Page 78 of The Beach Shack
The moment hung there, warm and still.
Then, just as Luke leaned a little closer and Meg tilted forward to meet him, a rogue wave surged up the beach and splashed icy water over both of them.
Meg shrieked. Luke shouted something unintelligible, stumbling backward.
They were both soaked.
Meg wiped her face, laughing. “That was not subtle.”
Luke grinned, water dripping from his curls. “Apparently, the ocean has opinions.”
Meg wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. Maybe both.
They spent another hour combing the final stretch of beach, logging data, chatting between waves. When the last marker was flagged and their bags packed, Luke held out a ziplock baggie containing the plastic bits they’d collected.
“Want to label this one?” he asked. “You get to pick the name.”
Meg smiled. “Let’s call it… Sample Group 7B: Grilled Cheese & Revelations.”
He laughed. “Perfect.”
As they made their way back toward the stairs, the tide crept in behind them, smoothing the sand where their footprints had been.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
After all these years in marketing, Meg had learned to read the unspoken stories in how businesses organized their files and paperwork.
The Beach Shack’s tiny back office was particularly revealing. Unlike the cheerful, deliberately casual atmosphere of the dining area, this space showed the private reality of Margo’s management style. Receipt spindles dating back months. Invoices filed by vendor name rather than date. Tax documents stored alongside personal mail. The organizational system appeared random to an outside observer but clearly followed some internal logic that made perfect sense to Margo herself.
Meg had offered to help with month-end reconciliation, expecting resistance but receiving instead a distracted nod from her grandmother, who was preoccupied with a delivery issue. Now, alone in the cramped space with scattered financial records, Megfelt both satisfaction at being trusted with this task and a nagging concern about what she might find.
The regular monthly payments—the “Standing Obligation” entries—had been weighing on her mind since she’d first glimpsed them. With Margo busy in the kitchen and the afternoon lull providing a quiet window, Meg finally had the opportunity to investigate properly.
She started with the current year’s ledger, meticulously noting each monthly $1,500 payment. Then she pulled out the previous year’s records, finding the identical pattern. And the year before that. The consistency was remarkable—same amount, same day of the month, year after year.
Looking for earlier records, Meg discovered a stack of ledgers stored in a bottom drawer, each bound in the same weathered leather, Margo’s precise handwriting marking the years on their spines. She selected one from five years ago, then ten years ago, then fifteen.
The pattern held across all of them. The monthly payment amount had changed only once—increasing from $750 to $1,500 about twelve years earlier. Otherwise, it was the same clockwork financial commitment, stretching back through decades of Beach Shack history.
Meg sat back in the creaky office chair, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. These payments represented a significant ongoing expense for a small business with tight margins. More troubling was thecomplete lack of explanation—no recipient name, no service rendered, no contract referenced. Just “Standing Obligation” month after month, year after year.
Her instincts flared with warning signals. In any other business, this would raise red flags.
What troubled Meg most wasn’t the financial implication but the secrecy. Why hadn’t Margo ever explained these payments? Why deflect questions about them? What obligation could possibly justify decades of substantial monthly payments without documentation?
As she continued searching through the records, Meg found something else unusual—a separate small ledger, different from the others, tucked inside a folder labeled simply “F.” Inside were notes in handwriting Meg didn’t recognize, presumably her grandfather’s, detailing what appeared to be a payment agreement.
The entries stopped abruptly in 1978, the year her grandfather died. The final page had a single line in Margo’s handwriting: “Promise continues.”
Meg felt an uncomfortable tightness in her chest. This wasn’t merely unusual bookkeeping or an eccentric business practice. This was something her grandmother had deliberately kept hidden, even as financial struggles occasionally forced her to delay other payments or dip into personal savings.
The implications were troubling. What kind of promise required such financial sacrifice? And why had it been kept secret from the family for so long?
She was still pondering these questions when Margo appeared in the doorway.
“Finding everything alright?” her grandmother asked, her tone casual but her eyes immediately going to the collection of ledgers spread across the desk.
Meg decided directness was the only approach. “I’ve been looking at these monthly payments. The ‘Standing Obligation.’ They go back decades.”
