Page 73 of The Spotted Cottage By the Sea
That weight on her chest pushed deeper. “Oh yeah? To Granny’s?”
There was a knock at the back door. Patty put a hand on her shoulder. “You stay put. I’ll get it.”
Sheila watched the door open to two smiling faces: Shelby and Emma.
Her jaw dropped. “Girls! I didn’t know you were coming!”
Eliza walked in behind them, a grin on her face. “Surprise! You weren’t supposed to know, Mom. This is an intervention.”
Sheila already had the girls in a hug and she had to pull away. “What?”
Patty spun around with a plate of blueberry cream cheese muffins in her hand. “I made intervention muffins!”
“I don’t know why you would –”
Mackenzie, still on the screen, cut her off. “The jig is up, Mom. Eliza told us about the house, and Granny filled us in on the rest.”
Patty locked eyes with her, beaming. “Guilty. Who wants tea?”
“Sit down, Mom,” Eliza said gently. “We need to talk.”
It took a full hour to tell them everything, going back to when Sheila met Lottie.
“I can’t believe you got fired,” Shelby said.
“I can’t believe you broke into an amusement park,” Emma said.
Mackenzie, on screen and propped on top of a box of crackers, added, “I can’t believe you got to hang out with Russell Westwood!”
“I told you he was helping us with the tea shop,” Eliza said.
“Well, you’re a bad communicator,” Mackenzie said. “You made it sound like he waved at you from his limo, not that he was in there painting with you.”
Shelby turned to Sheila. “What else didn’t you tell us, Mom?”
She sighed, dropping her hands to pick up her tea. It had gone cold during all her confessing, but it was still a comfort. “I think you know it all now, girls.”
“Okay.” Mackenzie cleared her throat. “We’ve been talking, Mom.”
“Clearly.” She smiled. She shouldn’t have raised intelligent, independent young women if she didn’t want them figuring out when she was hiding things.
“I think the answer is pretty simple, and I speak for all of us when I say this.” Mackenzie drew herself up. “You need to sell the house and put the money into saving the tea shop.”
Sheila leaned into the phone. “What? I can’t sell the house.”
“It’s a great house, Mom, and we really do appreciate all the sacrifices you made to raise us there.”
“Yeah,” Emma added, “but you’ve done it. You raised us. You don’t need it anymore.”
Sheila smiled a weak smile. “It’s our home, girls.”
“It can serve a new purpose now. Do you know how much it’ll sell for? House prices in our neighborhood went crazy. And it’ll help keep Granny in her home,” Eliza said, putting her head on Patty’s shoulder. “Look at her, Mom. She’s helpless. She needs us.”
“Excuse me!” Patty opened her mouth in mock shock. “I am not helpless!”
“We don’t need the house anymore, Mom. It was home, but only because you made it home. Wherever you are, that’s where home is.”
Sheila bit her lip, trying to fight the lump rapidly swelling in her throat. Her vision blurred with tears, and she looked down, taking a sudden interest in the remaining blueberry cream cheese muffin.
