The Beach Shack Legacy (Laguna Beach #7)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The grill was almost there.

Stella could hear it ticking from across the room, the metal expanding the way it did every morning while Anna held her hand two inches above the surface and counted.

Three seconds, pull away, wipe palms on apron, back to the cheese.

Anna had a system for the cheese—cheddar, Gruyère, Monterey jack, and the sharp white that Margo insisted gave everything its bite—and she lined them up the same way every morning, in the same order, like she was setting out paints.

Tyler was in the dining room, towel over his shoulder, wiping down tables. He couldn’t stand still before the doors opened and never had been able to. Stella had stopped pointing it out. Some things about your father you just let happen.

She was supposed to be filling the sugar caddies and she was not filling the sugar caddies.

Camera around her neck instead, one hip against the counter.

Joey came through the back door carrying a crate of tomatoes, set it down, looked at the stack of napkins Anna had folded ten minutes ago, and immediately straightened them.

“Those were fine,” Anna said from the kitchen.

“They were close to fine. There’s a difference.” He squared the bottom edge against the counter and stepped back to evaluate. “Better.”

The Shack smelled the way it always smelled first thing—coffee, clean wood, and grilled cheese baked so deep into the walls you could probably taste it if you pressed your face against the grain. Which nobody had ever done. Probably.

Bernie was in his booth—same booth, same crossword, coffee steaming in the mug with the chip on the rim that nobody was allowed to throw away.

“Six-letter word for ‘unfinished,’” he said to nobody in particular.

“Undone,” Tyler called from across the room without looking up.

“That’s six.” Bernie wrote it in. “Not bad for a man who thought ‘archipelago’ was a type of pasta.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, but it was memorable.”

The front door opened and Bea came through it like a small hurricane—bag over one shoulder, hair everywhere, something clutched against her chest with both hands.

“I got it,” she said to the entire restaurant. “It came. It’s here. Look at this.”

She held up a thick white envelope with the CalArts logo in the corner—the orientation packet. Registration forms, housing assignments, a campus map she unfolded across the nearest table like she was planning an invasion.

Anna came out from behind the counter, took one look at the packet, and pulled Bea into a hug that lasted long enough for Joey to respectfully look away and reorganize two salt shakers.

“Let me see.” Anna released her and picked up the housing form, holding it at arm’s length because she refused to admit she needed reading glasses. “A roommate from up north. That sounds nice.”

“Her name is Sage. She does ceramics.” Bea’s whole face was lit up—luminous in a way that made Stella raise her camera and click without thinking.

“When’s move-in day?” Joey asked, appearing at the table with a pen and the small leather notebook he kept in his apron for situations that required documentation.

“Right after Labor Day.”

“And orientation starts?”

“That first week.”

Joey wrote it down. “How far is it from here? Drive time.”

“About an hour and a half, depending on traffic.”

“At what time of day? Because the 5 northbound at three-thirty is a completely different freeway than the 5 northbound at seven.”

“Joey, I haven’t mapped my trip yet. I just got the packet.”

“I’m being proactive.” He tucked the notebook back into his apron, squared his shoulders, and nodded once.

Tyler came over, towel still on his shoulder, and traced a route on the map with his finger. “Good campus. I shot a wedding near there once. The light in those canyons is unbelievable in the fall.”

Stella lifted her camera again and took three quick shots—Bea’s hands on the map, Anna reading with her chin propped on her fist, Tyler behind them both with the ocean in the window over his shoulder.

“What about meal plans?” Joey asked, and got out the notebook again.

Margo came through the front door carrying her canvas tote, wearing her painting smock over a cotton blouse. She scanned the room—quick, left to right, grill to counter to booths—and her eyes landed on the packet spread across the table and Bea’s face above it.

“Well,” Margo said. “Look at that.”

Bea held up the housing form. “I have a roommate. Her name is Sage.”

“What does Sage do?”

“Ceramics.”

“Good. Ceramics people are steady.” Margo set her tote on the counter and came over to the table and stood looking down at the campus map with her reading glasses pushed up on her head. “Your great-grandfather wanted to go to art school, you know. His father called it unserious.”

“And he opened a restaurant on the beach instead,” Bea said. “Much more serious.”

“He did.” Margo looked at the map a second longer. “I suppose it worked out.”

Anna’s eyes were bright. She pressed her fingers together and cleared her throat. “I’m really happy for you, Bea.”

“I know, Mom. You’ve said that fourteen times.”

“Fifteen. I’m counting.” Anna pulled her in again, shorter this time, and kissed the top of her head.

