Chapter 1
"Mom," Miley found herself shriek out loud, as she saw the bright red pickup truck charging towards their small black shot her head to the right, and the look on his face almost said it all.
She clearly feared for both of their lives. Before Miley knew it, their little black car viciously spun around to the left side of the road. And in a split second, a car coming from the other side of the highway crossroad crashed into where Miley and her mother were sitting, and she felt two or three flips as the car threw her back anf forth banging her body against the window and car doors. She could hear screams, cars honking their horns, and the police making there way over to the scene.
"Mom!" Miley screamed once again. "Mom," she quietly whispered as her own tears were choking her. But she lay there still as a rock, motionless beside her daughter.
"Miley," said her wife, Lilly, wo was in the passenger's seat now, watching Miley stare into the middle of nowhere. "Miley?" he questioned louder and more urgently.
"What?" she replied impatiently, almost jumping out of her seat, looking into the dusty rear view mirror.
"You know," she said, staring out the window, " you could keep and eye on the road every now and then." She threw Lilly an unhealthy glance and gripped her fingers tigher on the steering wheel and the car picked up speed.
"It's just that crossroad," Miley said quietly, "I'm sorry." She shook her head and stopped at the stopsign before hitting their neighborhood road.
When she parked the car into their tiny driveway, her daughter, Elizabeth, came running toward her out from the screen door. She was dressed in her pink and lime green fairy costume holding a sparkly wand in one hand and an orange empty pumpkin bucket in the other.
"Grandpa said he would take me trick-or-treating tonight!" Elizabeth exclained with a huge smile spread across her dimpled face.
Miley looked releved and thanked her own father, who was standing in the front doorway with the door wide open. He just nodded her head and stolled back in the house, as Abigail followed behind him.
"I made some coffee" her father said barely audible for her to hear as she sat the two coffee mugs on the glass table. They made a soft ringing sound that caused Miley to look forward. She quickly tied up her long brown hair into a ponytail from he shoulders.
"Oh," she she relied glancing at the table then her father, "actually, I'm heading to work right now."
Her father looked at her and said, "But I thought you were off today... and its Halloween night"
"Yeah, well I got a call and I have to fill in for Mikayla tonight." Miley said grabbing her coat. As she left, her mom took the mugs frm the table and started cleaning up the kitchen for tonight and set a bwol of chocolates for later trick-or-teaters.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Lilly asked, dropping the rake into a ple of colorful and fallen leaves onto the brown lawn.
"Work," she simply stated as Lilly came over to her, smiling. She gave her wife a quick hug and told her she'd see her later that night. As she backed out of the driveway Lilly picked up Elizabeth, both waving to Lilly in the car. She waved back and headed her way to work in her gray Taurus car.
When she arrived to the hairdressers, she already had a customer waiting for her to style her hair. She quickly apologized to her and set up her salon for that night's work.
"Miley," her boss, Richard called from the front desk. "You have someone waiting on the line." he informed her waiting for her reply.
"Uh..." she hesitated as she was curling the customer's highlighted blonde hair, "just have them leave a message and I will get back with them, thanks."
He shrugged his shoulders, and before there was time for Lilly to say it was a very important phone call, Richard quickly told her to leave a message for Miley and slammed the corddless phone down on the desk continuing with his work.
Chapter 2
By the time Miley got home that night, Lilly and Elizabeth were sound asleep. She had worked until 10:30 P.M. and she was exhausted.
She creeked into the house trying not to awake anyone. In about six hours, her wife would be waking up to report to work for the day. Since it was a Saturday, she wouldn't have to go the hairdresser's and Lizzie of course would be off of school for the weekend. It was her seventh birthday tomorrow, and Miley still had alot of work to be done for the party.
"I could probably drop Lizzie off at dad's house in the morning" she thought as she crawled into bed.
It was last minute timing, and Miley still needed to find space to bake Elizabeth's chocolate and pink iced cake, get everything ready at their local bowling alley, where she would be celebrating her party with friends, and wrapping all of her daughter's birthday presents.
The next morning Miley followed along with her plan, she dropped Elizabeth off at her grandmother's house, and got everything set up for her birthday party later that night.
It was around 5 P.M. when "Happy Birthday" was finished being sung by a chorus of 9 little 2nd grade girls.
"Make a wish Lizzie!" Miley yelled softly with a huge grin on her face and the camera covering half of it. Elizabeth gently closed her big blue eyes and about ten seconds later re-opened then and all seven candles went out in a flash with one blow.
When Elizabeth flinshed her wish and all of her candles were blown out, Miley came running from the doors toward Lizzie with a handful of lavender wrapped presents with small pink bows tied from every corner.
"Mommy," she yelled from the table, as she flung her arms around her second mother. "I missed you!"
"Sorry I'm late sweetie." she said with her hands full, doing his best to hug her little daughter back without dropping Elizabeth's present on the floor. "Happy Birthday!" Lizzie just smiled and weent along running with her friends down the bowling alley stairs.
