“I’m pretty sure she didn’t,” I said. “We didn’t talk about our jobs, so I didn’t even know she’s a mechanic, and I didn’t mention racing. I guess she could have looked it up and seen a picture of me, but she looked really surprised when she saw me in the garage. Then she offered to leave if it made me uncomfortable for her to be here. I really think it was as much a shock to her as it was to me.”
I fielded a few more questions from my brothers and father but didn’t elaborate anymore. I stuck to the same details, not wanting to drift too far into anything personal or give them more information than they needed. I knew full well my brothers knew exactly who she was. They were there the night I met Kelly and again on my birthday a few days ago when I saw her again. What really mattered was they all seemed to be fine with the idea of her working there, and I was glad for that.
I was happy when the conversation finally detoured to another topic, and I could relax away from the hot seat. I ended up eating another sandwich along with potato salad and a cheese wafer, finishing the meal up with one of the restaurant’s pineapple cupcakes. Mom was a fantastic baker and created most of my favorite things to eat, but there was something special about the pineapple cupcakes from Belle’s. Whatever it was, I could probably eat a dozen of them by myself.
After dinner, I headed home. Now that I knew she had officially been hired, I wanted to call her. Everything was out in the open, so it wouldn’t have been that hard to ask Mom for her number. I could call and check in with her, to congratulate her for her new job. But I stopped myself before I did. I didn’t want to overstep. Mom let me know her first day was Monday. I could wait until then when she was in my space and we were at the beginning of our new normal.
10
Kelly
Choosing where we were going to live wasn’t easy before leaving Canada. I had to try it to find the perfect spot for Willa and me from a different country and trust it was going to be as good in person as it was online. It was a major risk, a leap of faith I was nervous about making. When I first started talking about making the big move, Kira pointed out going to visit Charlotte in the first place had been my idea. I already knew it, and loved it, so why not go back?
Fortunately, I was able to find the little apartment and had spoken to the wonderful landlord several times before committing to the place.
I was still a bit anxious when we arrived, but I found the apartment to be even better than I thought. And it wasn’t just the place itself that made me happy. One of the reasons I was interested in the apartment to begin with was the adorable little park not far away. We could easily walk there and enjoy not only the elaborate play area, but the splash pad. That would be a fantastic respite during the intense hot weather of the summer.
The park was where Willa and I went to spend the day after I found out about getting the job at Freeman. As excited as I was about getting back into a garage and working on bikes again, it wasn’t lost on me that going back to working outside the home would mean less time with my little girl. It had been the two of us since the day she was born, and I was already starting to feel the pangs of missing her. It was a few days until I started work, so I wanted to savor every minute before then.
We got to the park a little while after breakfast, and there were already several families there. I brought Willa over to the sandbox, and she immediately wriggled over to another cute little girl sitting in the sand. She picked up a purple shovel and started digging while the other little girl moved it into a bucket.
“They seem very intent on whatever they’re doing,” a young woman with a short, dark bob said, gesturing to the girls.
“Yes, they do,” I said with a slight laugh. “It is very serious work.”
She smiled at me. “I’m Katie. That’s my daughter, Sara.”
“Kelly. And that’s Willa.”
Katie and I fell into small talk that eventually drifted into a more personal conversation. I learned she was also a single mother and lived just a few blocks in the opposite direction of the park as Willa and I did. She worked as a medical assistant and had another child, a five-year-old boy named Harrison, who was in school. She said that with the sniffling sound in her voice I knew I was going to have when it came time to send Willa to kindergarten. It was still years in the future, but I was already feeling sad about leaving her for that first day.