Page 15 of The Spotted Cottage By the Sea
That email hadreallytested her grace.
This moment was a new test, and she didn’t have time to find a way to do it gracefully.
The ringing stopped and cut to his voicemail.
Maybe if he didn’t want to answer his phone, she could email him using his own style? Subject, “By the way,” content, “Your mom isn’t moving.”
No. That was unwise, and she was being petty. She had gone so long without letting him get to her, but here she was, glaring out at the ocean and letting little malevolent thoughts wash over her.
She paused and let out a sigh. She knew what he was going to say. Tell her it wasn’t her business. Tell her to stay out of it.
How could she, though, when she had seen the sadness in Patty’s eyes? When she’d met Patty’s secret boyfriend whom she refused to admit was her boyfriend?
Sheila took a seat on a bench facing the water. She’d been through enough therapy to know that what she was doing was unproductive, but she couldn’t stop herself.
She called him again, and this time, the call went to voicemail much sooner.
He must have declined the call.
The nerve.
She shot up from the bench and stomped back to the cottage, pushed open the door, and blew into the kitchen. Patty and Reggie were still sitting there, and they turned in surprise when she burst in.
“Everything all right?” Patty asked wearily.
“You don’t have to worry about Russell Westwood,” Sheila said. “I think I’ve scared him off.”
“Sheila. I didn’t ask you to do that.”
She tossed her purse onto the kitchen counter. “You didn’t have to.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Patty said, slowly standing from her seat. “You’re at a delicate time in your life.”
Sheila’s eyes flitted up to her momentarily before redialing Brian’s number.
Three calls. He had to answer. What if she was calling about an emergency? Shouldn’t he have the decency to answer at least once? “I don’t need you to tell me I’m old.”
“You’re not old. You’re middle-aged,” Patty said matter-of-factly, as if that would make her feel any better. “It’s still a delicate time. A transition. You’re used to being so many things to so many people. Maybe it’s time for you to think about yourself.”
Sheila got his voicemail again and hung up. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Exactly,” Patty said gently, holding her hands up as though trying to defuse a bomb. “Maybe if you –”
“You’re not going to convince me to leave, Patty. There is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than here, with you, in this cottage.”
That was easy for her to say it so forcefully because it was, in fact, the truth. And because there were a lot of things she didn’t want to face right now.
Sheila knew she was middle-aged. She knew she had an empty nest. She also knew she was broke and she’d just gotten fired.
To her horror, she’d become a statistic. A woman teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after a divorce.
No onewantsto become a statistic; it just happens. While Brian excitedly planned the new life he’d dreamt up, complete with Christmas cards of his new family in matching pajamas, Sheila was out there doing the stuff no one took pictures of: scrubbing the slime off the shower. Running a bake sale for the third time that year. Getting mascara out of the bathroom towels for the hundredth time because her teenage daughter hadn’t been asked to prom.
Yet, all the while, she knew Brian had it wrong. On the eve of finalizing their divorce, he’d left her a message.
“You’re nothing without me,” he’d said, the disgust curled in his voice.
Every moment since then, she’d proven him wrong. She wasn’t going to stop now.
