Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The morning had been going so well.
Stella drove down Pacific Coast Highway with the windows cracked, salt air rushing in, music turned up loud enough to feel the bass. She was meeting Bea at the coffee place on Third—their regular ritual now, when neither of them had Shack shifts.
Driving had become automatic now—she didn’t have to think about every movement, didn’t grip the steering wheel like it might escape. Tyler had been a good teacher. Patient. Panicked only when necessary.
She parked on the side street—not perfectly, but close enough—and spotted Bea already at their usual bench outside, two cups waiting.
“You’re late,” Bea said, handing her a cup.
“I’m three minutes early.”
“Which is late for me. I’ve been here since the dawn of time.” Bea gestured at the pastry bag between them. “I got croissants. The almond ones. You’re welcome.”
“You’re a saint.”
“I know.” Bea stretched her legs out, face tilted toward the sun. “Okay. Game plan. Coffee, pastries, then we hit the vintage store on Third. I need a dress for the gallery opening and everything in my closet is wrong.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, everything. I’ve entered a new aesthetic phase. The old clothes don’t align with my creative vision.”
“What’s the new phase?”
“I’m calling it ‘messy elegance.’ Think structured silhouettes with unexpected textures.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Neither do I, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
Stella settled onto the bench, coffee warming her hands. The morning stretched ahead, full of nothing in particular and everything that mattered.
“This is nice,” she said. “Just... this.”
“Being normal teenagers?”
“Is this what normal teenagers do?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never been normal.” Bea bit into her croissant, flakes scattering. “But if it is, I approve.”
Stella’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it.
From her mum.
Where are you?
She typed back.
Coffee with Bea. Back in an hour.
You went out?
Stella frowned at the screen and typed.
Yes?
How did you get there?
And there it was. The question Stella had been avoiding for days.
She could lie. Say Bea drove. Say they walked. Say anything except the truth that was about to complicate everything even more.
But she was tired of dancing around the edges of her new life, pretending it was smaller than it was.
I drove, she typed. I have my license now.
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then nothing.
“Uh oh,” Bea said, reading over her shoulder. “That’s not a good silence.”
“No.”
“How did she not know you could drive?”
“It never came up.”
“It never—” Bea shook her head. “You don’t exactly have long conversations, do you?”
“She asks how I’m doing. I say fine. She asks about the Shack. I say fine. She doesn’t ask about the rest.”
“The rest being... your entire life?”
“Pretty much.”
The phone rang.
Stella answered before she could talk herself out of it. “Mum.”
“You have a driver’s license?” Fiona’s voice was sharp, clipped. “Since when?”
“Since a while ago. Tyler taught me. I passed the test and—”
“Tyler taught you to drive? Without asking my permission?”
“I’m sixteen. I don’t need your permission to—”
“You absolutely need my permission. You’re a child. You’re my child. And you’re driving around California like—”
“Like a person who lives here?”
Silence. Stella could hear Fiona breathing, could picture her pacing whatever room she was in, phone pressed to her ear.
“Come back to the house,” Fiona said. “Now.”
“I’m with Bea. We had plans.”
“I don’t care about your plans. Come back. We need to talk.”
“Mum—”
“Now, Stella.”
The line went dead.
Bea was watching her with wide eyes. “That sounded bad.”
“It was bad.”
“What are you going to do?”
Stella looked at her coffee, still warm in her hands. At the sunshine on the sidewalk. At this morning that had been so perfect five minutes ago.
“Go back, I guess.” She stood. “Rain check on the vintage store?”
“Obviously. Text me later?”
“Yeah.”
She drove back to Margo’s cottage with her stomach in knots, the coffee turning sour in her gut. The route was familiar now—she’d driven it a dozen times, maybe more. Left on Coast Highway, right on Cliff Drive, past the house with the ugly fence, down the narrow street to Margo’s garden gate.
Fiona was waiting on the porch.
She looked smaller than usual, somehow. Arms wrapped around herself, shoulders tight, face pale. Not angry, Stella realized as she parked. Scared.
That was almost worse.
“Inside,” Fiona said as Stella approached. “Please.”
The cottage was quiet, though Stella could hear the faint, rhythmic scratching of a brush from Margo’s painting shed at the back of the house.
Stella had seen Tyler’s text about Rick’s visit, about Bernie’s observations, about everyone figuring things out. Everyone was dealing with their own crisis today.
Fiona was already pacing the living room by the time Stella closed the door. Back and forth in front of the window, arms still wrapped around herself.
“Sit down,” Fiona said without looking at her.
Stella sat on the couch. Watched her mother pace.
“You should have told me,” Fiona said. “About the driving.”
“I know.”
“You should have asked me.”
“Would you have said yes?”
