Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The rugelach took until past midnight and then some, and for the first hour neither of them said anything that wasn’t about the rugelach.
That was fine with Stella. There was a rhythm to it—she rolled and Joey filled, or he rolled and she filled, and the trays went in and came out and cooled on the racks that had held the party’s ruin that morning, and the kitchen smelled like butter and cinnamon and the particular apricot Letty’s card had specified in a hand that pressed hard on the no substitutions.
They were good at it. That was the thing Stella kept not saying.
In the worst hours of the worst day they’d made for this family, standing in a kitchen they’d nearly wrecked, they were good at this, and it was the only part of the whole day that felt like anything but a mistake.
“These are better than the ones this morning,” Joey said, holding one up to the light like it might have a serial number.
“The ones this morning got made in a panic.”
“These are getting made in a different panic.” He set it down and squared it to the others on the tray, because Joey squared things, because the world held still when the corners lined up. “A calmer panic. A panic with more information.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“Everything’s a thing if you write it down.”
She laughed, which surprised her, because she hadn’t thought there was a laugh anywhere in her after the day she’d had, and it came out anyway, and Joey looked down at the tray and lined up a corner that didn’t need lining up, pleased with himself and pretending he wasn’t.
They worked. The trays went in.
“I like this,” Stella said, to the oven, not to him. “That’s the stupid part. I like this more than anything I did all year and I found that out on the day we nearly burned the place down.”
“You didn’t nearly burn the place down. There was never a fire. The risk was entirely to the supply chain.” He filled a row. “But I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“I do the count in my head when I bake. The stress count. It goes down.” He said it plainly, like a reading off a gauge.
“Everything I’m behind on, everything I haven’t done, the emails—it all goes quieter when there’s a tray in the oven and a timer running.
It’s the only time the numbers stop.” He filled another row.
“It’s a documented effect. I have a card on it. ”
“Section nine,” Stella said.
“Coping strategies with measurable outputs. You remember.”
“I remember.”
She rolled the next one. She’d noticed the thing she was about to say for weeks and never said it, because saying it was an inspection and you didn’t inspect Joey, and now it was the middle of the night and the family was gone and there was nobody to hear her get it wrong.
“You haven’t gone to a study group since May.”
Joey didn’t look up. “The rotation changed.”
“The rotation didn’t change. You changed it.” She kept rolling. “And your textbook’s been in your bag since you brought it in. The new one. Next term’s. I’ve watched you carry it in and out of here for weeks and I’ve never once seen it open.”
“I read the back.”
“You read the back.”
“Twice.” He set down the row he was filling. He didn’t pick up another. “It’s a good back. It describes the book accurately.”
And there it was, the door she’d been knocking on, open a crack, and she did not shove it, because you didn’t shove Joey either. She waited, then she rolled another one.
“I don’t like it,” Joey said.
“The book?”
“The program.” He said it to the tray. “Marine systems. I don’t like it.
I don’t like the classes and I don’t like the study groups and I don’t like the thing at the end of it, the job, the actual job I’d have, which I looked up, which is mostly spreadsheets about salt water.
” He stopped. “I like spreadsheets. I want to be clear that the spreadsheets are not the problem. It’s the salt water.
It’s the—it’s all of it. I don’t like any of it and I’ve known since about October and I haven’t said it out loud until right now, in a closed restaurant, at whatever time it is, to you. ”
Stella put down the dough. She had something to say and he didn’t let her.
“And here’s the part that’s actually funny.
” He wasn’t laughing. “I may not have to quit. I may have already quit by accident. I did not study for finals. I did not study at all, because I was here, because there was always a tray, and I sat down to study four separate times and every single time I ended up back here with an apron on.” He looked at her.
“So I might have failed myself out of a program I was too much of a coward to leave. Which would be efficient. I’d have gotten the outcome without having to make the decision.
Except I’d have wasted a year and the fund’s money and I’d have to tell Margo I did it by not trying, which is worse than doing it on purpose. ”
“That’s not worse.”
“It’s worse. On purpose is a decision. By accident is just—” he moved his hand, the shape of something falling. “It’s just what happened to me while I was somewhere else.”
He was quiet a second. Then he picked the row back up.
“It’s not exactly a secret, anyway. I haven’t opened a textbook since spring. The evidence has been sitting in my bag the whole time.” He filled the next one, steady. “You were just the first person who noticed.”
