16. June
JUNE
I look down at the boy tucked under Sarah Magnolia’s arm and shoot my friend an incredulous look. “I thought you said he was a photographer.”
The boy rolls his eyes, the whites contrasting sharply against his dark eyeliner. “I am a photographer.”
Sarah squeezes him, unbothered. “He has a camera and everything, see?”
“Okay, but what do you usually photograph?”
However, Sarah cuts him off before he can answer. “Warren did my cousin’s wedding last year. He can handle a promo shoot.”
I suppress my reservations as I reevaluate Warren. He appears to weigh about a hundred pounds soaking wet—and he is soaked, thanks to wearing black leather in seventy-degree heat. Disinterest seems to radiate from him like a plague.
If I had more time—which I absolutely do not—and more money, he’d be out of here immediately. But as it stands, we’re due to open in under an hour.
It’s not an official launch. There’s no ribbon-cutting or sparkling wine—just a chance to remind the island that we’re still here, and to take photos as if we haven’t been marinating in butter and stress since five o’clock this morning.
Sarah’s right. He has a camera. As long as he can point it straight, that’s all that matters.
“Fine.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You have an hour to get exterior shots before people start arriving. Sarah, I’ll see you later, yeah?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, darling.” She leans in to kiss my cheek. “Break a leg!”
The shack smells like it should when I walk in—salt, lemon, a touch of paprika, and something frying that takes me back to childhood summers and third-degree burns.
Sophie’s at the register, talking with Mom and Roland, her movie-star smile bright.
Her tanned shoulders are wrapped in our branded tee like it’s high fashion.
“Hey, Junebug. Are you feeling ready?” Roland greets me as I make my way over.
I pull him into a quick squeeze. “I’m ready for anything. You know me.”
“Everything looks amazing, June.”
I turn to look at my mom, feeling oddly nervous at her words.
Her blond hair is still wavy like Sophie’s, despite its new, cropped length, and her eyes still crinkle in the corners the way they always have.
The long sleeves of her shirt fall almost to her knuckles, covering the bandages I know must be across her palms.
“Thank you.” The words stick a little, so I clear my throat. “And thank you for coming.”
“I was hardly going to miss this!” She grins at me, then Roland and Sophie as if to invite them back into the conversation.
“Talk of the town,” Roland agrees. “Birdie’s has been buzzing about this all week.”
But I’m still looking at my mom. Trying to comprehend her easy smile, her careless laughter when, not twelve hours ago, she…well, it’s not like she found a letter from her dead husband all but confessing to his own suicide.
“I’m excited, honestly.” I force myself to grin before nodding to Sophie. “You got everything handled out here?”
Sophie’s smile, at least, is an easy one. “Aye, aye, captain.”
The others laugh at her salute as I make my way around the back.
In the end, it was a good decision not to tell Sophie about the letter.
The news got lost in the chaos of the soft launch, and by the time we settled again last night, it felt too heavy to bring up.
At least now there’s one of us capable of being pleasant in front of customers.
Even if it means we’ve only delayed a terrible conversation further down the line.
I push through into the kitchen to find Meredith staring bleakly at the fryer as if her thoughts are a thousand miles away—or fifteen years behind. “Hey, it’ll be fine. Like riding a bike, right?” I say, trying to jostle her back to the present.
She shakes herself and glances over. “You sure you’re okay on prep?”
“You always overcrowd the stockpot anyway.”
“Hey!” Despite my teasing, a faint smile flickers on her face, the first since that day at the fishing hut. As if she’s aware of it, Meredith’s expression falls again, her eyes turning distant as she clears her throat.
Preparing for the Shack’s semi-opening has been a welcome distraction, keeping us busy enough that there’s barely time to crash into bed at the end of the day.
But I’d be lying if I said the letter wasn’t hanging over us, ominous and foreboding.
It’s there in the background, with a mutual unspoken agreement to push it to the back of our minds until we’re actually ready to deal with it.
Which, given our family history, will likely be in another fifteen years.
Something creeps eerily into my periphery, and I startle when Warren’s breathy voice whispers too close to my ear. “Creatures.”
I jerk away immediately. “Excuse me?”
“I usually photograph creatures,” he replies, answering my earlier question.
I’m not sure if I want to laugh or curse him out. We haven’t even opened, yet this strange, gothic kid feels like some kind of catastrophic omen.
“That’s great, Warren.” I slap on a strained smile, wipe my hands on my apron, and pretend everything’s under control.
