'Where,' Nancy Parker sounded unimpressed, 'are my car keys? I'm sure I hung them up yesterday.'

Searching the kitchen, living room and the bedroom she shared with her husband, she finally threw her hands up in the air. 'Jeff,' she yelled into the small fourth bedroom they'd converted into an office, 'have you seen my car keys.'

'Liz asked to borrow the car last night,' he swivelled on his chair to face his frustrated wife. 'She's doing the opening if you want to go down and ask her where she put them. I didn't hear her come home last night but saw the car in the alley this morning.'

'Liz would have hung them back up,' Nancy sounded confused. 'Not,' she hesitated, 'that she asks for the car often. Do you know where she went?'

'Nope,' he pulled off his glasses and placed them on the desk. Getting up, Jeff stretched. 'After the last couple of months, I'm not asking either. I'm going to make a coffee, do you want one before heading out.'

'Please,' Nancy called, walking across the hall into her daughter's room and her last hope of locating her keys.

The bed seemed unusually rumpled. Then again, Liz normally made it before leaving for her shift at the diner downstairs. Sighing heavily, Nancy couldn't be mad. After all, her daughter didn't give them too many headaches.

'Well, accept that whole staying out all night with Max a few months back,' Nancy reminded herself as she pulled up the sheets and doona. 'Funny, I could have sworn Liz usually slept on the other side. Not that I've made her bed for years now.'

Taking a quick look around the room, nothing else seemed out of place. However it meant her car keys weren't obviously laying around either. After a more thorough check of the chest of draws and desk, Nancy entered the bathroom. Lying on the floor beside the dirty clothes basket she spotted her object. Unfortunately she noticed something else which made her blood run cold.

'Jeff,' she demanded in a loud, clear voice, 'come in here please.'

The tone brought an instant response. Forgetting the coffee machine, he rushed to see what had upset his wife. Standing in Liz's bathroom, she held a white pen like device out to him. Taking it from Nancy's shaking fingers he looked at the small window.

'I think,' he swallowed hard before looking up into the teary eyes of his wife, 'we can safely assume our daughter and her boyfriend have made up.'

'It's always the good girls who get caught,' Nancy agreed. 'What are we going to do?'

'Give them a chance to explain themselves and then listen as they tell us how they're going to handle this,' Jeff sounded stoic. 'If Liz is making these kinds of adult choices, she needs to take adult responsibility for them. We can stand by her decisions, even help make her path easer but we need to let her feel the consequence of her actions.'

'Right,' Nancy tried to keep her emotions at bay. 'Suddenly I don't feel like going out,' she burst into tears and fell into her husband's waiting arms.

Would you like to see the reaction to this situation? Leave me a line or two. I love to include others ideas if they fit with my overall plot.