Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tyler changed his shirt three times.
Stella sat on the kitchen counter eating a Tim Tam and watched him come out in the blue linen, stand in the hallway for four seconds, go back in, and come out in the grey henley. He looked at himself in the hall mirror. Touched the collar. Went back in.
“The flannel,” Stella called.
“What?”
“The one she liked. From the coffee shop.”
Silence. Closet opening. Tyler in the doorway wearing the flannel with the sleeves pushed up, looking like he was about to give a speech he hadn’t written.
“This is fine,” he said.
“That’s fine.”
“She’s just coming by the Shack. Meeting everyone. It’s not a thing.”
“It’s absolutely a thing.”
“Stella.”
“Your ears are already pink, and we haven’t left the house.”
His hand went to his ear. Worse. Stella raised her camera. Click. Tyler mid-crisis, flannel edition.
“I will confiscate that camera.”
“You bought me that camera.”
He checked the mirror one more time, adjusted nothing, and picked up his keys.
“She’s meeting us after lunch hours. Walking from school.”
“I know. You told me this morning. And at lunch. And twenty minutes ago.”
They drove to the Shack with the windows down and the November air coming in cool. Tyler drummed his fingers on the steering wheel the whole way. Stella let him.
“Does she know Margo might be there?” he asked.
“Margo’s eighty. She does what she wants.”
“I just mean—should I warn Lindsey?”
“Lindsey handles high schoolers all day. She can handle one grandmother.”
The lunch rush was winding down when they got there. Anna behind the counter, Bernie in his booth, the last two tables finishing soup. Tyler tied on his apron and started clearing plates with a focus that had nothing to do with plates. He kept looking at the door.
“You’re wiping that table for the third time,” Stella said.
“It’s a dirty table.”
“It’s clean. It was clean the first time.”
Anna came out of the kitchen drying her hands. She did the Anna thing—quick scan of Tyler, reading his face like a weather report.
“You changed your shirt,” Anna said.
“I’m wearing a shirt. That’s all that’s happening.”
“You’re wearing the flannel Lindsey liked.”
Tyler’s ears went darker.
The front door opened at two-fifteen. Lindsey came in with her bag over her shoulder, lanyard still around her neck — WORLD’S OKAYEST GUIDANCE COUNSELOR, the letters fading. She wore jeans and a cardigan and walked like someone who was glad to be exactly where she was.
Tyler set down the rag.
Stella put the camera down. Some moments you don’t shoot.
“Hi,” Lindsey said.
“Hi.” Tyler’s voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat. “You found it.”
“Hard to miss. It’s lovely.” She looked around the Shack—the shells on the ceiling, the menu board, the ocean through the windows. “This is beautiful. I can’t believe I’ve never stopped in before.”
She looked at the ocean. Tyler looked at Lindsey looking at the ocean. Stella looked at Tyler looking at Lindsey. The whole thing was ridiculous and lovely.
Stella stepped forward.
“The last time we talked, you were behind a desk and I was pretending to care about transfer credits.”
“I remember. You did care. You were pretending not to.” Lindsey’s face opened up, warm and focused. “Your portfolio prints were extraordinary, by the way. Mr. Reeves showed me.”
“He wasn’t supposed to do that.”
“He was proud of you. Probably couldn’t help himself.”
Anna came over, wiping her hands on a rag.
“You must be Lindsey. Tyler has told us —”
“Nothing,” Tyler said. “I’ve told you nothing.”
“He turns pink when we mention you,” Stella said. “We’ve been filling in the gaps.”
Tyler looked at the ceiling. Lindsey laughed—real, warm.
Margo was at the counter with a cup of tea. She’d arrived twenty minutes ago — no reason given, no brush to find. She’d been watching the lunch service wind down the way she always watched things now. From a distance. Taking it in.
Stella decided that Tyler must be frozen in time and pulled Lindsey over toward Margo.
“Lindsey, this is my great-grandmother, Margo Turner.”
Lindsey smiled, the broad smile she gave everyone that Stella realized was just part of her personality.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Turner,” she said.
Margo set her cup down and looked at Lindsey. A long look. The kind she gave tomatoes and paintings and the ocean at certain hours.
Lindsey held still under it. Didn’t try to fill the silence. Didn’t smile too hard. She just stood there with her faded lanyard and let Margo look.
Margo turned to Tyler.
“She didn’t flinch.”
“No.”
“Good.” She turned to Lindsey, smiling. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Lindsey.”
Margo picked up her tea and took a sip and didn’t say anything else, which was Margo for a standing ovation.