It isn’t.
We’re missing half the eco-friendly baskets, we run out of tartar sauce in the first hour, and someone—definitely not me—forgot to plug in the backup fridge, so the coleslaw is sweating its way into a health code violation.
Meredith and I stand shoulder to shoulder in the cramped kitchen, doing our best not to sweat through our new branded tees in the oppressive heat, which would be fine because running food orders is a skill ingrained in our very being.
Coordination and communication, however…
Meredith might not be throwing things around the kitchen, but it’s clear she’s exerting a lot of control to avoid doing so. “Stop hiding the mayo!”
“I told you, we’re not serving it!” I mean, this isn’t the first time I’ve told her this. I’ve said it at least forty-seven times already. “I didn’t labor over the butter all morning for you to be rationing it like this.”
“Because we’re going to run out!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize something being popular was a bad thing.”
Meradith is beyond annoyed at this point. “It is when you didn’t have the foresight to make enough!”
“You wanna try that again, Mer-bear?” I snap, a little louder than I intended.
Warren looks up, smirking. Click.
Sophie pokes her head through the kitchen window, eyebrows already furrowed in concern. “Hey, uh, guys? Let’s not have a PR meltdown with an actual camera pointed at us?”
“Tell that to Gordon Ramsay back here,” I say.
Meredith shoots me a glare. “Tell that to Martha Stewart with a death wish.”
“Can we not?” Sophie hisses, flashing a grin at a couple of tourists hovering near the chalkboard menu. “You’re both stress-sweating and scaring the customers.”
I run a hand through my frazzled hair and step back from the station, unable to answer with anything more polite than, “I’m going on break.”
It’s with considerable restraint that I manage to ignore Meredith’s protests and burst through the back door into the not-much-cooler air of a Nantucket summer afternoon. With one—okay, five—long breaths, I lean against the wall and dial the one number I swore I wouldn’t use today.
By the time I return, Sophie seems to have taken it upon herself to bounce between us like a human buffer, juggling the sour mood in the kitchen and then laughing a little too loudly with customers.
After half an hour, she starts to sound quite maniacal.
The sound of her forced joy grated on our already fraying nerves.
“You said two tails!”
Meredith’s eyes are about as crazed as I’ve ever seen. “I said we had two tails left!”
“Then what am I supposed to do with these?” I hold up the two baskets.
“Give them out for free!”
“June!” Sophie’s voice breaks through the hatch loud enough for the whole shack to hear. “There’s a hot tourist here for you.”
The pounding of my excited heart is quelled by Meredith’s arched eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t do that anymore?”
Logic tells me she’s curious and not being condescending. But in this heat and stress, rational thinking often slips away.
“Don’t act like you know me.” I quickly turn away from the shock and hurt that flickers across her face, snatching the two spare lobster tails and calling back to Sophie, “Don’t start flirting with him.”
“I’m not!” She drawls out the word petulantly, and I find she has a matching expression when I push through the door into the restaurant.
Then my eyes land on Ashton, and the tight spiral of heat eases into something much more manageable. He’s dressed in a silly linen button-down with arms full of salvation and a familiar smile that wraps around a greeting. “Hi.”
I can feel Sophie’s eyes burning into the side of my face, but I ignore her as I slide the tails across the counter. It’s a simple exchange for the shopping bags he drops from his arms. “Did you manage to get everything?” I ask, though I’m already rooting through the plastic.
“And then some.”
There’s a dull thud as a cardboard cup tray appears. Carrying three coffees with Linda’s café branding stamped on the outside. If I weren’t entirely dripping with sweat and residual anxiety, I would have kissed him then and there.
“They might be a bit cold, but I figured since you and your sisters have been up since dawn, you might appreciate?—”
“Thank you!” Sophie swoops in to steal a cup, immediately chugging what must be half the contents before moaning gratefully. “Please tell me you’re keeping this one?”
I throw her a dead look instead of dealing with my mortification. “There’s a queue forming, Soph.”
Predictably, my younger sister ignores me—and the growing disgruntled customers—before turning to Ashton again. “Is that shirt Burberry? I’m Sophie, by the way. June’s sister. You better be nice to her; we can’t afford to lose another cranberry pie.”
“Ashton,” he replies in greeting before shooting me a confused look.
“Later,” I say as I shake my head. “Thanks for this. I owe you one.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Sophie clearly doesn’t take the hint. “So, are you guys like dating or?—”