”
“You like the booth.”
“Same thing.” He set the cup down and looked at her. “What’s on your mind, Stella?”
She turned her water glass on the table. She hadn’t planned this. But she’d been thinking about it since the soundbar—since she’d watched Margo look at the spot on the couch where Bernie sat and seen the same expression she’d been photographing for months without understanding what it was.
“I helped Tyler install a soundbar at Margo’s last week,” she said.
“I heard. The sound is much better.”
“She bought it so you could hear basketball.”
“She bought it so the room would have better audio.”
“Bernie. She went to a store and talked to a man about speaker specifications. For a sport she didn’t know existed four months ago. Because you mentioned the crowd was hard to hear.”
He picked up his coffee and didn’t say anything.
“And while Tyler was installing it, she wasn’t watching him. She was looking at the couch. Your spot. The cushion where you sit.” Stella took a sip of water. “That’s not friendship, Bernie. You know that.”
He set his mug down slowly.
“I take a lot of pictures of this family,” Stella said. “I have hundreds of you looking at her. And last week I watched her look at an empty couch cushion the same way.”
His hand stayed near the cup.
“Does she know?” Stella asked.
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
