When James Walker heard footsteps running down the stairs he set his newspaper aside and counted the seconds before his daughter would come running through the living room into the dining room as she always did when he returned from his increasingly frequent business trips. From the top of the stairs he could hear his wife vainly trying to keep Molly from running on the stairs and her slower descent.
"Daddy! You're home!" Molly threw her arms around her father as climbed onto his lap. "Look what I drew!" Molly held open a page from her favorite coloring book, A Children's Atlas of the United States, that she had brought downstairs. "I colored Washington. Mommy showed me which one it was because that's where you went!"
"That's very pretty, sweetheart." James pulled the book for a closer inspection. He noticed that unlike all of the other pages, where Molly colored the shape of the state in a single color Washington was dotted with a differently colored crayon smudges that happened to be located exactly where he had traveled on his most recent trip. "What are these marks?"
Molly's eyes narrowed in concentration as she looked at the page before turning to smile at James. "That's where I saw you."
"You saw me?" James asked cautiously. He knew that Molly occasionally would tell him stories and had a healthy imagination; however, he could never be too certain. He certainly had talents that could hardly be considered normal.
"I saw you," Molly repeated. " I took the crayon –" She picked up a pen that lay on the table. "Then I closed my eyes. I thought about you, and I could see you and put the crayon where you were." With her eyes closed Molly absently flipped through the coloring book and jabbed the pen on the map of California at the position where their house was. "See you're at home now." Molly pointed to another crayon smudge around central California. "That's when I saw you on a plane."
"That's amazing." James said as Molly smiled. His daughter was obviously proud of herself, and he saw no reason for her not to be. However, he had learned that certain talents required an appropriate amount of discretion that he was not sure a five-year-old girl could understand. "Sweetheart, does anyone else know that you can find people?"
Molly's face broke into an even wider smile. "When we play hide and seek on the playground everyone knows I'm the best!"
James had known that Molly prided herself on her prowess at hide and seek, but he was still concerned that people might not understand her unique talent. "Yes, but does anyone know how you find them?"
"Dad, if I told them that then they would think I cheated and wouldn't want to play with me anymore." Molly sounded exasperated that James did not understand exactly how important hide and seek was.
"Does anyone think it's strange that you always know where they are?" James still wasn't sure that Molly truly understood the severity of the situation.
"If I found people too quickly they wouldn't want to play with me anymore."
James smiled at the priorities in his daughter's life. He doubted that any rationale he could use to try and convince Molly to keep her talent a secret would be understood, so there was no harm in using hide and seek. "Molly, let's make a deal. Let's keep it a secret that you can find people and everyone else will just think that you are the best at hide and seek."
Molly grinned. "Deal!"
James's wife had emerged from the kitchen carrying breakfast for Molly and herself and inquired about her husband's recent trip.
Molly slid from James's lap into her own chair. "Daddy? Are you going to go away again?" Molly was distracted from hide and seek at the prospect of her dad leaving again.
"I'm afraid so, Sweetheart." James could never stand to see Molly's face fall like that. "What if we played a game whenever I go away?"
"A game?" Molly sounded confused.
"Just like hide and go seek. We'll go to the store and buy you a big map. Then each time I go away I won't tell you where I'm going, and you try to find me." This had the desired effect as Molly was smiling again.
"When are you going away again?" Molly asked, now excited.
"Are you that excited for me to leave?" James asked with a smile.
"No," Molly scrunched up her face in disgust, "but we can't play hide and seek if you stay here."