Page 10 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
“Oh, the Festival!” Bea perked up. “Are you entering, Mom?”
“Maybe,” Anna said vaguely, already painting again. “Haven’t decided.”
“You should,” Bea said. “Your Florence work was amazing.”
“What about you, Aunt Meg?” Bea asked. “You could totally make art with food.”
“I don’t think grilled cheese counts as Festival art,” Meg said.
“Everything can be art,” Bea said with sixteen-year-old certainty. “It’s about what you mean by it.”
“My intention,” Meg said, “is usually lunch.”
Luke laughed. “Speaking of lunch—breakfast? Before the kitchen becomes a studio?”
“Excellent idea,” Meg said, closing her laptop with perhaps more force than necessary.
She looked around the chaos—her childhood home transformed back into the creative whirlwind it had once been. Anna painting by the stove. Bea spreading tarps. Paint footprints leading toward the hallway.
She should be annoyed. She was annoyed. But underneath it was something else—a weird, warm nostalgia for exactly this kind of chaos.
“Don’t let Bernie put odds on me,” Anna called as they headed out. “I don’t compete anymore. It’s not about winning.”
“Since when?” Meg asked.
“Since I realized the best art happens when you’re not trying to prove anything.”
“Very zen,” Luke said.
“Very Anna,” Meg said. “She’s been saying variations of that since high school.”
“And you’ve been organizing variations since high school,” Anna shot back, grinning. “Some things never change.”
“Some things never change,” Meg agreed, stepping over a paint tray Bea had left in the exact spot she’d put her work bag last night.
Six more weeks of this. Six weeks of paint in unexpected places, of tripping over easels, of her sister and niece turning their childhood home into an art studio.
They were ridiculous. They were messy. They were family.
“Fair warning,” she told Luke as they walked to his truck. “This is mild. Wait until they really get going.”
“Should be interesting,” he said.
“That’s because you don’t have paint in your coffee maker,” she pointed out.
Outside, the morning light spilled across the porch, catching a faint shimmer of blue on her sleeve. She brushed at it, then stopped. Maybe a little color wouldn’t kill her.
Inside, Anna was already humming, Bea was talking about memory and light, and the familiar scent of turpentine mingled with coffee.
Meg sighed, but the sound softened into a smile. Loving creative people meant living in the splash zone. At least paint was washable.
CHAPTER FIVE
Stella Walsh stood in the bathroom she shared with her dad, watching him check his hair in the mirror for the third time in five minutes.
“Dad, it’s just dinner. And we’re walking three doors down.”
“I know it’s just dinner.” Tyler ran his hand through his hair again, then immediately messed it up.
