“Yeah,” Molly said flatly.
Mrs. Carmichael reached for Molly’s hand. “So, how are things between you two? Are they looking good?”
Suddenly, the pain that had found Molly’s heart back when she looked at that empty house returned with a vengeance. Tears filled her eyes and she turned her face away from her mom’s concerned gaze. “Mom... I don’t know...”
“What’s wrong, sweetie? What’s wrong?” Mrs. Carmichael pulled Molly into her arms. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
“Nicholas and me... What if we’re too different? What if we tried to be together and he ended up breaking my heart all over again?” The words rushed out of her, finally finding a voice to her fears. “It was bad enough with Roger. With Nicholas, I know that it’s going to be even worse. And I don’t know if I can handle that kind of pain right now. I don’t know if I’m ready for it. Ugh. Why do we have to be so different?”
Mrs. Carmichael rubbed big circles into Molly’s back for a moment before she pulled away from her daughter. “Molly.”
“Yeah?” Molly responded, wiping a tear away from the corner of her eye. She must still be exhausted from baking all night. She never cried like this.
“I used to smoke.”
“What? Mom, you smoked?” Molly stared at her mother in shock.
“Like a chimney,” Mrs. Carmichael admitted with a grin at her daughter. “I would smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. I had to or else I was the grumpiest woman in the world. Your dad actually met me during one of my smoke breaks.”
“But I thought dad has asthma?” Molly was confused by the direction of her mother’s story.
“He does,” Mrs. Carmichael said, nodding her head. “That’s what made us as a couple so preposterous. There I was, taking a smoke break outside the restaurant where I waitressed, and out comes your father, from the same restaurant. Except he’s coming out to complain about there being too much smoke coming from the back kitchen.”
“So how did you two even end up together?” Molly asked, intrigued by her mother’s story. It was a side of her she'd never known.
“Your father, who was coughing up a lung at the time, told me that he wanted to use the last of his breath to tell me how beautiful he thought I was,” Mrs. Carmichael said fondly, her eyes distant with the memory. “And then, he somehow managed to find enough extra breath to ask me out.”
“But you don’t smoke anymore. I’ve never seen you smoke a day in my life...” Molly tilted her head to the side as she wondered if her mother had been able to hide her smoking habit for the past twenty-five plus years.
“No. I don’t. I quit cold-turkey about a week after I started going out with your father,” Mrs. Carmichael told her. “I didn’t like that it was hurting him, and I was a little worried that he’d have to break up with me so that he could have a nice, long, healthy life. And I didn’t want to ruin my own chance at being a part of his nice, long, healthy life.”
“I'm glad you did,” Molly told her.
“Me, too,” she said. Mrs. Carmichael looked over at her daughter and smiled. “What I’m saying is that if you two are so different, one of you will have to change. That’s just how it is. But change doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. If I’d refused to change, I would’ve never been with your father and I wouldn’t have the best kid in the state.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Molly said with a blush. “I thought you liked Liam better than me.”
“Oh, Molly.” Mrs. Carmichael shook her head with a soft laugh. “If you two are meant to be together, the change will come easily. Maybe it’ll be him. Maybe it’ll be you. Maybe both of you. But whichever way it happens, I promise you that the change will feel natural. And it won’t be something that you could ever force. You just have to feel it.”
“That sounds complicated,” Molly said with a sigh.
Mrs. Carmichael placed her hands on Molly’s face, clearing away the rest of her daughter’s tears. “When you feel it, you’ll know.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Molly said with a final sniffle, and the tears finally stopped building behind her eyes.
“I figured you needed a little advice. Why else would I tell you about my old smoking habit?” Mrs. Carmichael replied before she kissed Molly on the tip of her forehead. “I planned on taking that secret to the grave. Ah, well. Now, I’ll have to keep the one about how your father and I robbed a bank pretty close to the vest.”
“Wait, what? You and dad robbed a bank?!”
Mrs. Carmichael walked away from the conversation with Molly right behind her. Suddenly Molly wondered where the random “rainy day” money had come from. And just why had they insisted on moving to this small town?
“Mom, tell me you’re joking. Mom!”
Mrs. Carmichael seemed to ignore her daughter’s pleas for more information, even as they both made their way into the kitchen. Mrs. Carmichael soon joined Mr. Carmichael and Liam where they were hunched over the kitchen counter.
Molly let her line of questioning go once she spotted the cookies on the kitchen counter. She joined her family around the cookie platter and spent the rest of her afternoon laughing with Liam, listening to her parents detail how they spent their fabulous vacation time in Miami, and eating far too many cookies.
Chapter 28