Page 37 of The Beach Shack
“She looked so tired at her birthday party,” Rick continued quietly. “I keep thinking about what happens in five years, or ten. What happens when she can’t stand at that grill anymore? When she can’t manage the long days?” His voice cracked slightly. “She’s too proud to ask for help, and I’ve been too proud to keep offering it after she shut me out.”
“That’s why you’ve been avoiding my calls,” Meg said, understanding now. “You were afraid I’d ask about this.”
Rick nodded. “I was ashamed, I guess. Here I am, her son, and I don’t even know if she’s going to be okay. We haven’t talked about money in years. For all I know, she’s one medical emergency away from losing everything.”
They sat in the growing evening light, the weight of Rick’s fears settling between them.
“What do you think those payments are really for?” Meg asked gently.
“I honestly don’t know anymore. Maybe they were legitimate once—some kind of business loan or partnership Richard set up. But that was fifty years ago. Even if there was an original obligation, surely it should have been paid off by now.” Rick gathered his notebook back toward him. “What I do know is thateighteen thousand dollars a year for decades... that should have been Margo’s retirement fund.”
“So what do we do?”
Rick looked at her with something like hope for the first time since he’d arrived. “I was hoping you might be able to reach her in a way I couldn’t. You’re not the son who questioned her husband’s decisions years ago. You’re the granddaughter who came back to help.”
He stood, leaving the box on the table. “Maybe you can find a way to talk to her about the future—about what she needs, about what she wants. And maybe you can figure out if those payments are still necessary, or if they’re just... habit.”
As Rick moved toward the door, Meg called after him. “Why now? Why are you finally talking about this?”
He paused, his hand on the doorframe. “Because I’m scared, Meg. And because watching her struggle alone while I nurse my hurt feelings feels selfish and wrong.” He turned back to face her. “She’s my mother. Whatever mistakes we’ve both made, she deserves better than that.”
After he left, Meg sat staring at the box of old notes. This wasn’t about solving a mystery anymore. It was about helping an eighty-year-old woman who had spent her whole life taking care of others, and making sure someone was finally taking care of her.
The answers weren’t in the files. They were in finding a way to bridge the gap between a proudmother and a worried son, and in having the conversations that should have happened years ago.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After Rick left, Meg sat at Tyler's dining table for a full five minutes, staring at the box of old records, trying to make sense of what she'd just learned.
Rick's worried voice echoed in her mind: "She's eighty years old and has nothing saved for retirement." The notebook lay open in front of her, filled with his decades-old concerns about monthly payments that had drained away Margo's financial security.
She needed air. Space to think.
Meg grabbed her keys and drove without thinking, muscle memory guiding her toward the coast. The familiar route to Main Beach that she’d taken countless times as a teenager when she needed to think.
The afternoon sun was still warm, but the beach crowd had thinned to joggers and a few families packing up their umbrellas. Meg found a parking spotand walked down to where the rocks formed a natural jetty, waves washing over the lower stones in a steady rhythm that had always helped her concentrate.
She climbed carefully to a flat boulder that offered a good view of the horizon and pulled out her phone. If there was one thing she was good at, it was research. Surely she could find some clarity in facts and legal precedents.
Inheritance trust obligations, she typed into Google. The results were predictably generic—legal websites explaining basic trust structures, nothing that addressed decades-old verbal promises or mysterious monthly payments. She triedbusiness partnership buyoutsandsilent investor agreements, but the information felt abstract, disconnected from whatever Richard Turner had actually committed to fifty years ago.
Meg opened her email and started typing to Jennifer Chen, a friend from business school who’d gone into corporate law:
Hey Jen, Hope you’re well. Quick hypothetical question—if someone made a verbal agreement to make monthly payments to an investor, and that obligation continued even after the investor died with no heirs, would there be any legal?—
She stopped typing and stared at the screen. How could she explain this without revealing her family’s private business? And what if Jen asked follow-up questions, wanted details Meg didn’t have?
Delete.
She tried again:
Hi Jen, Working on a case study about family business obligations. If a founder promised ongoing payments as part of an informal investment agreement, but documentation was minimal?—
This was ridiculous. She was trying to turn her family’s secrets into an academic exercise. Even if Jen could provide legal insight, it wouldn’t help Meg understand why Richard had made such a promise in the first place, or why Margo had continued honoring it at such personal cost.
Delete.
As she turned to pace across the rock, her phone slipped from her hand and landed with a soft thud in the sand below.
