Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Something was different at the Shack.
Stella knew it before she was through the door. The air had a charge to it—not bad, not crisis, just shifted. Like someone had moved the furniture two inches to the left and everyone was pretending they hadn’t noticed.
Bea was right behind her, backpack over one shoulder, college brochures threatening to escape from the unzipped front pocket.
They’d walked from school together, Bea complaining about her portfolio statement and Stella half-listening while mentally composing shots of the light on the boardwalk.
October was coming. The afternoons were getting shorter and the shadows longer and everything had a golden urgency to it that made her fingers itch for the camera.
The Shack was still half-full unusual for this late.
Mrs. Patterson occupied her usual table by the window with her classic grilled cheese and extra pickles, bent over a crossword, pen tapping her chin between answers.
Bernie was in his corner booth, tablet propped up, but his coffee sat untouched and his eyes kept going to the hallway instead of the screen.
Two tables of tourists were finishing up, shopping bags piled on empty chairs.
And from somewhere down the hall—the back office, it sounded like—came the steady rhythm of someone typing.
Anna was behind the counter, wiping things that looked already clean. Tyler was at the grill, scraping it down, but he kept losing his grip on the scraper and starting over, which wasn’t like him.
“Who’s typing?” Stella asked, dropping her bag into her usual booth.
Anna glanced toward the hallway. “Auditor. Rick sent him to look at the books.”
“Since when?”
“Monday.”
Stella looked at the hallway. The typing was steady and fast and precise — no pauses, no backspacing, just a continuous stream of keys being pressed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. “Is that normal? For an audit?”
“I have no idea what’s normal for an audit. This is my first one.”
Bea had already settled into the booth across from Stella, but she wasn’t pulling out homework. She was looking at the hallway too. Her hands were still on her backpack straps.
“What’s his name?” Stella asked.
“Michael Torres.” Anna slid two plates of focaccia toward their booth. “He’s thorough.”
“That’s what Anna says when she means intense,” Tyler said from the grill, not looking up.
“That’s what I say when I mean thorough.” Anna picked up the rag again.
The front door opened and Luke Donovan walked in, phone in one hand, looking like a man who had been sent somewhere against his will but was determined to enjoy the sandwich.
“Hey.” He dropped onto a counter stool and set his phone face-down. “Meg wanted me to check on things.”
“Meg could call,” Anna said.
“Meg has called. Twice. She wanted eyes on the ground.” Luke picked up a menu he didn’t need—he’d been ordering the same thing for twenty years. “She also wants to know if the auditor is still here, what he looks like, whether he seems competent, and if Anna is quote handling it unquote.”
“Tell her I’m handling it.”
“I told her that. She wants independent verification.” Luke set the menu down. “I’ll have the usual. And tell me about the auditor so I have something to report.”
Tyler brought Luke his grilled cheese without being asked — the Luke special, which was just a regular grilled cheese with an extra slice of tomato because Luke had once mentioned he liked tomatoes and Tyler had never forgotten.
Tyler set it on the counter and went back to the grill, and Stella caught something in the way he moved—distracted, a half-beat off his usual rhythm. She filed it away.
“The auditor,” Anna said to Luke, “is a man in pressed khakis who has been in the back office since Monday. He drinks black coffee. He has a dairy allergy, which is—I don’t even know what to do with that at a grilled cheese restaurant.
He doesn’t look at the ocean. And he told me we have a five-hour revenue window like I’d never considered the concept of time. ”
Luke took a bite of his sandwich. “Sounds like Rick’s type.”
“He is exactly Rick’s type.”
Luke’s phone buzzed. He checked it, typed something with one thumb, set it down. “Meg wants to know if he’s looked at the scholarship accounts.”
“Tell Meg I have it handled.”
“I’m going to tell Meg you said that and she’s going to text me four more questions.” Luke took another bite. “This is my life now. I’m a grilled cheese spy.”
Mrs. Patterson looked up from her crossword. “Seven letters. Financial examiner.”
“Auditor,” Bernie said from his booth without looking up.
“Thank you, Bernard.” Mrs. Patterson wrote it in and went back to her puzzle.
Stella pulled out her camera. She couldn’t help it—the light was awesome with the afternoon angle, turning Luke’s sandwich into something that belonged in a food magazine. She framed a shot of Luke mid-bite, phone buzzing on the counter beside him. Click.
“Don’t send that to Meg,” Luke said.
“I’m not sending it to anyone. It’s for the series.”
“The series of me eating a sandwich?”
