Page 26 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
“Making art that means something. To you, to someone else, to the world. The Festival is just one way to share it.”
Candace nodded, looking convinced. “I can’t wait to see what you created about our town with your Florence eyes.”
After everyone left, Anna stood in the quiet art room, surrounded by student work. Bright, bold, unafraid of breaking rules or going outside lines. They’d learned well.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Meg.
Where are you? Bea’s reorganizing our spice cabinet by ‘color harmony.’
Then another.
Never mind. She got distracted by the light through the window. Crisis averted.
Anna smiled. Her daughter, the beautiful artist. Her sister, the organization devotee. Somehow they were all under one roof again, bumping into each other's lives like they always had.
She looked around the art room one more time. Her students were excited about her Festival entry. They wanted to see their teacher’s work displayed officially, applying everything she’d learned in Florence to their shared home.
It was time to stop thinking of herself as just a teacher who painted sometimes. Maybe Florence hadn’t changed her into a serious artist—maybe it had just reminded her she’d been one all along.
Her students were right to be excited. She’d already started her Festival piece, but maybe this time she saw it differently — not as a teacher’s side project, but as an artist’s work.
“Lines are suggestions,” she murmured, echoing Everett.
Outside, the Laguna light was doing its thing—sharp and clear and honest. The kind of light that made you want to capture it, hold it, share it.
The kind of light that made you want to paint.
Anna grabbed her bag and headed home, already thinking about canvas and color and the way the ocean looked when the afternoon sun hit it just right. Her Festival piece was coming together beautifully, and tomorrow she’d start implementing what she’d learned about café design at the Beach Shack.
Everything was going to be perfect.
All art had feelings. And hers were finally ready to show the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stella arrived at the Beach Shack at 8:30 a.m. to find Anna already there, armed with a measuring tape, three notebooks, and the kind of look that usually meant trouble.
“Morning, Anna,” Stella called, hanging up her jacket. “You’re here early.”
“Research,” Anna said, holding up her measuring tape like it explained everything. “I need to document the current spatial relationships before I can optimize them.”
Stella caught Joey’s eye as he emerged from the storage closet with napkins. They’d developed a silent communication system for situations exactly like this—raised eyebrows meaningincoming Anna project, slight head shakes meaningprobably harmless, and wide-eyed stares meaningtake cover.
Joey’s expression fell squarely in thetake covercategory.
“What kind of optimization?” Stella asked carefully.
“The Florence Method,” Anna said, stretching her measuring tape from the coffee station to the nearest table. “I spent three months studying how Italian cafés work. Giuseppe’s place near the Ponte Vecchio serves a thousand customers a day with half our space and twice our speed.”
“Giuseppe sounds efficient,” Stella said diplomatically, while Joey retreated behind the register like it might offer protection.
“And now I have a few weeks before my teaching job starts, so it’s the perfect time to implement what I learned,” she said.
Anna moved around the restaurant with careful focus, measuring distances between tables, sketching traffic flow patterns, and occasionally making notes with the intensity of someone solving a puzzle. Stella found herself oddly fascinated by Anna’s process—there was something beautiful about her complete focus, even when that focus was aimed at reorganizing other people’s lives.
The front door chimed and Tyler walked in, camera bag over his shoulder and the relaxed expression of someone whose biggest worry was finding good lighting.
“Morning,” he said, then stopped when he saw Anna crouched by the coffee station. “What’s happening?”
