Page 8 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
“I have a betting pool on everything. Very scientific. Data-driven analysis of family patterns.” He looked up from his screen. “Three-to-one Meg tries to organize a family meeting within forty-eight hours. Two-to-one Anna starts ‘improving’ something before she’s been here a full week. Five-to-one Tyler finds urgent photography work the moment things get complicated.”
“And what are the odds,” Margo asked quietly, “that any of them actually want to spend their lives here?”
Bernie studied her face carefully. “That’s not a betting pool question, Margo. That’s the million-dollar question.”
“Fifty years,” she said softly. “Richard and I built this place from nothing. I’ve kept it going since he died. And I have no idea if any of them love it enough to make the sacrifices it requires.”
“Maybe that’s what you’re really testing,” Bernie said gently. “Not whether they can handle the work. Whether they love it enough to choose it.”
“Maybe.” Margo looked around the dining room that had been her life for five decades. “Rick’s right, though. I can’t wait much longer. If something happens to me before I make decisions...”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“You don’t know that. The knife slipping—that wasn’t like me, Bernie. Fifty years of cooking, and my hand just... gave out.”
“You were tired. You’ve been working too hard since Tyler left for a while.”
“Or I’m getting old.” She smiled ruefully. “Eighty years old, to be precise. Rick’s not wrong about the urgency.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“A few weeks. I let them handle things—all of them, together—without stepping in to fix everything. See who shows up,who disappears, who actually pays attention to what this place needs.”
“And if none of them pass the test?”
Margo was quiet for a long moment. “Then I’ll know I need to make different plans.”
Outside, the morning was warming toward another perfect Laguna Beach day. Anna was on her way with her artistic chaos and her daughter Bea. Their world would fill with creative energy and family noise and all the complicated love that came with three generations trying to figure out how to be together.
Bernie raised his coffee mug in a mock toast. “To the most interesting few weeks in Beach Shack history.”
“Indeed,” Margo said quietly, not certain at all if the outcome would be what she hoped for. But she clinked her mug against his anyway.
Time to find out which of her grandchildren was ready to inherit not just a business, but a legacy.
CHAPTER FOUR
Only two days after Anna and Bea’s arrival, Meg Walsh found her project-management mug filled with paint water at six-thirty in the morning. That’s it. That’s how long it had taken for them to shake their jet lag and transform her carefully organized house into an art installation.
Meg had braced for chaos—she just hadn’t expected it to move in, unpack, and redecorate before breakfast.
Her kitchen looked like a Jackson Pollock crime scene. Paint tubes were scattered across the counter, and her favorite mug—the one that readCaffeine: Because Murder Is Illegal—was now holding something suspiciously teal. She stared at it, torn between annoyed and amused.
“Oh, you’re up!” Anna breezed into the kitchen, a paintbrush tucked behind her ear like a pencil. “I made coffee. Well, I tried to make coffee. The machine’s being temperamental.”
“Convenient,” Meg said, rinsing her mug and putting it in the dishwasher.
Luke would be here soon for their morning walk—one of the few routines she’d managed to keep intact despite the artistic invasion.
“Mom, have you seen my good brushes?” Bea wandered in, wearing a silk scarf over paint-stained jeans. “Not the travel ones—the Florence ones.”
“Check the bathroom,” Anna suggested. “You were painting in there yesterday. The morning light through that frosted window?—”
“Amazing!” Bea finished, eyes bright. “Way different from Florence. Makes everything look clearer.”
They vanished down the hall. Meg reached for her backup mug—the one she’d hidden on the top shelf after finding it full of paint thinner on day three. At least she was learning.
The front door opened and Tyler appeared, camera bag slung over his shoulder. One look at the kitchen and he burst out laughing.
