[1] Home Is Where the Heart Is

(1) Welcome Home

🔷 Before you read, please remember votes and comments = more chapters—no votes or asking me to "please update" comments = no chapters. Just follow me so you know I've updated instead of asking me to. Thank you.🔷

❈•≫────≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫────≪•❈

A three-door blue Ford Focus pulls onto the drive, a modern two-floor semi-detached Tudor-style home with a garage. As soon as the engine cuts off, a blonde woman in her late 20s steps out of the vehicle, closing the car door behind her and peering up at the house before opening the boot, pulling out her suitcase, and shutting it closed when suddenly the front door opens.

"Isabelle! My darling girl!" an older woman named Joyce Barnaby comes dashing towards her youngest daughter, embracing her in a loving embrace and pecking her on the cheek, "It's so wonderful to see you!"

"Hello, mum," Isabelle said, returning her mother's embrace and kissing her cheek.

They are both now separate, as the eldest enquired, taking hold of her daughter's suitcase. "How was the journey up from London?"

"I did it in two hours, so it was a pretty good time, actually," the younger complied with a shrug as they entered the house. She closed the front door behind them, leaving Isabelle's suitcase beside it as they wandered into the kitchen.

"That's good then," Joyce went to grab the kettle and filled it with fresh water, "Fancy a tea or coffee, dear?"

"A tea would be lovely, mum, thanks," the young blonde leaned against the kitchen counter as her mother now grabbed some mugs from a white kitchen cupboard as the kettle boiled, "I haven't heard from Cully in a while. So, how's she been?"

"Oh, you know your sister. She's always here, there, and everywhere, going from one extreme to the next," Joyce plonks a teabag in each cup. " She never likes to sit still for a moment, that girl."

"I know, but it's just something Cully and I have in common as sisters," Isabelle smiled fondly. Our sense of discovery and adventure."

"You both get that from your father," Joyce implied, glancing over her shoulder before pouring boiling water into each mug.

"Get what from me?" the voice of one Thomas Barnaby, or Tom as he liked to go by, questioned from behind both women in the kitchen doorway.

"Nothing, dear. We were talking about Cully," Joyce responded simply with a shrug. " I didn't hear you come in. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"I have my ways, and tea would be lovely. Thank you, dear," Tom complied before turning to his youngest daughter and happily beaming, "Is that my Isabelle?"

"Alright, Dad," he hugged her tightly and pulled back slightly to look down at her with pride.

"Or should I now say, PC Barnaby?"