grandchildren like to eat.”
“Nooo!” With that, Mike threw himself on the floor and proceeded to display the most violent fit of temper Sam had ever witnessed. Theresa picked him up as he flailed and threw his head back, raging and wailing. “Mikey, please. Be a good boy for Mommy. Please eat like a nice boy, and we’ll go home and watch any movie you want today, okay?”
“How come he gets to choose?” the girls started in.
“Because I said so!” Theresa snapped as Mike’s hand came down hard across Theresa’s face. “Mikey, please. Now eat nicely and we’ll watch a movie later, okay?”
“PB and Js on fine china.” Sam couldn’t help it. She met Theresa’s look of scorn with a wide smirk.
Sam held her sister’s glare as long as possible but was the first to look away.
They sat down at the table.
“So you’re taking over Aunt Jean’s diner.” There was that look on her face, like Theresa thought it was a crazy idea.
“I am.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I have a lot of work ahead.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Theresa cut her sandwich with a knife.
“You’re right. It is a lot of work.” She’d already submitted her business plan and got the startup loan she needed to stock the diner and do minor repairs. Plus she had rolled her 401K over to an IRA. She didn’t want to touch it, but it was there if need be.
“Aunt Jean was a wonderful person, God rest her soul, but she was no businesswoman. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing.”
“She ran it for over thirty years,” Sam was quick to defend. “I should think she had some idea what she was doing.”
“Yes, and she barely scraped by. She never had a vacation her entire life.”
“Maybe she didn’t want one.”
Theresa laughed. “Who wouldn’t want or need a vacation?”
Sam did her best to maintain composure. Theresa and Shawn went to a five-star resort every winter. Mother told her about them every year.
“Don’t get mad, Sam.” Theresa touched her arm. “All I’m saying is that you should have thought this through. You don’t know the first thing about running a business. I don’t want to see you fail, but frankly, I can’t see anything else happening with this.”
“She can get her old job back,” Mother added.
“Well, that’s good, at least.”
Sam hated that she felt the need to defend herself. “I won’t need to get my old job back. I will make this work. You’ll see.”
This time, Theresa placed both hands on her arm. “If you want to come back to Cold Springs permanently, I think that’s great. I’d love to have you close by. We all would. I just don’t see this diner as a viable prospect. You could get yourself a nice office job in the city and commute. That would be a whole lot less stressful. Don’t you want less stress?”
Sam wanted to ask Theresa how she knew what amount of stress she could handle, but she held her tongue. She hadn’t finished her sandwich yet, but she suddenly felt full and threw the container in the trash and stood. “I’m going back to the diner and do some work.”
“So soon?” Mother asked. “You just got here.”
“Well, like I said, I have a lot of work to do. It’s not going to get done by itself.”
“Why don’t you do the sensible thing?” Theresa called to her as she made her way out the door. “Sell the place and share the money with us.”
Sam stopped cold in her tracks. Mother and Theresa had inherited nothing from Aunt Jean’s estate. Aunt Jean had left everything in her bank account to Burt and all her possessions and the diner to Sam.
Sam couldn’t deny that the situation was awkward at best. Sam would have thought Aunt Jean would leave something to Mother, being that they were sisters. And to Theresa? Perhaps Aunt Jean was like the majority and thought Theresa already had everything. Nevertheless, perhaps Sam should have