They ate. The garden filled with the sounds of eleven people eating and talking and reaching for bread and arguing about olive oil. Tyler told a story about a surf session that went wrong and Lindsey corrected three details. Meg asked Michael about a client project and Michael answered with more words than usual. Bea and Stella sat across from each other and communicated mostly through looks, which was how they communicated best.
Joey ate his chicken with methodical attention and then set his fork down.
“This chicken,” he said.
“What about it?” Margo said.
“This is not regular chicken.”
“No, it isn’t,” Bernie said.
“The herb profile is—where did this recipe come from?”
Bernie, beside Margo, picked up his water glass. “My mother.”
Joey looked at Bernie. Looked at Margo. Looked at the chicken.
“Bernie’s mother’s recipe,” Joey said.
“Helen,” Bernie said. “Her name was Helen.”
“Helen’s chicken.” Joey folded his napkin precisely, twice—and set it beside his plate. “Well. It’s exceptional. I would like to propose that it be added to the Shack’s menu on a trial basis, pending nutritional review.”
“It’s not going on the menu, Joey,” Margo said.
Bernie smiled. “I’m glad you like it, but some recipes are just for family.”
The table went quiet for half a second. Just long enough for the word to land. Family. Bernie had said family. At Margo’s table. With her tongs and her good plates and her string lights in the garden.
Anna reached for the bread basket. Tyler took a drink of his wine. Meg looked at Luke and Luke looked back and neither of them said anything, but they were both smiling. Bea was studying the string lights with her head tilted, which meant the sketchbook was coming out later.
Margo picked up the pepper and passed it to Bernie without him asking.
After dinner they stayed in the garden. The string lights came on as the sky went dark. Luke and Tyler cleared. Anna and Michael washed. Joey dried, because Joey had a system for drying that involved a specific rotation pattern he’d explained once and nobody had retained. Meg sat with Margo and Bernie at the table, and at some point Stella saw Meg look down and go still for a second, and when Stella followed her gaze she saw it.
Bernie’s hand on the table. Margo’s hand next to it. Not holding. Just close.
Stella raised her camera. Looked through the viewfinder. The hands on the table, the string lights behind them, the lemon bowl between them. A perfect frame. The kind of shot she would have taken without thinking six months ago.
She lowered the camera.
Some things were not for the camera. She’d learned that somewhere between Sedona and here. Some moments belonged to the people in them. This one belonged to Margo and Bernie, at their table, in their garden, with their family around them and the lights in the trellis and the night coming in warm.
She put the lens cap on and went to help with the dishes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The house was quiet. The light through the studio window was early—seven o’clock light, the kind that came in low and cool before the day warmed it into something softer. She hadn’t been in the studio this early in years. She’d forgotten what this light looked like.
The canvas was on the easel where it had been since the night of Bernie’s knee. Thirty inches by forty. The gray she’d mixed that first night was long gone—scraped off and thrown away months ago. The palette was clean. The brushes were in the jar, dry, waiting.
She’d set out the paints last night. Not all of them—just the ones she’d need. Cadmium yellow. Burnt sienna. Raw umber. Titanium white. A blue she’d mixed herself years ago and kept in a small jar because the color was right and she’d never been able to replicate it. It was the color of late afternoon light on a white cabinet.
She tied on her smock. It was paint-stained from years of use—the left cuff had a streak of cobalt from the beach series, the pocket had a thumbprint of ochre from something she couldn’t remember. The smock smelled like turpentine and linseed oil and the studio and every painting she’d ever made.
She didn’t start with Bernie. She started with the kitchen.
The table first. The edge of it, the wood grain, the way the light hit the surface at four o’clock when the rectangle on the floor had reached the table leg. She knew that table—she’d sat at it for months, playing cards, drinking tea, watching the light move. She painted the table from memory the way she painted everything from memory, which was by feel and by color and by the specific weight of a thing in her mind.
