Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The patio didn’t look like the Shack. At least not in a way Stella had ever seen.
Stella stood in the doorway with her camera and tried to match what she was seeing with the place she’d been photographing since she’d arrived at the beginning of summer. Same railing. Same ocean. Same boardwalk beyond it.
But Paige had done something to the space that made it feel like a different building.
String lights at three different heights instead of Anna’s single strand, turning the whole patio warm and golden.
White chairs faced the water. Flowers and food and Rosa’s salsa in small bowls on every table—the Shack dressed up but still the Shack, the way a person looks different in good light but is still themselves.
It looked like a wedding venue. It also still looked like their restaurant. Stella wasn’t sure how both of those things could be true at the same time, but they were.
She raised her camera and started shooting.
Tyler was at the food station fussing with his eggs Benedict appetizers. Miniature versions on half-muffins, lined up on a tray. Lindsey stood beside him in a blue dress.
“Stop adjusting them,” Lindsey said. “They’re perfect.”
“This one’s tilted.”
“It’s an egg, Tyler. And it’s perfect.” She took his hand and held it for a second.
Click. Stella got that one.
Joey was at the far end of the patio with a clipboard. He’d made himself the liaison between Paige’s setup crew and the kitchen, which nobody had asked for and nobody was going to argue with. He wore his good apron — the one without stains—and had a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.
“Napkin count confirmed,” he said into it.
Stella was fairly sure nobody was on the other end.
Through the kitchen window she could see Bea and Anna working side by side at the counter. Bea slicing bread. Anna arranging cheese trays. Not talking. Just working. They’d been like that all week—not fixed, but steady. Shoulder to shoulder.
Margo sat in a chair at the edge of the patio in a green dress she’d apparently owned since 1994.
Bernie sat in the chair next to hers, tablet nowhere in sight, wearing a jacket Stella had never seen him wear.
They looked like two people who’d been sitting next to each other for fifty years, which they basically had, just never quite like this.
And then there was Michael.
Michael Torres was sitting on a stool near the railing with a guitar across his lap.
A guitar.
Nobody had known Michael played guitar. Anna had called Stella last night sounding like someone had just told her the ocean was fake.
“He asked if Meg had music for the processional and I said Paige had a playlist and he said ‘I could play something on guitar’ and I said ‘you play guitar’ and he said ‘my mother taught me’ and I called Paige and Paige said ‘bring it on’ and now I don’t know what’s happening. ”
What was happening was Michael in a white linen shirt with his sleeves rolled, tuning a guitar on the patio of a grilled cheese restaurant. The guitar was old. Worn along the neck. Dark wood. Rosa’s, probably. Like the salsa. Another thing he’d been carrying around without telling anyone.
He played a few notes. Testing. His fingers on the strings were different from his fingers on a pen—looser, less careful. Like the guitar knew a version of him the rest of them hadn’t met yet.
Stella shot it. Click. Michael and the guitar and the ocean. That was going on the wall.
The sun was getting low. Four-thirty. The sky going amber. Paige appeared at the patio door and nodded once. Ready.
Thirty people on the patio. Family and friends in Paige’s white chairs and along the railing.
Natalie in the front row. Rick near the back, looking around the patio as if he hadn’t seen it like this before, either.
Because he hadn’t. The officiant—one of Paige’s people, a woman with hopefully a short ceremony and kind eyes—stood at the railing with the ocean behind her.
Michael started to play.
Stella didn’t know what kind of music it was. Not classical exactly. Something warmer. It was good. It was really good. The patio went quiet and everybody just listened.
Anna came out of the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. Her hand went to her mouth.
And Michael smiled.
Not the almost-smile. Not the expression that wasn’t an expression. An actual, real smile. The kind that takes over a person’s whole face. Stella had never seen him do that. She didn’t think anyone had.
She raised the camera and shot it.
It didn’t go away. He kept smiling. He kept playing. And the whole patio was still.
Then, from the beach—Meg and Luke.
They came up the wooden steps from the sand.
Barefoot. Heads together. Meg in the ivory dress, simple, no beading, moving when she moved.
Luke in a white shirt and rolled khakis with sand on his ankles.
They weren’t walking in any formal way. They were just walking up from the water together, the way they’d probably been walking together since they’d found each other, toward the family that was waiting for them.
Meg heard the guitar. Stella watched her face change—surprise first, then recognition, then something that broke through whatever composure she’d been holding onto all day. She pressed her fingers against her eyes with one hand and held Luke’s hand with the other and kept walking.
Luke looked at her. Steady. Stella had photographed a lot of people. Luke was the steadiest.
They reached the patio. The officiant smiled.
The ceremony was short—simple vows, the ocean behind them, the light going gold.
Meg cried. Luke didn’t, but his hands shook when he put the ring on.
Tyler stood beside them as witness, ears pink, grinning so hard it looked like it hurt.
Anna stood on Meg’s other side, holding flowers she’d pulled from one of Paige’s arrangements when nobody was looking, because Anna always needed something in her hands.
Michael played through the vows. Quiet now. Just the guitar underneath the words.
They kissed. Everyone cheered. Joey’s walkie-talkie crackled with static that had no source. The stray cat appeared from under a table and jumped onto a chair in the front row like he’d had a reservation.
Stella shot everything. The kiss. The cat. Tyler wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and pretending he wasn’t. Margo in her chair, perfectly still. Bernie beside her, hands in his lap, watching.
Click. Click. Click.
The best frames of her life. And she knew it while she was taking them, which almost never happened.