Page 13 of Fierce-Ivan

“Plus it makes a lot and we have it for a few days.”

“I’m making a double batch,” she said. “We’ll freeze one and can take it out another night.”

“Always so smart,” her mother said. “Tell me about your day. How is work going?”

“It’s great,” she said. “I told you how I was working on a new project and I’ll be doing it with Ella’s cousin Ivan.”

“The guy that doesn’t work there but helps out?” Karen asked.

“Yes, him. He’s nice.”

Kendra debated on if she should tell her mother what she discovered today and realized that if there was one person she could confide in, it was the lady in this room. The two women only had each other when her father decided that it was too much work to deal with a wife who was going blind and left when Kendra got her drivers’ license.

Kevin Key paid child support until Kendra was twenty-one because the court demanded it while she was in college. It would have been longer if Kendra didn’t graduate from college earlier, but she wasn’t going to go to school longer to make her father pay up when she could make more getting a job.

By the time she was done with college, her mother was working from home. Her job had changed, but she still had one she enjoyed and that was all that mattered.

The company was fair and supportive and Karen felt like she had value.

They didn’t have a lot, but they had each other.

When Kendra got her first job, they had more. Her mother wouldn’t let her pay the mortgage, but she took care of all the food and other expenses and it gave them both a lot of breathing room.

After a few years of looking, she’d found the house she now owned. Her mother sold their home and after the balance of the mortgage was paid off, her father getting half—which she felt was a dick move on his part after everything he’d done to them—and the realtor fees, her mother had twenty thousand dollars. She gave it to Kendra to put down on their current home.

She’d argued that she didn’t want the money and her mother insisted, saying that if she was living here for free, the least she could do was put some money into it.

That twenty thousand wouldn’t even pay for two years of rent in a place the size of what she had so she’d taken the money knowing it would lower her monthly payment too.

Everyone won in the end.

“Is he handsome?” Karen asked in a humorous voice she had so often.

“He is,” Kendra said. She pulled the boiling water off the stove and drained the noodles, her glasses fogging up and forcing her to take them off.

“So ask him out,” her mother said.

“I don’t know. Here’s the thing.” She stopped talking while she ran the cold water over the noodles to let them cool enough to layer the dish. “Remember how I told you that Jolene Fierce set all her kids up and her nephews?”

“Yes,” her mother said and moved to the counter and started to set up the ingredients for their dinner. Her mother would layer it all and Kendra would put the Bolognese between the layers while Karen did the rest.

“And that Ella was helping to keep her mother away from me?”

“Which is very sweet of your boss to do,” her mother said as they got to work on their dinner.

“It is. Ella is great. I love how she stands up to her mother and gives her crap. They all do. But they listen to her too. They have a lot of respect for their parents. Well, anyway, Ella told me today that her mother has me picked for Ivan. She thought it was funny I didn’t realize it. She thought for sure I knew that.”

“Why didn’t you realize it?” Karen asked.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“Yes, you do, Kendra.”

She let out a sigh. Not much got past her mother either. “I didn’t think I was good enough for him. Or a member of their family.”

“I didn’t get the feeling that the Fierces were stuck-up people, but I could be wrong.”

“They aren’t,” she said.