Page 51 of The Beach Shack
Letty clinked her glass against Meg’s. “You holding up okay with all the Beach Shack chaos, dear?”
Meg hesitated. “It’s… a lot.”
“Of course it is,” Nadine said briskly. “This place—this life—it’s woven tight. You can’t pull one thread without unraveling half a tapestry.”
“That’s true of all legacies,” Vivian added, tilting her glass toward Margo. “You don’t just inherit the stories—they come tangled in secrets, obligations, old arguments nobody quite remembers.”
“Some people run from that,” Eleanor observed. “Some come back.”
Margo looked at Meg with soft eyes. “And some people need time to figure out which they are.”
The words hung in the lavender-scented air. Meg looked down at her glass, aware that all five women were watching her with varying degrees of affection and curiosity.
“I wasn’t planning to come back,” Meg admitted.
“But you did,” Letty said simply. “That means something.”
“You and your mother have more in common than you think.,” Margo said quietly.
That caught Meg’s attention. “Mom?”
“Sam left too,” Vivian said gently. “Had to find herself away from here before she can figure out what home means.”
“The difference is,” Margo added, “you came back when I needed you.”
They didn’t push. Didn’t pry. But the message was clear: they saw her. Not just as Margo’s granddaughter, not just as the temporary help behind the counter. As part of this. As one of them.
“So,” Vivian said after a companionable silence, “how long are you staying?”
Meg smiled into her glass. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Nadine nodded. “It always is. Stay long enough, and you’ll start seeing the patterns.”
“Like what?”
“Like who always shows up to help on clean-up days, and who brings wine but no paper towels,” Eleanor said with a pointed look at Letty.
“Hey, wine is a contribution,” Letty protested.
“Like who’s still pretending Richard’s decisions were all wise and noble,” Vivian continued with a meaningful glance at Margo.
Margo raised her glass. “Richard made the best decisions he could with the information he had.”
“Including paying for that guy’s cottage?” Nadine asked dryly.
Margo’s expression tightened almost imperceptibly. “That’s ancient history, Nadine.”
“Is it?” Vivian asked. “Because Meg’s asking questions, and sooner or later?—“
“Ladies,” Margo interrupted firmly, but not unkindly. “Not tonight.”
But Meg had caught the exchange, the way the conversation had suddenly sharpened before Margo shut it down. Another piece of the puzzle she didn’t understand yet.
The conversation moved on—Nadine asking Eleanor about her new deck tiles, Letty launching into a story about a disastrous second date with a man who’d confused her with his accountant. But Meg watched Margo more closely, seeing how she laughed at Letty’s stories, how she argued with Eleanor about the best way to prune bougainvillea, how she rolled her eyes at Vivian’s conspiracy theories about the city planning committee.
This was Margo as herself—not as the matriarch, not as the business owner, but as a woman with opinions and friendships and a wicked sense of humor that came out when she felt safe.
“Meg,” Margo said during a lull, “tell them about that efficiency presentation you tried to give the staff.”
