Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She wasn’t normally at the Shack at two-thirty.
Most days Meg dropped the hollandaise before seven, checked in with Anna, and drove to San Clemente for client work. Sometimes she came back in the evening for dinner service. Every time she asked how things were going, Anna said the same thing.
“It’s fine.”
Tyler said, “We’re managing.”
The Shack at seven AM looked like the Shack—Anna behind the counter, Tyler at the grill, coffee on. Busy. Alive. Fine.
Today her afternoon meeting had canceled and she’d come home early, and the Shack she walked into at two-thirty was not fine.
Tyler was asleep on the prep counter.
Face-down on the cutting board, one arm dangling toward the floor, the other curled around his head.
His apron was still tied. His hair had given up.
A piece of onion skin was stuck to his cheek, and the vinegar pot from the morning sat unwashed by the sink, and the kitchen had the staleness of a room that had been running too hard for too long without anyone opening a window.
Meg set her bag on the counter and stood there.
She catalogued. She couldn’t help it—cataloguing was what she did, the way Tyler aimed cameras and Anna rearranged furniture.
Tyler’s camera bag: in the corner, dusty, strap coiled on top.
The grill off, but the grease trap needed cleaning.
The muffin baskets empty, crumbs at the bottom.
Dante’s apron on the hook, which meant he’d already left.
Joey’s laminated prep sheet, version 4.2, taped to the register at an angle that would have given Joey a stroke.
And Tyler. Asleep. At two-thirty in the afternoon. On a cutting board.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Tyler.”
Nothing. He slept the way exhausted people sleep—completely, like his body had made a decision his brain hadn’t approved.
“Tyler.”
He jerked upright. Eyes unfocused. Onion skin still on his cheek. He looked at Meg and blinked three times, and for a second he looked exactly like he had at fifteen when she’d caught him asleep in front of the TV at two AM on a school night.
“I’m resting my eyes,” he said.
“You’re drooling on food preparation surfaces.” Meg peeled the onion skin off his cheek. “When did you eat last?”
“I had some Canadian bacon.”
“A burned batch?”
“The inside was—”
“If you say ‘the inside was fine,’ I am going to call Margo.”
Tyler closed his mouth.
The front door opened. Anna came in carrying a produce box and looking like she’d been awake for a calendar year.
The shadows under her eyes matched Tyler’s.
Her hair was pulled back in something that had probably started as a knot and evolved into a different kind of knot.
She stopped when she saw Meg at the counter.
“Meg. What are you doing here?”
“My meeting canceled. I came home early.” Meg folded her arms. “How long has this been going on?”
“He fell asleep. It happens.”
“On a cutting board. At two-thirty. That doesn’t ‘happen.’ That’s a system failing.
” Meg looked at Anna, the way she looked at a client presentation that wasn’t working.
The exhaustion. The too-clean counter. The way Anna’s hands went straight to the rag, wringing it, wiping surfaces that had already been wiped. “You look terrible too.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not being unkind. I’m being accurate.” Meg pulled out a stool and sat. “How are the girls doing?”
Anna set the produce box down. “They’re fine.”
“Don’t ‘it’s fine’ me, Anna. I have heard ‘it’s fine’ from you every morning for three weeks. Tyler is asleep on a cutting board. Nothing in this building is fine.”
“Stella’s calc grade dropped a little.”
“Dropped to what?”
“C. From a B-plus.”
“In three weeks.” Meg’s arms stayed folded. “And Bea?”
Anna picked up the rag again. “She missed the RISD preliminary deadline.”
Meg’s stomach dropped. Bea—who had color-coded sticky notes for her color-coded sticky notes, who had been planning her portfolio since Florence, who carried college brochures arranged like tarot cards—missed a deadline. Because she was here. Plating focaccia.
“And Joey?”
“He’s been skipping his Thursday study group. To check on the muffin inventory.”
“His scholarship study group.”
“Yes.”
