Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret - Liz Kessler [68]
A moment later, she’d wrapped Mom in her arms. “Oh, my baby,” Nan cried over and over again. “My darling, darling girl.”
Granddad was behind her. “Come inside, come in, all of you,” he said.
We went inside. Granddad held his arms out toward Mom and she fell into them while Nan stood behind Mom, stroking her back, whispering to herself and half laughing, half crying.
I turned to Aaron. “We did it!” I said. He smiled and held his arms out to me.
“You did it,” he said, pulling me close. “You and Mandy did it.”
Mandy — of course. We had to tell her. “Should we go see her?” I asked.
Aaron held me a little closer. “In a minute,” he said. “Not just yet.” I snuggled more tightly into his shoulder and didn’t argue.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think this calls for a cup of tea,” a voice announced from the doorway.
Millie winked at someone standing next to her. As she came through the door, the other person followed. Mandy.
“Well, fancy that,” Millie said to Mandy as they both came inside. “I wonder how that happened. . . .”
Then she marched through the front room, straight into the kitchen. “Right, where’s the kettle?” she asked.
Mandy joined us in the front room. “I told her,” she said bashfully. “I had the feeling she might be able to help. Turns out she did.”
“How?” I asked.
Mandy smiled. “You’ll see.”
“You’ll see what?” Mom said, coming over and putting an arm around my shoulders. “Do you think it’s about time someone explained some of this to me?”
Nan put an arm around Mom’s waist. “And me,” she said.
So we did. Millie poured the tea while Aaron, Mandy, and I explained everything.
“But there’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Mom said. “How did you get them here now?”
Granddad pulled out a newspaper. “With this,” he said.
He opened it up and spread it on the table for us all to see. It was a photograph Millie had taken of my grandparents.
I looked at Mandy. She smiled back. “That’s how,” she said.
I read the caption under the photograph.
Is this you?
If so, please, please come to Brightport immediately. The biggest reward of your lives is waiting for you.
Come now! You won’t regret it!
Nan smiled at Mom. “We called the editor and he told us to come to this cottage. And the article was right,” she said. “This is the biggest reward of our lives, without a doubt.”
“But how did this get into the paper?” Mom asked.
Mandy cleared her throat. “Er, that was me,” she said. “My dad’s really good friends with the editor of the Brightport Times, and it’s part of a big chain of local papers.”
“This went into them all,” I said.
“It was a bit of a long shot,” Mandy added.
Mom put her hand over Mandy’s. “But it worked,” she said gently. “And that’s all that matters.”
She was right. Well, she was nearly right. It wasn’t quite all that mattered. I still only had a few days to show Neptune that we’d made a big difference with our task, and I had no idea if we were going to manage that or not.
Mr. Beeston had agreed to try to help with my idea, and thanks to his insider contacts, we’d gotten the perfect venue — but there was no guarantee it was going to work.
And in the meantime, I still hadn’t managed to walk around Brightport with my head up, or without thinking that every other person I passed wanted to throw me in a net, hand me over, and collect their reward.
Mandy saw the look on my face and nudged me. “Hey,” she whispered. “I saw Mr. Beeston at the Brightport Times office yesterday. He was looking pretty pleased with himself. I wonder if it had anything to do with this.” She thrust the morning’s paper into my hands. “This was what I came by to show you. I nearly forgot, what with, you know —” She waved her hand at my grandparents.
“What’s this, then?” Millie asked. Grabbing the newspaper, she spread it out on the table, and we all stared at the front page.
SATURDAY NIGHT SPECTACULAR
A mystery show, the likes of which you have