The oven ticked. Stella looked at him, this boy she’d known since she got off a plane into a family she hadn’t met, who documented everything and said nothing, standing there in an apron having just told her the truest thing he’d ever told anyone.
She wasn’t going to say the thing she was thinking. She rolled another one instead.
“I don’t know what I want,” she said instead. “That’s my whole thing. Everybody keeps asking and I keep saying community college like it’s an answer and it’s not an answer, it’s a way to not answer.” She wiped her hands. “But I know I love this. I found that out today. Terrible day to find it out.”
“So.” Joey filled the last row, because the last row still had to be filled. “We both love it. You don’t know what you want except this, and I know I don’t want the thing I’m supposed to want, and it’s this.”
“Yeah.”
“So we should—” and she watched it come up in him, the same thing that had come up in her, the balloon, the what if—”there are places. Commercial kitchens you can rent. By the hour. I’ve seen the—”
“We’re eighteen, Joey.”
“People start businesses at eighteen.”
“With what license? With what money? We have a jar that says there are no plans to do this.” She heard herself and almost smiled and didn’t. “It’s a nice idea. It’s a really nice idea. It’s the kind of idea you have at midnight after you’ve had the worst day of the summer.”
“It’s a good idea at midnight.”
“Everything’s a good idea at midnight.” She started stacking the cooled trays. “In the morning it’s just something that would cost money we don’t have and a license we can’t get and time we already proved we’ll steal from the people who actually run this place.”
That stopped him. It stopped her too, hearing it come out of her own mouth, because it was the thing she’d been walking around since Meg stood there with the clipboard.
“We can’t do this,” Stella said.
“We just said we love it.”
“I know we did. That’s not the part I’m talking about.
” She set the tray down and made herself say the rest, because stopping in the middle would have been worse.
“This is my family’s whole life, Joey. This building.
This is the thing Margo built and the thing that pays for all of it and the thing that’s still going to be here when we’re—I don’t even know what we’re going to be.
And we nearly took it apart this week because we wanted to make cookies for a nice lady.
We had no right. It’s not ours to risk. I’m the newest person in this family and I am not going to be the one who put the Shack in a hole because I found a hobby I liked. ”
“It’s not a hobby.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is.” Her voice didn’t shake, which she was glad about.
“No more. No extra jobs, nothing past what the family said yes to, no other space, no getting ahead of anything. We do the shortbread and the loaf and the cards we already promised and when people ask for more we say no. Every time. No exceptions.” She looked at him.
“We’re good at it and we’re going to have to be smaller than we’re good at.
That’s the whole thing. That’s the answer. ”
Joey was quiet for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. Just that. And she knew it cost him the same thing it cost her, and neither of them said so.
They finished the last tray. They boxed Letty’s, all of it, stacked and labeled in Joey’s capitals, ready for a hand-off that would go fine, because the party had gone fine, because the guests never know and Letty never would either. That was the job. You made it look like it hadn’t cost anything.
Then there was nothing left to do but leave.
Stella reached behind her and untied the apron—her own, the worn one, Nana’s, the one Fiona had sent from home—and it was harder to do than it should have been. She stood there with it in her hands a second. Then she hung it on the hook that said STELLA.
They’d made her the hook a while back, her name on the masking tape in the row with all the others, ANNA and MARGO and Joey’s fancy one, and she’d been so honored she’d had to go to the walk-in for a minute so nobody would see her face.
She still felt it every time. She wasn’t going to be the one who lost it.
That was the whole reason, when it came down to it.
You didn’t get a hook with your name on it and then put the thing it was hanging in at risk.
Joey took his off and hung it next to hers.
They turned off the ovens. They checked the ovens twice, because Joey checked things twice, and this time Stella did the second check with him instead of waiting by the door.
They turned off the lights. They went out the back, and Stella locked it with the key Anna had given her in the spring like it was nothing, like handing a kid a key to the family’s whole life was something you just did, and pulled the door to make sure it caught.
It caught.
The lot was dark and the ocean was down there doing what it did and neither of them said anything on the way to the cars.
They’d be back in the morning. They’d put the aprons back on. They’d do less than they were good at, and be glad to, because it was still the Shack and it was still theirs to keep whole.