Bernie looked up from his crossword. Just a glance—over his reading glasses, the only one who needed them actually wearing them, across the room—and then back down. He wrote something in a box.

Bea refolded her campus map and stopped and looked at Stella.

“Wait. We’re picking up caps and gowns today. After lunch. You remember, right?”

Stella’s face went blank.

“You forgot,” Bea said.

“I didn’t forget. I just—it wasn’t on my—”

“You forgot we’re picking up caps and gowns. For graduation. The graduation that’s in three weeks. That graduation.”

Joey looked up from his notebook and followed this like a tennis match.

“In my defense, I’ve been very focused on the—”

Bea didn’t give her a chance to finish. “Stella Walsh, you forgot about graduation.”

“I forgot about the caps and gowns! That’s different!”

“How is that different?” Bea put both hands flat on the table.

Tyler, who had drifted back toward the dining room with his towel, said without turning around, “I skipped mine.”

Every head in the room swiveled.

“Your graduation?” Anna asked. “You skipped your high school graduation?”

“The surf was up. It was a four-foot south swell.” Tyler shrugged, still wiping. “You don’t waste a four-foot south swell on a gymnasium.”

“Tyler James Walsh,” Anna said.

“What? I got the diploma eventually. It was fine.”

“I’m sure it was. For you.” Margo had settled onto a stool at the counter with her coffee, and her voice was perfectly mild. “Meanwhile, I sat through three hundred and fourteen names, Tyler. In my good dress. In the fourth row. With my purse on the seat I’d saved beside me.”

Tyler’s towel stopped moving. “The fourth row.”

“The fourth row. I got there early.” Margo set her mug down. “They called your name. Nobody walked across the stage. I clapped anyway, in case it was a mistake.”

The room had gone very still. Bea’s mouth was open. Anna had both hands over hers.

“You clapped?” Tyler asked.

“I clapped. Then I sat through the rest of the ceremony because I wasn’t going to leave before it was finished.” Margo picked her mug back up. “The valedictorian gave a lovely speech about courage, which felt appropriate.”

Tyler stared at his grandmother, his ears gone pink. Stella raised her camera and then lowered it.

“Margo, I’m—”

“It was a long time ago.” She drank her coffee. “I certainly hope neither of you two get the same idea.”

“We’ll be there.” Bea had her hand up like she was being sworn in. “Both of us. Caps and gowns and everything.”

“I should hope so.” Margo looked at Stella.

Anna shook her head and reached across the table to squeeze Tyler’s arm. “I was there an hour early for mine. I ironed my gown. I brought extra bobby pins for my cap.”

“Sounds about right,” Tyler said, still pink.

“And I cried during the processional.” Anna’s eyes misted at the memory.

“That tracks.”

“It was emotional! They played ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ It’s designed to make you cry.”

Bernie set his pen down. “I wore my father’s suit. It was too big in the shoulders. My mother pinned it.” He picked the pen back up.

“Did you cry?” Bea asked.

“I am not a crier.”

“That’s not what Margo says.”

Bernie and Margo exchanged a look across the room. “Margo exaggerates,” he said.

“Margo has an excellent memory,” Margo said.

Stella laughed. The whole thing—Bea’s outrage, Tyler’s ears, Anna’s bobby pins, Bernie’s pinned suit, Margo in her good dress clapping for nobody—was so completely them that she raised her camera and caught the tail end of it.

Margo’s profile against the window. Bernie’s pen hovering. Bea with her hand still over her mouth.

“So we’re going today,” Bea said. “After lunch. You and me. And you’re trying yours on.”

“I’ll try it on.”

“And you won’t complain.”

“I might complain a little.”

“That’s acceptable.” Bea tucked the orientation packet back into her bag. “I’m going to look incredible. Fair warning.”

“You always look incredible.”

“I know. But in a cap and gown? Historic.”

The morning moved forward. Tyler went back to prep, still pink.

Anna returned to the grill, and the first sizzle of butter on the flat-top cut through the room like a starting bell.

Joey asked Bea two more questions about CalArts parking regulations and then went to check on a delivery that wasn’t due for another hour.

Margo sat at the counter, tote beside her, painting smock still on, drinking coffee in a kitchen she didn’t run anymore. She stayed for a second cup.

Stella leaned against the counter and looked up. Hundreds of shells pressed into plaster and paint, every one of them carried in by somebody who thought a morning was worth keeping.

Three weeks until graduation. Bea had CalArts and a roommate named Sage and a campus map she’d already memorized.

Stella had a caddy of sugar packets she hadn’t filled and a camera full of pictures of other people’s plans.