When Jack pulls up to Schmidt’s on the day before Thanksgiving it occurs to him that he might just take the offer from DelDine. Finally give in. They may keep it the same, as they’ve done with some places in town, or renovate it into a bistro with an eco-friendly kitchen and QR code menu or an Italian-fusion restaurant with zebra-print place mats.

Jack doesn’t usually have epiphanies like this early in the morning, especially right before a major holiday, when there are mountains of potatoes to peel, and the stress of all those turkeys defrosting and the phone ringing with pie orders and last-minute reservations. He puts the car in park, and the wind blows sand against his door. He steps out, feet hurting, his old Jeep the only car on the whole beachfront block, the boardwalk looking battered.

He squints at the Atlantic Ocean in the distance, and the restaurant’s blue awning trembles above him.

He looks at his family name written in cursive on the sign, Est. 1954 underneath, and he thinks, It’s time. It’s time to figure out his life.

—

Their offer is pretty appealing. A no-brainer, his dad would have said.

Jack can keep slogging through hot summers, his feet quitting by ten in the morning and him forcing them to keep going anyway. All summer, him in a damp T-shirt, face pale, working, working, morning until night, married to the place, as Kitty said before she moved west, like some long-ago prospector hoping to find a better life.

Jack is fifty-two, but an old fifty-two. A fifty-two that feels like assisted living is right around the corner. His best friend from high school, Deacon, just had a baby and ran a half marathon.

Jack never wanted to sell, especially not to DelDine, enemy number one to Rehoboth Beach family businesses, all their corporate lingo and management team members smiling and buying everything they can, as though quality and originality mean nothing.