Page 43 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
“I—what do you mean?”
“I mean,” Margo continued, her voice steady but carrying the weight of decades, “you’ve been here two weeks. In that time, you’ve reorganized our storage system, relocated the coffee station twice, redesigned our entire floor plan. Did you ask anyone if they wanted any of those changes?”
“I was helping?—”
“I know you were,” Margo said softly. “You all are. You’ve all been helping me.” Her gaze moved around the table, taking in each beloved, complicated face. “But somewhere along the way, I think we stopped asking what anyone actually wants.”
She looked at Tyler. “You love this place when it fits your life. When it gets complicated, you find urgent photography work elsewhere. Maybe because you don’t know if you want it, either.”
Then to Meg. “And you—you manage everything so beautifully it looks effortless. But this place isn’t a project, sweetheart. It’s a life. Are you sure it’s one you even want?”
No one spoke. Even Anna had gone perfectly still.
“I’m not saying that to scold,” Margo continued, her voice growing quieter. “I just—look at us. I’m eighty years old. I can’t carry this place forever. And lately I’ve started to wonder if I should even be the one carrying it anymore.”
The silence felt heavier than anger. Even the ocean outside seemed to have stopped moving.
“You’ve all built lives that make sense outside those walls,” Margo said, her voice gentle but final. “And maybe that’s as it should be. But if this place means something to you—really means something—you need to figure out what that is before someone else decides for you.”
She stood slowly, placing her napkin on the table with the deliberate care of someone who’d made a decision she couldn’t take back.
“You’re all adults. You get to choose your own lives. But so do I. To be honest, this doesn’t feel like help. And I won’t spend what time I have left pretending this is working if it isn’t.”
She looked around the table one more time, at the faces she’d loved for decades.
“When you know what you actually want—not what you think you should want, but what you really want—let me know.”
The front door closed behind her with a soft click that somehow managed to sound final.
She walked slowly down the street toward the Beach Shack, not looking back at the warm light spilling from Meg’s dining room windows. Behind her, she could hear the murmur of voices—probably trying to figure out what had just happened, what it meant, what they were supposed to do now.
But that wasn’t her problem anymore.
For the first time in fifty years, what happened to the Beach Shack wasn’t entirely her responsibility to solve.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sky had deepened to a bruised lavender by the time Stella peeled off from Bea and Luke. Her feet took the familiar curve toward Margo’s cottage without thinking. Dinner was basically a group breakup. With carbs. And witnesses.
“Stella,” Margo said, not surprised, when she opened the screen door. “You look like someone who needs to talk.”
“I think I do.”
Margo handed her a glass of lemonade without asking. “Come in.”
They settled into the mismatched chairs in Margo’s living room, the ones that creaked. It smelled like paint and lemon polish and Margo—somehow messy and organized at the same time— with shells arranged on windowsills, old photographs of family and friends, a bookshelf that held everything from cookbooks to art history texts.
“What was that?” Stella asked finally, gesturing toward where the dinner had happened. “I mean, what just happened back there?”
Margo sipped her wine. “A family dinner.”
“That was like watching a car crash in slow motion.”
Margo chuckled. “You say that like it’s new.”
“It felt different. Worse, maybe.” Stella paused. “Are you okay? I mean, you just walked out on everyone.”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Sometimes walking away is the only way to make a point.”
