Molly clicked on her mom’s phone number in her contacts and held the phone up to her ear. It rang a few times before she answered.
“Molly?”
“Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“I’m doing well, hon. How are you?”
There was a lot of background noise, which was unusual. Normally her parents were holed up in their offices working.
She heard her dad’s voice in the background. “There it is!”
“I’m good. What are you guys up to? It sounds like you’re out of the office on a Wednesday.” Molly raised her eyebrows. Not being in the office on a weekday was almost unheard of.
“We aren’t at work. We took the day off.” Her mom’s voice sounded distracted. “Molly, can I call you back in just a little bit? I’m in the middle of something.”
Molly frowned. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll be home all day.”
“Oh good. I’m glad to hear it. Talk soon!”
Then the line went dead. Molly looked at her phone, feeling rejected. Her parents had barely spoken to her since she had moved, and now they finally took a day off in the middle of the work week and couldn’t even bother to talk to her.
She sighed and leaned back into her couch. She had the day off, but she didn’t have any plans. Eli was working, so she couldn’t hang out with him. Although she could go hang out at the bookstore, she knew she would just be a distraction.
Molly grabbed the tablet off the counter and doodled on it. After speaking the words aloud to Eli about possibly wanting to be a graphic designer, she had been drawing even more. She wasn’t sure what kind of graphic design she would want to do, but she was testing out different options, whether it be websites, menus, book covers, or illustrations.
After creating the bookstore’s website and launching it earlier that week, she realized her potential was far greater than she gave herself credit for. She considered starting her own business creating websites for companies, but for now, she wanted to make sure that was what she actually wanted to do for a living.
Her stylus moved along the screen as she made a mock-up design of her potential future website. She was only halfway done with it when there was a knock on her door.
Molly looked at the clock and knew it was too early for Eli to come around. She didn’t have any friends in Storyville yet, aside from the Millers, and they were all at work. She set her tablet down on the coffee table and walked over to the door, peeking through the peephole before gasping and swinging the door open.
Her parents stood on the other side with wide smiles on their faces. “Surprise!”
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she covered her mouth with her hand, unable to speak.
“Oh, honey, come here,” her mom, Ashley, said.
Her parents stepped inside and wrapped their arms around her.
“We didn’t mean to make you cry,” her dad, Jared, said.
“Oh, Jared, they’re happy tears,” Ashley said.
“How am I supposed to know that? A woman cries and I immediately scream ‘danger’ in my head.”
Molly laughed and pulled back from their arms, wiping her tears from her cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to see you, of course. You can’t expect us to stay away forever,” her mom said.
“I would never expect you to stay away. But I didn’t think you’d come during the work week.”
“We needed to come check out where our daughter is living. Make sure you’re doing okay,” Jared said.
Tears continued to slip down Molly’s face. “I thought you guys were mad at me for leaving.”
“No, no. Why would you think that?” Ashley asked.
“I haven’t really heard from you,” Molly said.