"Hey, be careful!" Miley warned and and smiled. "What have you been up to?" she asked Lilly, turning around on her heels.
"I got in some extra hours at work," Lilly admitted. "Sorry I'm so late."
Miley's face was so hidden from the camera half the time it seemed as if she was filming the whole birthday party because the camera neer left the tight grip of her hands.
"Whoo," Lizzie yelled from behind them,"Strike!" She was jumping up and down in the air as all her friends congradulated her and gave her high-fives. Miley's face fell when she found out that she had just missed her daughter's very first strike. She then went back to cutting the vanilla birthday cake into perfect squares to serve to Elizabeth's birthday guests and refilling the plastic cups.
Lilly stepped closer to Miley and calmly told her, "Look, there's something important I need to explain to you, and possibly Elizabeth later on."
Miley's forehead crinkled, and she said, "Not now, it's Lizzie's birthday party." Lilly looked taken aback and started saying it was she that had called her work while Miley was at the hairdressers last night, but Miley refused to talk because it was time to eat cake and she offered, "We'll talk later on tonight, when we go home, okay?"
Elizabeth and all of the girls came running from behind them and Lilly had no other choice, but to agree with her wife.
Chapter 3
When Miley heard the news she couldn't believe it. "What?" she questioned Lilly for what seemed the hundredth time. She looked around at all the things the had already unpacked in the current house, and thought about all the trouble it was to get it here in the first place.
"My job is tranferring us, we have no choice but to sell this house." she said qietly, almost afraid to speak. Miley had a worried look on her face and thought about everything. She would have to start a new job, Elizabeth would have transfer to another school - again, and they would have to put their house up for the market.
"Houses aren't selling well right now," she told Lilly in a hushed tone, trying not to wake Elizabeth who was asleep on the couch next to them. Her soft blue blanket was draped over her tiny shoulders as she lay there sound asleep. "We can't leave Hendersonville now..." she trailed off.
"I know Miles, but what other is there I can do?" she asked, this time getting louder. "If I don't take this job who knows what will happen to us here?" Miley frowned as Lilly continued, "And we can barely keep up with the taxes we are dealing with right now!" Lilly exclaimed, furiously. Miley looked taken aback and walked out of the room in silence. She stood at the backdoor as Lilly walked up from behind her. Apologizing for being so difficult, Lilly told Miley that this was the last oppurtunity thet had left, all while hugging Miley close to her.
She had nothing else to say except, "Okay, I know... I'm sorry, it's just..." she started off but looked at the confusion left on her wife's face and she shook her head. "So when will we move, and where?" she impatiently questioned him.
"As soon as we can... we need to find a realtor to sell this house, and you probably need to tell your boss about the situation soon. And, really we aren't moving out of Tennessee," he said with a small knew how much Miley loved the state they were in. "We're actually moving to a larger city here, in Nashville," she informed Miley.
Miley stared at the flowers in the sparkling vase left on the glass table and her vision trailed to Elizabeth who was stratching, and a few seconds later she awoke.
"Mommy," Lizzie called from the couch as Miley picked her up in her hands. Looking at Lilly, Miley wondered when they would tell Elizabeth. Both women knew how upsetting it would be to Lizzie, to leave her hometown of Hendersonville in such a flash.
Later that night, while the whole family was walking aroung the neighborhood, Lilly broke the silence and said, "Elizabeth, do you remember how much you hated Hendersonville when we moved from Franklin, and it was only just a few miles away?" Elizabeth just nodded and continued to eat her strawberry flavored ice cream cone.
"And now you love it here, don't you?" Lilly questioned looking at her daughter. Elizabeth nodded once again, without saying a word.
Miley was worried she would take this the wrong way, and said, purposely interrupting her woife, "Okay... I think it's time we turn around, it'ds getting dark outside."
Lilly flashed her wife a look of warning and raised her light blonde eyebrows toward her wife. As they turned around, she went on, "Well, Mama is getting transferred to another city for her job." Elizabeth looked up at Lilly slowly, and Lilly could see her wife's face in Elizabeth's, the same way Miley looked at Lilly when she had told Miley this earlier that day. "But it's a quite larger town than Hendersonville, Nashville, in fact. You'll make plenty more friends there and there's so much more to do there, you'll see."
Elizabeth stopped walking at first and dropped her ice cream cone onto the sidewalk. Miley walked over to Elizabeth and grabbed er daughter's hand. "Come on Lizzie, we have to head home."
From the glow on the neighborhood streetlights, Abby could just see an outline of Elizabeth's face, but she could have sworn she saw a glistening tear or two stream down her daughter's face in the night.
Their whole walk home was in silence, and nothing more. Lilly still had a pit of fultiness left in her stomach because she knew she still had more news to tell Miley. There was more than just moving, and she wasn't sure how Miley was going to take it. "I'll tell her tomorrow," Lilly thought to herself as she kept her fast pace on the concrete sidewalk.