Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Michael Torres had been in the back office for three days, and Anna had learned exactly five things about him.
He drank his coffee black. He arrived during prep every morning and stayed past closing.
His handwriting was small enough to fit an entire spreadsheet onto a single legal pad page.
He did not eat—or if he did, he did it in secret, like a man with something to hide, which in his case was probably a granola bar in the briefcase.
And Joey’s dairy-free plates kept disappearing from the prep counter without comment, which meant either Michael was eating them or the stray cat had developed a taste for gazpacho.
The typing, though. The typing never stopped.
On Thursday the typing stopped.
Anna was behind the counter, wiping down after the last customer—Mrs. Patterson, who had complimented the grilled cheese as she did every single visit and left her tip folded under the salt shaker as she’d done for thirty-seven years.
Bernie had left ten minutes ago. The Shack had that post-closing hush where the grill ticked and the ocean took over.
A chair scraped in the back office. Footsteps. Michael appeared at the end of the counter with his legal pad and both pens — the one from behind his ear and the one from his shirt pocket. Two pens meant something. She didn’t know what yet, but two pens was different from one pen.
“Do you have a few minutes now?”
Anna set down the rag. “Sure.”
He laid the legal pad on the counter and turned it toward her. Columns of numbers in that precise handwriting, a few lines highlighted in yellow, a few more circled in red. Red was new. Red was probably not great.
He pointed to the top row. “The Laguna Promise Foundation. Annual scholarship. Current amount, eighteen thousand per year.”
“That’s right.” Anna leaned her hip against the counter.
“My grandfather started it. He grew up here. Didn’t have money for school.
He wanted to make sure someone else did.
Every year, one kid gets a full ride — marine technology, trade school, wherever they need to go.
” She paused. “Joey’s the current recipient. You’ve met Joey.”
“I’ve met Joey.” Something in his voice — not quite dry, not quite warm. Joey had that effect on people.
Michael’s pen moved on the pad. “The funding comes entirely from Shack revenue.”
“It’s the first thing Margo set aside every year. Before salaries, before maintenance. The scholarship isn’t a line item, Michael. It’s the reason.”
He looked at her. Same expression he’d worn for three days — measured, even, everything receiving the same weight. But his pen had stopped, and she’d come to understand that a stopped pen meant he was listening differently.
“I’m not questioning the priority,” he said. “I’m mapping the structure. Those are different things.”
“Are they?”
“Substantially.” He clicked the pen. “Rick set up the foundation correctly. The tax structure is clean. But the funding model assumes revenue levels from two years ago, before you added three salaried positions.”
Anna crossed her arms. “We needed the staff. Tyler does mornings. I’m full-time. Meg handles marketing and pulls shifts.”
“I understand. I’m telling you the math has changed.” He tapped the line circled in red. “At current revenue, you can keep the scholarship or pay yourselves. Not both. Not sustainably.”
The grill ticked. The ocean kept going. Anna stared at the red circle on his legal pad and the Shack around her went suddenly, specifically fragile — the whole place balanced on a number she hadn’t known existed until a man with two pens pointed at it.
“That’s not an option,” she said. “The scholarship stays.”
“I’m not suggesting you cut it. I’m telling you where the numbers are.” He straightened. “Combined with a five-hour service window, the margin isn’t there. You need approximately thirty percent more revenue to cover everything. That’s the gap.”
Anna uncrossed her arms and gripped the edge of the counter instead. “So, what do we do?”
“That’s your decision. I can show you the math. The solution has to come from you.” He tucked the pen behind his ear. “I’m not done with the full analysis. I need the rest of the week.”
“Take what you need.”
He nodded and looked around the Shack the way he did every time he emerged from the office — the slow inventory, ceiling to floor. His eyes paused on the shells, the hooks, the menu board. Then they landed on the cooling rack where Anna had set the afternoon’s focaccia.
“The focaccia,” he said. “Is it always that color?”
Anna looked at the bread. Golden brown, crackled on top, rosemary pressed into the crust. “When it’s done right, yes.”
“It’s made here every day?”
“Every morning. Meg’s recipe. I just follow it.” She pulled the board toward her and cut a piece. Set it on a napkin. Slid it across the counter to him. “No dairy.”
He looked at the focaccia. Looked at her. Picked it up and took a bite.
His face did something she hadn’t seen before. Not a smile — his face didn’t seem to do smiles — but a softening around the eyes, a half-second where the consultant disappeared and someone else was standing there. Someone who knew what good bread tasted like and hadn’t expected to find it here.
“It’s very good bread,” he said.
“It’s the best bread you’ve ever had.”
“My face didn’t say that.”
“Your face said exactly that.”
He set the focaccia down on the napkin, picked up his legal pad, and headed for his car with his briefcase. At the doorway he paused.
“Good bread is hard to find.”
Anna stood at the counter and looked at the napkin with the half-eaten focaccia on it.
He’d taken a bite. He’d eaten something she’d made with her own hands, and his face had changed, and she didn’t know what to do with any of that information so she put it in the same place she’d been putting everything about Michael Torres — somewhere at the back of her mind where it could sit until she was ready to look at it.
She pulled out her phone and called Meg.
“Hey. How’s the resort?”
“Chaotic. Margaret moved the presentation up again. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. The auditor finished his preliminary numbers.”
She heard Meg sit up straighter—it was audible somehow, even through the phone. Meg’s posture had a sound. “And?”
“Scholarship or salaries. Not both. We need thirty percent more revenue.”
Silence. “I’m coming up. I can be there by—”
“Meg. I’ve got it.”
“Anna, this is the financials. This is my—”
“I know it’s your thing. But it’s my job.” Anna looked at the hallway, where the typing had settled back into its steady rhythm. “He says the solution has to come from us. He can show us the math but we have to figure out the rest.”
“So let me help figure out the rest.”
“You will. At the family meeting. But right now, you have a presentation and a wedding and a resort full of people who need you. Let me sit with this.”
Another silence. Longer. Then Meg’s voice, quieter: “You’ll call me if—”
“I’ll call you. I promise.”
Anna hung up, put the phone in her apron pocket, and stood in the empty Shack listening to the ocean and the grill cooling down. Thirty percent. The scholarship. Five hours of revenue and a man who’d eaten her focaccia and called it good bread.
She hung up her apron and turned off the lights.