Page 80 of The Beach Shack Summer
“Maybe Sam hired someone?”
“Sam doesn’t hire people. She doesn’t... organize things like that.” Meg moved to the front window, cupping her hands around her eyes to peer inside. “Oh.”
“What?”
“It’s... it’s exactly the same. Like she just left yesterday.”Through the glass, she could see the living room—same couch, same art on the walls, even what looked like the same magazines on the coffee table. “This is weird, right? This is objectively weird?”
“Pretty weird,” Luke agreed. “Want to check the back?”
They walked around the side of the house, past the maintained garden beds. The back door had a window. Meg peered through.
“The kitchen’s the same too. Same plates in the rack. Same—“ She stopped. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“There are fresh flowers on the table. Like, really fresh. Pink roses, maybe a day old.”
“So someone’s not just maintaining it. They’re... visiting?”
“I guess? But why?” Meg stared at the flowers, baffled. “Who puts fresh flowers in an empty house?”
They retreated to the sidewalk, both glancing back at the house.
“So,” Luke said carefully, “setting aside the mystery of who’s leaving flowers in your mom’s empty house—it’s right there. Three doors from Tyler. Fully functional, apparently.”
“Luke, no.”
“I’m just saying?—“
“Even if I could get in touch with Sam, which is a big if, I can’t just move into my childhood home. That’s... that’s going backward.”
“Is it? Or is it finding a solution that keeps you closeto Tyler and Stella while giving everyone room to breathe?”
They stood in front of Tyler’s house, the contrast stark—papers visible through windows, bikes crowding the porch, every sign of too many lives in too small a space.
“I don’t even know if she still owns it,” Meg said weakly.
“Easy enough to find out.”
“Luke.”
“What? I’m being practical. You need space to work. Tyler needs his house back. Stella needs to not eat breakfast standing up.” He gestured toward Sam’s house. “There’s a perfectly good house right there.”
“With a mysterious flower fairy, apparently.”
“Minor detail.”
Meg laughed despite herself. “This is insane. We’re standing here seriously discussing me moving into my mom’s abandoned-but-mysteriously-maintained house because I’ve turned Tyler’s place into a paper factory.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds very reasonable.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m trying to help. That’s literally what I’m doing.” He turned serious. “Meg, you can’t keep working from Tyler’s bathroom. Something has to give.”
“I know.” She looked between the two houses—Tyler’s chaos, Sam’s empty perfection waiting with fresh flowers. “I just... I have a lot of memories in that house. Not all of them good.”
“Then maybe it’s time to make new ones.”