Fiona’s jaw tightened. “That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point. You would have said no. You would have said I wasn’t ready, or it wasn’t safe, or I should wait until I was back in Sydney. So I didn’t ask.”
“Because I knew you’d say no to anything that made my life here more real.”
Fiona stopped pacing. Stood very still by the window.
“Since you got here,” Stella continued, her voice rising, “you’ve been looking for reasons this won’t work.
The house is too small. The school isn’t rigorous enough.
The Shack is ‘charming’ like that’s an insult.
And now driving—driving, Mum, which is a normal thing that normal teenagers do—is suddenly evidence that everything is wrong. ”
“I’m worried about your safety.”
“No. You’re worried about losing control.” Stella heard her voice shake and hated it. “You’ve had control my whole life. What I ate, where I went, who I saw. And now I’m here, making decisions without you, and you can’t handle it.”
“I’m your mother.”
“I know! I know you’re my mother. But I’m also—” Stella stopped. Breathed. “I’m also a person. With my own life. And I’m trying to build something here, and every time I think you might actually support that, you find a new reason to tear it down.”
Fiona moved to the armchair, sat down slowly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, knuckles white.
“The driver’s license,” she said, her voice flat. “What else don’t I know?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else has been happening that you haven’t told me? What else has Tyler been teaching you, deciding for you, doing without my consent?”
“It’s not like that—”
“Then what is it like?” Fiona’s voice was cold, controlled.
“Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like my daughter has been living a secret life all summer.
Signing up for school, getting a job, driving, becoming a photographer—all of it happening without me.
And I’m supposed to just... accept that?
Sign the papers and go home and pretend I’m okay with being erased from your life? ”
“No one’s erasing you!”
“Aren’t they?” Fiona’s face was closed now, expressionless. “You have a grandmother now. Great-grandmother. Aunts, cousins, a whole family that you’ve known for one summer.”
She stopped. Didn’t finish the sentence.
Stella waited. The silence stretched.
“I want you to come home,” Fiona said finally.
“Mum—”
“I want you to come home. With me. When I leave.” Fiona stood, moved back to the window, her back to Stella. “Pack your things. This was a nice experiment, but it’s time to come back to reality.”
“This is my reality.”
“No. This is a fantasy. A summer vacation that went too long.” Fiona turned, and her face was hard. “You’re my daughter. You belong with me.”
“I belong here.”
“You belong where I say you belong. Until you’re eighteen, that’s how it works.”
Stella stood slowly. Her legs felt unsteady.
“And if I don’t want to go?”
“Then we have a problem.” Fiona’s voice was flat. “Because I’m not leaving without you. I’m not going home and telling the twins that their sister chose strangers over them.”
“They’re not strangers. They’re family.”
“I’m your family. I’m the one who raised you. I’m the one who was there every single day while Tyler was off taking pictures and living his life.” Fiona’s control was cracking slightly, anger bleeding through. “He doesn’t get to have you. Not like this. Not when he didn’t earn it.”
“He showed up when I needed him.”
“And where was he before that? Where was he when you were sick, when you were scared, when you needed someone at two in the morning?”
“Where you told him to be! You’re the one who set the rules. You’re the one who kept him away!”
“I kept him away to protect you.”
“You kept him away to protect yourself.”
The words hung in the air.
Fiona’s face went white.
“Pack your things,” she said, very quietly. “We’re leaving.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“And that’s my answer.” Stella felt tears burning her eyes but refused to let them fall. “I’m not going. I’m not packing. I’m staying here, with my family, whether you like it or not.”
“Then I’ll make you.”
“How? Drag me onto the plane? Call the police?” Stella’s voice shook. “I’m sixteen. Soon enough, I’ll be eighteen and none of this will matter anyway. So what’s your plan, Mum? Force me back to Sydney, watch me count the days until I can leave again?”
Fiona had no answer for that.
They stood in silence, the air between them thick and ruined. Stella’s chest heaved. Fiona stood rigid by the window.
“You don’t get it,” Stella said, her voice cracking. “You never got it. I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing it for me. For the first time in my life, I’m choosing something. And you can’t stand it.”
She didn’t wait for a response.
She walked past her mother, through the door, into the bright afternoon. The sunshine felt wrong—too cheerful, too warm for what had just happened inside.
She sat on the porch bench, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around herself. The bougainvillea blazed purple against the fence. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked.
She could hear her mother inside. Not moving. Not following.
Good.
After a few minutes, Stella stood and walked to the garden wall. Further from the door. Further from whatever was happening in that living room.
She pulled out her phone. Typed with shaking hands.
Can you come get me? I don’t want to drive.
Tyler’s response was immediate.
On my way.
She sat on the wall and waited, the ocean glittering in the distance.
We’re leaving, her mother had said. Pack your things.
But Stella had no intention of packing anything.
This was her home now.
And she was going to fight for it.