Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 78th cycle. Now cycle 79!

"Escape to New York"
((Older) Rachel,) Chloe & parents
Red series
(no listings yet, sequel to "Two Roads")

Chloe didn't know how to handle herself for a while, having her parents back by her side. The last time she'd seen them had been when they'd dropped her off here at the start of the summer, and so much had happened since then that, even though they'd kept in touch through phone calls and video chats and letters and the likes, now that they were physically in the same room, she felt more than ever how much she had grown, and changed… and yet they were still her family, and being around them made her feel like she could remember where she'd come from.

Rachel had not told them about the audition, Chloe soon gathered. It was as she'd said, she'd flown them over for a visit, as far as they knew. She'd been out of the house when Chloe woke up because she'd gone to pick them up at the airport. Now that they were all together, she'd gone off again, so they could have time alone as a family. Chloe debated how she would do this, how she would give them her 'big news,' and in the end she'd decided that there was no better way than to just go ahead and tell them.

"I need to talk to you about something," she started, once they'd all sat down. "The thing is, Miss Berry didn't tell you everything about why she flew you up here. I had no idea she'd done that, but that's good, because I was going to call you anyway."

"Are you alright?" her father asked, and she nodded.

"It's nothing like that, nothing bad, it's… it's good, I guess… very good. It's just sort of… complicated."

"Complicated?" her mother repeated.

"Life-changing," Chloe went on, taking a deep breath. "We did this thing, the rest of the workshop and me, like a… a flash mob? We wanted to have something to remember the workshop by, in case we all got split up and lost touch. And when we were out there, someone saw us. His name is Kurt Hummel, he's a friend of Miss Berry's." And of my birth father's, too. "He's a director, he works… well, he works on Broadway," she kept it to the point. "He saw us, saw me… and he wants me to audition for his new musical," she finally revealed.

Her parents were not the kind she'd expect to see 'flip out,' but that was about as good of a way of putting it, really. For the second time that day, Chloe found herself in a parent sandwich; her father cried.

"That's wonderful, sweetheart," her mother smiled.

"It is?" After all the talk they'd had about her coming home when all this was done, she would have expected her mother to need a bit longer before she jumped to being ecstatic.

"Of course it is," her mother nodded. "Why, don't you want to do it?" Everyone seemed to know this was exactly what she wanted, so why was it so difficult for her to say yes?

"Tell you what, let's go for lunch," her father piped in. "Are you hungry?" he asked Chloe, and she realized then that she hadn't even had breakfast, much less lunch.

"Starved," she admitted.

The next thing she knew, they were headed out, taking a taxi off to the streets which had become second nature to her but were still drawing out the tourists in her parents. They'd told her to pick the restaurant, so she did. All the while as they'd made their order and waited for their lunch, the subject of the audition and whether or not she'd go for it never came up once. Her parents wanted to know more about her life in the city, the things she hadn't necessarily brought up in their communications. They knew about her friends, knew about George – her father wanted to meet him while they were in town – but there was still plenty more for them to learn.

It wasn't until they all had their plates and she'd gone to pick up her fork that she'd put it down again and stared at them, sitting across from her.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked.

"Honey, it's your decision," her father said.

"I know that, but I still want to know what you think," she explained; she had really missed them more than she could say. Her mother and father looked to one another.

"If I were in your place, I'd say yes in a heartbeat," her father said, and her mother nodded her agreement.

"But what about you guys? I can't just leave you, it's not…"

"Chloe," her mother cut in, and she looked up at her again. "Look, you and I both know that it was hard to let you come back here, after what happened the last time. But these last few weeks, I've had to come to the conclusion that maybe some things happen for a reason. If you hadn't run away up here, you wouldn't have run into that Berry woman, and you might never have come back to us. You also wouldn't have been here, in this workshop of hers, and you've been doing so well with that, she's said," her mother nodded. Chloe had a brief thought, wondering if her mother and Miss Berry had been communicating in secret. "And now here you are, with this chance… When life hands you something like this, you don't look for reasons to say no, you look for ways to say yes."

"And how do I…"

"If being away from us is the only thing holding you back, then there's an easy way to fix that… We could move to New York." Chloe blinked.

"You… You'd do that?"

"For you? What do you think?" her father smiled; they'd talked about this before, she realized.

"It's going to take some adjustments, but then that's life for you," her mother added

"Okay, but I haven't even auditioned yet, I could still not get…"

"Not with that attitude," her father chuckled. "But if it'll help you feel better, we won't make any commitments until you know for sure." Chloe let out a breath, and she felt herself smiling. "So what are you waiting for? Give him a call."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!