Joey came out of the kitchen carrying a bus tub.
“New person,” he said, looking at Lindsey. “Are you eating? Because we have a system and I need to know your preferences in advance.”
“Joey,” Anna said.
“It’s a legitimate question. The system depends on information.” He looked at Lindsey.
“I’ll eat anything,” Lindsey said. “And I have no opinions about condiments.”
Joey stared at her like she’d said something incomprehensible.
“Everyone has opinions about condiments,” he said, and went back to the kitchen.
Lindsey looked at Tyler.
“Did I fail?”
“Joey’s tests are impossible to pass. Don’t worry about it.”
Anna made Lindsey a grilled cheese—the classic, cheddar and gruyère on sourdough—and Lindsey ate it at the counter and asked questions.
Not polite questions. Real ones. How long Margo had run the place.
What the shells on the ceiling were about.
Whether Tyler had always been this nervous or if it was new.
“New,” Stella said. “He used to be worse, actually. This is the improved version.”
“Stella.”
“You should have seen the shirt debate before the first date. Three options. Forty-five minutes. I had to intervene.”
“I chose the blue linen on my own.”
“After I told you to.”
Bernie stood to leave at his usual time, easing his weight off the bad knee. He stopped at the counter on his way out and looked at Lindsey.
“Tyler’s girl,” he said. Not a question.
“I’m Lindsey.”
“I know. He’s been adjusting that collar since you walked in.” Bernie tucked his tablet under his arm. “Welcome to the Shack. The grilled cheese is excellent and the family is loud. You’ll get used to both.”
He left. Tyler’s ears had reached a shade Stella didn’t have a name for.
Lindsey stayed until three. She helped clear the last tables without being asked, stacking plates the way someone does when they’ve spent their career in rooms where things needed doing.
She pulled off her lanyard and tucked it in her bag and touched Tyler’s collar one more time—small, quick, already theirs.
“Three blocks,” she said. “I’m good.”
“I can drive you —”
“Three blocks, Tyler.”
She said goodbye to Anna, to Margo and her third cup of tea, to Joey who was reorganizing the condiment station with renewed intensity. She walked out the door without looking back.
Stella shot her leaving. The lanyard sticking out of the bag. The walk of someone who didn’t need to look back.
Tyler watched her go. Then he turned to Stella with a look on his face she’d only seen once before — the morning he’d asked Fiona for the guardianship papers and realized it was going to be okay.
“So,” Stella said. “That went well.”
“Yeah.”
“Your ears survived.”
“Barely.”
“Margo said ‘good.’ That’s basically a marriage blessing.”
“Stella.”
“I’m happy for you, Dad.”
Tyler looked at her. His ears were still pink but his face was different — softer, settled. The face of someone who’d been holding his breath for weeks and had just let it out.
“Thanks, kid.”
That night, Stella texted Bea from her bed.
Lindsey met the family today.
Bea responded fast.
How’d it go?
Good. She ate a grilled cheese, asked real questions, didn’t flinch at Margo. Tyler’s ears may never recover.
Ha. Good for Tyler.
Stella looked at the text. Good for Tyler.
The right words. The right sentiment. But she heard Bea’s voice underneath them the way she’d been hearing it since the Friday dinner three weeks ago, when she’d pointed out the Florence laugh and the olive oil ramekin and Bea had gone quiet and said “that’s a LOT” and asked for a minute.
Three weeks. Good for Tyler. Not good for Anna. Not good for anyone dating anyone. Good for Tyler, specifically, as if Tyler’s situation and Anna’s situation were completely different, which they were and they weren’t.
Stella had pushed Tyler toward Lindsey and it had gone well. She’d told Bea about Anna and Michael and it was going — somewhere. Somewhere Bea wasn’t ready to follow.
Same instinct. See the truth, say it out loud. Two different landings.
She typed: Art night Wednesday. You coming?
I’m working the paint station.
That’s not what I asked.
Long pause.
I’ll be there. I’m fine.
Fine. Bea’s word for everything since September. Fine like Anna was fine with the audit. Fine like things were fine when they weren’t.
Stella put the phone down and looked at the ceiling. Tyler was watching something on TV. Outside, the ocean did its thing — steady, the same sound through fifty years of Walsh family everything.
Tyler was happy. It had been easy. Lindsey had walked in and the family had opened up and that was that.
Bea was fine. It was not going to be easy. And Stella was the one who’d lit the fuse.
She turned off the light and let tomorrow be tomorrow.