“The series of the Shack. You’re in the Shack. You count.”
Bernie had been watching all of this from his corner booth, tablet forgotten. He caught Stella’s eye and raised one eyebrow—the eyebrow that meant he was cataloguing something for later use. She aimed the camera at him. He went back to his tablet with studied nonchalance. Click.
The typing down the hall stopped.
Everyone heard it. Anna’s hand paused on the rag. Tyler looked up from the grill. Bernie’s eyes went to the hallway. Even Mrs. Patterson glanced over her crossword.
Footsteps. And then a man appeared at the end of the counter.
Stella’s first thought was that he’d gotten lost on his way to a bank. Everything about him was straight lines—collar, shoulders, the way he held the legal pad. Two pens. One in the pocket, one behind the ear.
He looked at the counter. At Anna. At the dining room full of people looking back at him.
“I have a few questions about the vendor contracts,” he said to Anna. “When you have a moment.”
“After close. Give me twenty minutes.”
He nodded once—one single nod, like a period at the end of a sentence—and went back down the hall. The typing resumed.
Luke looked at Anna. “That’s the auditor?”
“That’s the auditor.”
“He has two pens.”
“I know.”
“Meg’s going to have a lot of questions.”
“Meg always has a lot of questions.”
Luke finished his sandwich, texted Meg something that took a full minute to type, and stood. “Tell Anna she’s doing great,” he said, reading aloud as he typed. “Tell her I’ll call tonight. Tell her not to let the auditor change anything without running it by me first.”
“Tell Meg,” Anna said, “that I love her and she needs to focus on her own work.”
Luke typed that too, kissed Anna on the cheek, waved to the room, and left. His phone buzzed before he reached the door. He checked it, shook his head, and walked out smiling.
Stella looked at Bea. Bea hadn’t touched her focaccia. Her calculus textbook was open, but she wasn’t reading it. She was looking at the hallway where Michael had appeared and disappeared.
“You okay?” Stella asked.
“Fine.” Bea picked up her pen. Put it down. Picked it up again. “He’s just very... there. In the office. With all of Margo’s files.”
“Anna’s files.”
“They were Margo’s first.” Bea opened the textbook to a random page. “It’s weird. Someone you don’t know going through everything.”
Stella watched her for a moment. Bea’s jaw was set the way it got when she was processing something she wasn’t ready to talk about—not angry, not scared, just braced. Like she could feel weather coming and didn’t know yet if it was rain or just clouds.
“Anna seems fine with it,” Stella said.
“Anna seems fine with everything.” Bea found her place in the textbook. “That’s not the same as being fine.”
Joey materialized through the back door—he must have come through the kitchen entrance—carrying a small paper bag and heading straight for the hallway without stopping.
“Joey,” Anna said. “What’s in the bag?”
“Research.”
“What kind of research?”
“Dairy-free research. I’m expanding the options.” He kept walking. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I worry about everything you do.”
“That’s fair.” He disappeared down the hall. Stella heard a brief exchange she couldn’t make out — Joey’s voice, animated, and then Michael’s, three words at most—and Joey reappeared, bag still in hand, looking undaunted.
“He said he’s not hungry.”
“He always says that,” Anna said.
“I left it anyway.” Joey adjusted a napkin on the nearest table, checked the condiment bottles, and looked at the clock. “I have to get back to campus. Tell him the gazpacho is better than last time. I adjusted the cilantro.”
He was gone before Anna could respond. The door swung shut. A napkin settled into place.
Bernie made one final note on his tablet, tucked it under his arm, and eased himself up from the booth. He paused at the counter on his way out.
“Interesting afternoon,” he said to no one in particular.
“Is it?” Anna asked.
“Mm.” He looked at the hallway, then at Anna, then at the hallway again. “Same time tomorrow.”
The Shack emptied out. Mrs. Patterson finished her crossword, left her usual tip folded under the salt shaker, and told Anna the grilled cheese was perfect, as she did every time, as if it might one day not be and she wanted to be on record.
Stella sat in her booth with her camera in her lap and watched Anna start closing up — wiping counters, checking the grill, counting the register. Down the hall, the typing had resumed. Bea was doing calculus problems, but her pen kept stalling.
Stella raised her camera and framed the shot—Anna at the counter, rag in hand, the hallway behind her where the typing kept going.
The Shack at the end of the day, everything in its place except for the sound that didn’t belong there.
The steady, precise, unfamiliar rhythm of someone counting what they’d built.
She didn’t take the picture. Some things needed another day to come into focus.