Page 89 of The Beach Shack
She sat on the steps with a thermos of coffee, the steam curling into the quiet morning. Her laptop sat unopened beside her—three unread emails from colleagues that could wait. Not at 6 AM. Not when the world looked like this.
Anna answered on the second ring, her voice thick with sleep. “Is this you having a morning crisis or a morning epiphany?”
“Not sure yet,” Meg said. “Is there a word for both?”
Anna laughed softly, and Meg could picture her sitting up in her tiny Florence apartment, probablysurrounded by paint tubes and coffee cups. “You didn’t sleep.”
“Some. But…” Meg paused, watching a pelican dive into the waves. “Everything here feels different now. Like it matters in a way I didn’t see before.”
“Because it does,” Anna said simply. “You sound different, too.”
“Different how?”
“Less... wound up. Like you’re not trying to solve something every second.” A pause. “When’s the last time you sat somewhere without your laptop?”
Meg glanced at the closed computer beside her and smiled. “About ten minutes ago.”
“See? Growth.”
They were quiet for a moment, the comfortable kind of silence that only happened between sisters when the edges had been smoothed down.
“I’ve been thinking about the ceiling,” Meg said finally.
“Margo’s masterpiece?”
“I always thought you had to be invited to add a shell. Like there was some official process.”
“She doesn’t invite,” Anna said. “She notices. And when you’re ready, she knows. It’s not about permission—it’s about belonging.”
Meg shifted on the step, watching the light change from lavender to pale gold. “What if I’m not sure I belong yet?”
“Meg.” Anna’s voice was gentler now. “You called me weeks ago because you were frustrated withefficiency charts. Now you’re sitting on a porch at dawn talking about belonging. That’s not someone who’s unsure.”
Meg felt something loosen in her chest. “I think I’ve been doing everything wrong. Here, I mean. Trying to fix things that weren’t broken.”
“Welcome to being a Turner,” Anna said with a laugh. “We’re all fixers. The trick is figuring out what actually needs fixing.”
They talked a few minutes more—about Bea’s latest sketch of the Duomo, about Florence’s weird obsession with putting anchovies on everything, about how Anna was already missing the morning light in their Laguna kitchen.
“I keep thinking about that summer when we were kids,” Anna said. “When you taught me to make proper coffee because you said mine tasted like dishwater.”
“You were twelve and using teaspoons instead of tablespoons of grounds,” Meg laughed. “It was basically dishwater with coffee grounds in it.”
“But you didn’t just tell me I was doing it wrong. You showed me the right way. You cared about getting it right.” Anna’s voice grew more serious. “That’s who you are, Meg. You fix things because you love them. The Beach Shack, Margo, all of us—we’re lucky to have you.”
After they hung up, Meg tied her sneakers, tucked the thermos under one arm, and walked down the slope to the beach. The sand was firm under her feet,marked only by the tracks of early morning joggers and the occasional seagull.
She passed Mrs. Baker walking her ancient corgi, who nodded and smiled without breaking stride. A surfer in a wetsuit jogged past carrying his board, salt water still dripping from his hair. The morning crowd was smaller, quieter—people who belonged to this time of day when everything felt possible.
No revelations. No soundtrack swelling. Just sand in her shoes and sea air in her lungs.
She hadn’t meant to look for a shell.
But when she saw it—small, ridged, and just a little broken at the edge—she stopped. It wasn’t perfect. Definitely not the kind of thing she would have picked up weeks ago, when she was still thinking in terms of flawless presentations and optimized outcomes.
But something about it reminded her of the iridescent one Margo had added on her birthday. Imperfect but catching the light anyway. Not flashy. Not obvious. Just honest.
She turned it over in her hand, feeling the rough edges where it had been tumbled by waves. It wasn’t from Florence or Fiji or some exotic beach sent from vacation. Just here. Laguna. Home.
