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Prologue
“Kendra, is that you?”
“Yes, Mom,” Kendra Key said when she shut the front door to the first-floor apartment her mother lived in. She was on the third floor, renters on the second.
To some it might not be ideal or the best location outside of downtown Charlotte, but owning the multiple-level home gave her some financial freedom and let her care for her mother.
“Don’t you look pretty,” her mother said. Kendra walked into the little room off the living room that her mother used as her office. It was more like a large closet than an actual room. She supposed someone could use it as a nursery, but with it facing the road, it wasn’t that quiet. It had some good light and that was what her mother needed.
“Like you can tell,” she said, letting out a laugh.
“I can sense your excitement and happiness,” her mother said. “And you aren’t boxy like normal so I think you’ve got a skirt on.”
She let out a sigh. Her mother couldn’t see details. She couldn’t recognize colors either other than lighter and darker shades, but she could piece together shapes more than anything if someone was close enough.
“I do have a skirt on. I wanted to make a good impression on my third interview with Ella Fierce McKinley. Jolene Fierce was in this interview too along with a few other members of the family and office staff.” Six people total and she’d been sweating more than she did when she got her drivers’ license and had to start carting her mother everywhere.
Most kids would be excited to have that mobile freedom, but Kendra knew deep down it was the start of her world changing forever. Maybe that was why she dragged her feet taking the test. She saw the writing on the wall.
“I’m going to assume it went well,” her mother said. “Your energy is almost infectious. You are all but dancing in your spot.”
“They offered me the job. I didn’t even make it to the driveway when the call came in.”
“You answered it while you were driving?” her mother asked.
Kendra knew that tone.“Hands free, Mom. I’ve told you that before. It’s hitting a button on the steering wheel. I was almost home. I wasn’t distracted.”
Her mother smiled. She wished her mother could see her own reflection when she did that.
Karen Key was an attractive woman at fifty years old. Kendra was an only child, her mother having her at the young age of twenty-one.
Back when things were better in her mother’s life. Just not for long.
“So you’ve got the job,” her mother said. “That’s wonderful. Is it what you want? You know how I feel about you changing jobs all the time. I’ve had mine for fifteen years.”
Her mother was fortunate that way. That she worked for a company that would create a job for her as her vision started to deteriorate so badly that she couldn’t read letters on a screen. She couldn’t drive anymore or do most daily functions as she had years ago. Or the same as she had years ago.
Kendra cared for her mother but not to the point she felt strapped to her.
Her mother was able to move around her apartment well. Feed herself, cook a few things without Kendra worrying about the house burning down. More like Kendra and her mother cooked meals together a few times a week and enough for her mother to warm up when Kendra wasn’t around.
It wasn’t as hard or bad as she’d thought it would be when she was sixteen and looking into the future with fearful eyes. And right now they had their own spaces.
“You’re lucky that way. But you know why I wanted to leave my current job.”
“You need to be happy with your career and not so much worrying about me.”
“I hate my job,” she said. “That is why I’m leaving it. There is no growth there.”
She was an executive assistant for a wealth management firm. She had a bachelor's in business administration but no concentration in any area.
She didn’t like accounting enough to focus on that. She didn’t see herself doing sales or marketing. She didn’t find she was strong enough to be a manager.
She liked to keep to herself, do her job and organize.
Give her a task and she’d finish it before it was due. She liked to manage projects not people. She liked to analyze data and assist.
In her eyes she was a problem solver. She was a team player.
