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took out her brand-new calling card, and dialed her parents’ home number. In the middle of a summer Sunday afternoon, her father was probably relaxing with a beer in front of the TV while her mother finished cleanup from the family dinner. For most Sundays in her life, Kelsey had been there to help with the cleanup. It gave her a lump in her throat to think that that family tradition was a thing of the past now—at least, for her.
    When Kathleen Malone answered the phone, Kelsey heard the sounds of water running in the background. Without even closing her eyes, she could easily summon a picture of her mother, still wearing her church dress with Grandma Kelly’s ruffled bib apron covering most of it, washing dishes in the sink while the nearby dishwasher served as draining rack. “Hi, Mom, it’s me,” she said, expending extra effort to make certain her voice sounded cheerful.
    “Kelsey! Did you get there safely? Is everything all right? Let me dry my hands so I can get your phone number before I forget. We missed you today at dinner. The table seemed awfully emp—”
    “Mom, I’m fine. I don’t have a phone yet—I’ll get thattaken care of tomorrow—so you can keep washing dishes.”
    “Well? What’s it like? The town, I mean. Is it everything you’d hoped for?”
    “It’s pretty, Mom. It’s old, but it’s very charming. It sits in a valley with mountains all around, and it’s really lovely. You’d like it.”
    “Was it worth moving halfway across the state for?”
    Kelsey sighed softly. To say her parents weren’t happy about her moving was a slight understatement. She understood their concern. She was their only daughter, and they worried about her. There would be a lot less to worry about with her living in Bethlehem, she’d tried to tell them—shorter hours, a safer environment, less crime, less stress—but they hadn’t been convinced. They wouldn’t stop worrying until she was married, staying home, and having babies, and preferably living only a few blocks away, like her brother, Sean.
    “It’s not so far, Mom,” she said patiently. “You can come visit any weekend, and I can come home from time to time.”
    “You can’t come for Sunday dinner. You can’t come to your cousin Angela’s baby shower this Friday. Of course”—honesty forced Kathleen to acknowledge this—“not being too fond of Angela, you would have found some way to get out of that even if you were here.”
    “Yes, I would have,” Kelsey agreed with a laugh.
    “So tell me all about your apartment.”
    “I haven’t seen it yet. I just got into town not ten minutes ago.”
    “I can’t believe you signed a lease on a place without seeing it first. It could be a dump. It could be on the wrong side of town. It might not even exist. The man could have taken your money and left the state.”
    “Mom, I don’t think Bethlehem
has
a wrong side oftown. I’m not sure they have any dumps either.” All the houses she’d caught a glimpse of in her back-and-forth tour of downtown were neatly maintained, not unlike the houses surrounding her parents’ place. “I haven’t signed anything, and no one’s taken my money. I offered to send the manager a check for the deposit, and he said it wasn’t necessary, that we could take care of it when I got here.” A town with so few child welfare problems that it needed only a part-time social worker, and an apartment manager willing to do business with a stranger based on nothing more than a verbal handshake—two strong suggestions that she was in for a nice change of pace.
    “Well, I hope you haven’t been taken,” Kathleen said stubbornly. “And remember, honey, nothing’s permanent. If you find that you’ve made a mistake, you can always come back home.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind. I’d better get going. I gave you both my home and office addresses, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, I’ve got them.”
    “And I’ll call you this week with the phone numbers. Give Dad a