Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
She asked him to go shooting, and Tyler said yes before she’d finished the sentence, because when your daughter asks you somewhere alone, you don’t make her ask twice.
They drove down with the windows cracked and didn’t talk much. Tyler had learned this year not to fill a silence like that one.
They set up at the overlook where the trail bent, the whole curve of the coast going hazy to the south.
Tyler started shooting, because that was the cover, and the light really was good.
Stella lifted her camera and didn’t. Lifted it and didn’t.
He kept his eyes on his own viewfinder and let her get there on her own time.
“So,” she said, finally, to the ocean, not to him. “Something happened.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a good something. I think.” She lowered the camera.
“Joey and I want to open a bakery. A real one.” And then it came out in a rush once it started.
“Bernie’s offering us the newsstand to do it in—the whole building, he wants us to have it.
Margo’s in. Michael says the money works.
We’ve been inside it, Dad—it smells like newsprint and dust and it’s ours if we want it.
” She barely stopped to take a breath. “Michael ran the numbers, found the one thing that would’ve sunk it, and we fixed it.
We’ve been in there. Bea’s already designing the sign.
” She stopped, started again. “I want it, Dad. I really want it. I’ve never wanted anything like this and it scares me how much. ”
Tyler set his camera down in the sand, careful, like it might go off.
“Say that again.”
She said it again, slower, and this time he let her get all the way through before he said anything.
“Bernie’s newsstand,” he said.
“Bernie’s newsstand.”
“The whole building?”
“The whole building.”
He looked out at the water for a while. When he looked back his eyes were doing something he didn’t try to hide, which for Tyler was its own kind of statement.
“I don’t—” He stopped, started over. “I’m proud of you. That’s the whole sentence. I don’t have a longer one today.”
She looked at him, and her own eyes did something too, and she looked back out at the water fast so he wouldn’t see it. He let her, because that was the deal.
“I want to build it,” Tyler said, eventually. “The door through the wall, whatever it needs. I want to be the one who does it.”
“Dad, you don’t have to—”
“I’m not doing it for money. Don’t even say the word to me.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say thank you.”
“Say that instead, then.” He picked his camera back up, framed a shot he didn’t take. “I’ve spent a year taking pictures of you becoming somebody. I’d like to build something too.”
She smiled at the water.
They packed up when the fog got serious about coming in, and Tyler drove them up to the little stand on the highway, the one with the flaking blue paint and the picnic table nobody used because of the ants.
“Bad news place,” he said, pulling in. “You know that’s the rule.”
“I know it’s the rule.”
“This isn’t bad news.”
“No,” Stella said. “Let’s not tell the ice cream that.”
Tyler ordered a sugar cone, mint chocolate chip, the way he’d ordered it at every stand on two continents. Stella ordered hers in a cup, same flavor, because a cone was—she’d maintained this since she was seven and would maintain it at ninety—a structurally unsound food delivery system.
“You’ve never once wavered on that.”
“I’ve never once been wrong about it.”
They sat on the tailgate with their ice cream, the ocean going dark past the parking lot.
“Do you have a name yet?” he asked. “For the place.”
“No.”
“None?”
“Bea’s designed the whole sign around a blank. She’s furious about it.” Stella took a bite from the cup. “We keep almost having one, and then not.”
Tyler smiled and took a bite of his cone. He crunched it extra loud on purpose.
“It’s not just the baking,” Stella said, somewhere in the middle of her cup.
“I mean it is. But it’s the cards. People keep bringing us their people, Dad.
Somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s wife’s mother, and nobody else is ever going to make those things again, and we can.
Joey and I want to do a request each week—rotate through as many as we can get to. People want to remember their people.”
Tyler looked at his daughter for a while. “That’s the whole business plan right there,” he said, finally. “The rest is ovens.”
Stella smiled at him and rested her head on his shoulder for a second. “I suppose it is.”
“You and Joey,” Tyler said, somewhere in the second half of the cone. “You’re sure? I mean…he’s Joey.”
Stella didn’t answer right away, which he liked.
“He made the apricot slice twice before the graduation dinner,” she said.
“Two failed pans. Told nobody. Just quietly bought a different pan size and got it right, and the only reason I know is I found the receipt.” She dug at the cup.
“He’s the only person I’ve ever met who practices for things nobody’s watching.
That’s who you want holding the other half of something. ”
Tyler thought about it. “Good answer.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do that.”
“You walked into it.”
He laughed and looked at his daughter.“You’re lit up.”
“I am not,” she said, but she smiled anyway.
“You are. You’ve been lit up since the overlook. It’s a little blinding, honestly.”
“Well, don’t look directly at it, then.”
“Too late. Ruined my night vision.” He took another bite so she wouldn’t see his face, because he couldn’t control what it was doing.
“You nervous?” he asked, after a minute. “About tomorrow. The pitch.”
Stella thought about it, actually thought about it, working at the cup with her spoon while she did.
“A little. Are you?”
“Me? I’m not the one pitching.”
“You’re the one who has to sit there and not say anything if anybody asks a hard question. That’s its own kind of nervous.”
Tyler considered this. “Yeah. Okay. A little.”
“Ha.”
“Don’t gloat. It’s unbecoming.”
She finished before he did, same as always, and they sat there a while longer, not in any hurry to get back to a house that didn’t know yet what was coming for it.
“One thing,” Tyler said, eventually. “Have you told your mother?”
The question landed soft, and Stella went still around it.
“Not yet.”
“You should. Before the whole family. Before any of it gets loud.” He said it gently, no push in it. “She’s a long way away, and this is a big one. She’d want to hear it from you, in your voice, before she hears it happened.” He balled up his napkin. “That’s all. Her before the noise.”
“Yeah.” Stella looked at her hands. “Yeah. I will.”
“And listen.” He kept the tone light, so it wouldn’t spook her. “Nobody else knows. Right? The family.”
“Just you. And Bea, but Bea’s under oath.”
“Bea’s under something,” Tyler said. “I don’t know that oath’s the word.”
“It’s the kind that lasts about four minutes.”
“Which is why I’m asking you to actually swear. Not a Bea swear.” He held up his hand, mock-solemn, and made her mirror it. “Say it.”
“I swear. Not one word, to anyone, until you say so.”
“That was convincing.”
“I mean it completely. I just also enjoyed the ceremony.” He put his hand down.
“You told your cousin first. That’s how it should go, she’s your age, she’s in it with you.
But you brought it to me before the family got a vote.
” He looked at her for a second, his daughter, who’d come to him across an entire ocean a year ago a stranger, sitting next to him now with the biggest thing in her life. “That’s the part I’m thanking you for.”
“Who else would I bring it to?” Stella asked, like it was obvious, and Tyler had to look at the ocean for a minute at nothing in particular.
“You finished your ice cream before me again,” he said, finally.
“I always finish before you.”
“One of these days I’m going to finish first and you won’t know what to do with yourself.”
“Structurally impossible. You’ve got a cone.”
He laughed, and they sat on the tailgate a minute longer while he finished it, the fog coming in off the water.