Meg stood up from the stool and walked to the kitchen window and looked at the ocean. The ocean didn’t care. The ocean had been doing this for millions of years without a business plan and it was actually doing fine. Not pretend fine.
She turned back to her brother and her sister.
Tyler on the stool, barely awake. Anna wringing the rag.
Two people who had been grinding for three weeks while Meg stopped by during the rush and told herself everything looked fine because during the rush it did look fine.
The rush was a performance. This was the truth.
“You’re eating your children,” she said. “My nieces.”
Tyler’s head came up.
“Stella is having trouble in calculus because she’s working dinner shifts at a grilled cheese restaurant.
Bea missed a deadline for the school she’s been dreaming about since she was fifteen.
Joey is jeopardizing the scholarship that our family created—” Meg’s voice went tight and she stopped and breathed. “This can’t continue.”
“The numbers are up,” Anna said.
“I don’t care if the numbers are up. The numbers don’t matter if Bea doesn’t get into art school.” Meg picked up her phone. “We’re calling Michael. Tonight. Everyone sits down and we look at what’s actually working and what isn’t and we figure out what to cut.”
“We don’t need to—”
“We do need to. We—this family—needs someone to show us data instead of feelings, because the feelings are telling you to keep grinding and the data might tell you something different.” Meg scrolled to Michael’s contact.
“I’ve been showing up at seven AM and hearing ‘it’s fine’ and driving to San Clemente and believing it. I’m done believing it.”
“Meg, you have three clients—”
“And a wedding I haven’t planned and a florist I still haven’t called and none of that matters right now.
” She pressed the phone to her ear. “Michael? It’s Meg Walsh.
We need to talk about the expanded hours.
” A pause. “Tonight. The Shack. Five-thirty.” Another pause.
“Bring everything. The daily breakdowns, the dinner covers, the projections. All of it.”
She hung up. Set the phone on the counter.
“Done,” she said.
Tyler looked at Anna. Anna looked at the rag in her hand. The kitchen was quiet except for the ocean through the windows and the grill ticking as it cooled.
“What about dinner service?” Anna finally asked.
Meg took in a deep breath. “Customers will find a sign that says “‘closed for family event’.”
“Well—” Anna started.
Meg held up her hand and shook her head. “Tonight the girls don’t work,” she said. “Bea does homework. Stella does homework. Joey goes to his study group. Am I clear?”
“Clear,” Anna said.
“Clear,” Tyler said.
Meg picked up the lemon bag and walked it to the walk-in. She put the lemons in the produce drawer and stood in the cold for a moment, breathing, because the walk-in was the only place in the building where nobody could see her face.
She pressed her hands flat against the cold shelf and breathed.
Then she came out, tied on an apron—not her old apron, just the nearest one—and started closing the register.
“Go home,” she said. “Both of you. I’ll close.”
“You don’t know the—”
“I ran this restaurant for months. I can handle the register.” She looked at Tyler. “Take the camera bag.”
Tyler picked it up. Slung it over his shoulder.
“Take it home. Shoot something. Remember who you are when you’re not poaching eggs.”
Tyler left. Anna stood by the door, produce box forgotten on the counter.
“Anna.”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll fix this. That’s what we do.”
“Is it?”
“It’s a Walsh family tradition. Go home.”
Anna went. Meg stood behind the register in her family’s restaurant and counted the drawer and wiped the counter — once, not three times—and thought about Bea’s deadline and Stella’s grades and the fourteen chair companies and the florist she still hadn’t called and the hollandaise she’d been making every morning like it was enough.
It wasn’t enough. She knew that now.
She finished closing, locked the door, and drove home to Luke. He was on the porch with a cup of coffee.
“How was the Shack?” he asked.
“Tyler was asleep on a cutting board.”
Luke set down the beer. “Oh.”
“Family meeting tonight. Five-thirty. You’re taking notes.”
“On it.”
She sat beside him on the porch and looked at the ocean and didn’t say anything for a while, and Luke—who had waited twenty years and never once rushed—just sat there beside her and let the silence do its work.