A/N: This is a very short little idea that occured to me. I kept meaning to expand it, but I realized that it was a complete idea as it was.
Happenstance
In the end she did as society might have expected. She married Ned Nickerson when she was twenty-one. It was a lovely ceremony- a red-headed blushing bride, twinkling blue eyes shining from behind the delicate lace of her veil, white roses scattered everywhere. Ned looked handsome in his suit, gazing, besotted, at his bride as she sauntered up the aisle, wondering how he got so lucky as to have gotten himself such a beautiful, clever girl.
She hung up her magnifying glass. Never formally really, but running a house is no easy task, and it only got harder when the kids starting arriving. By the time they have four, she can barely remember a life before diapers and applesauce and report cards. There certainly is no time for care-free frolicking to parties and crime scenes.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. She loves Ned, really, and the children really are the light of her life. Never having had a mother herself, she is dedicated wholly unto them, slavishly. But there is a nagging there that says that at one point she was good, really good, at something besides tossing salads and whipping drippy noses. These days her much vaunted deductive skills are most often put to use figuring out who broke the vase in the foyer.
When the children are finally all in school, her newfound free time (not that there's much of it) becomes dedicated to coffee dates with Bess and George, who have long since married and had children of their own, and shopping. She has forgotten Nancy Drew, girl detective, and keeps forgetting it until her oldest, Katie, begins to display a sleuth streak of her own. Though little Alice is contented playing with dolls, Katie is never happier than when she investigating a missing bike or absconding pet. Ned watches it with a fond smile that reminisces about another young redhead with a penchant for mystery, but for Nancy it is a reminder of the freedom she once had and lost. She wraps that disturbing thought in paper and places it on the shelf before telling Katie to do her homework.