2. Kayla
The only thing stopping Kayla from repeatedly banging her head against the kitchen table was knowing that it would definitely leave a mark and she could get called into work at any time this week. Which was part of the reason that she wanted to smack her head against a hard surface. Maybe she could give herself amnesia and forget about her stupid job altogether. Unwilling to give herself brain damage, however, and taking the responsible route, Kayla sighed and opened her eyes, looking back at the job search page she’d been scrolling through for the last hour.
Nothing had really caught her interest or grabbed her attention enough for her to start thinking about a new life with the particular job advertised. It would still be some version of paperwork and offices, coffee runs and emails, emails, and more emails. Despite her lack of enthusiasm, she’d still favorited a dozen listings, tallying a list to send resumes to because surely they had to be better than where she was now.
Hopefully. Maybe. Well, it couldn’t be much worse, could it?
Her current job was to serve legal papers to people who were getting sued or otherwise taken to court for whatever reason, and there seemed to be as many reasons as there were people. Someone slipped on private property and broke their hip. Someone said something defamatory, damaged property, got left out of the will, wanted a divorce, broke a contract… The list was endless. And it was her job to inform people that they were about to have legal action taken against them.
She’d had every curse word under the sun thrown at her and more than a few vases, too. Plenty of doors had been slammed in her face, hard enough to leave her ears ringing, and she’d had to bear witness to a lot of crying as well. Serving papers wasn’t exactly a happy experience for anyone involved.
Kayla had a fair few legal firms and courts on her books, contacting her to get the papers delivered. Some things just had to be done the old-fashioned way. No emails, no texts, nothing that could be excused away as getting lost in the humdrum of life. It was better to show up at someone’s door and say to their face, “Hey mister so and so. You’re being taken to court. Here’s the information you need. Godspeed. Please don’t throw a vase at me.”
Law firms liked Kayla because she was unassuming. Which was a really nice way of saying that she was sneaky. Sometimes people knew a court case was on the cards and would hide away, opening doors for no one and traveling wherever they could to avoid the physical handover that would kick off the official proceedings. They expected a bony, middle-aged man in a dark suit to be knocking on their door. If it was a more paranoid individual, they might be expecting something closer to a nightclub bouncer or a SWAT team.
What they weren’t expecting was a thirty-two-year-old woman in a pencil skirt with wild blond curls that fell past her waist. Kayla’s eyes, bizarrely, had been one of her best secret weapons despite the fact that she had been made fun of because of them for her entire schooling career. Her left eye was a bright sparkling green and her right a deep brown that reflected gold in the right light. A genetic anomaly that had strangers asking her all sorts of questions. But when she rapped on front doors to even the most evasive of people, they would stop and take stock of her for a second, figuring out which eye to make eye contact with, and with Kayla’s usual spiel of “yeah, heterochromia, wild huh?”, they would take the papers without even realizing what they were doing till it was too late.
Job done. Success. On to the next one.
But if they didn’t throw something at her, slam a door in her face or start screaming and crying, Kayla’s mishmash of unique physical features got people asking unnecessary questions.
“What happened to your eyes?” was the most common question, and she would respond, “I was just born this way.” Then people, for whatever reason that Kayla had never been able to figure out, got geographical.
“Where are you from?”
“Newark.”
“No, where are you from? What’s your heritage?”
“I’m half Italian.”
Then people always told her that she didn’t look half Italian. She’d ask what someone who was half Italian should look like, and that usually baffled or embarrassed them enough that the conversation was dropped and she was finally free. Not that it really mattered. Her dad had never been big on the whole sticking around to raise a child business. Her mom, on the other hand, had never left her side.
Speaking of which… There was a brief knock on the front door before Liz Harvey entered carrying a canvas bag full of plastic containers.
“Doing my weekly returns. I put them through the dishwasher at home so they’re all clean.”
“Thanks,” Kayla said. She’d always spent time in the kitchen with her mom, growing up cooking with her, the ultimate irony being that Liz wasn’t very gifted in the culinary department. The upside of having meals burned and falling apart was that it had given Kayla the freedom to make mistakes, to get creative and to have free rein in the kitchen. Over the years, as Kayla grew older and her mom switched to night shifts at the local hospital, Kayla took over the role of chief cook. Even now, she would prepare meals for Liz and drop them at her house whether Liz liked it or not, because she was still completely incapable of cooking pasta all the way through. Kayla had also banned her from ever cooking chicken without supervision again. Like, ever again.
Kayla stayed staring at her computer screen with unfocused eyes, and Liz perked up as she noticed the decidedly defeated set to her daughter’s shoulders.
“What’s up with you? Someone bonk you on the head with a doorstop or something?”
The amount of things Kayla had thrown at her was truly astonishing to the point where it was now a running joke, because laughing at it was really the only solution. Well, the other solution was to quit and get a new job, but that wasn’t going so well, now was it?
Liz stood with her hand on her hip, clearly waiting for an answer. A plump woman with blond hair like her daughter’s but very normal-colored brown eyes, hidden partially behind bright red glasses frames, she liked anything red, sequins, and Kayla’s cooking. They were her main interests in life, so Kayla wasn’t going to be able to get away with brushing her off by saying “It’s fine.” They knew each other too well.
“I’ve been looking through these job ads,” Kayla said, shutting the laptop for now.
“No luck?”
“None. Everything sounds worse than the next, and what”s the point of switching to something else I’ll hate but where I get paid less?”
“There’s nothing wrong with going back to working in a shop, Kayla. I mean, at least you wouldn’t have people screaming at you all the time,” Liz said primly, putting the containers away. “And God forbid I want you to have a job where people don’t threaten you on a daily basis.”
Kayla turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow.
“What?”
“Ma, have you ever worked retail?”
“No…”
“Thanks for making my point. Besides, you’re a nurse. You get more abuse hurled at you than I do.”
“The patients are sick and injured. I’d be upset as well.”
Kayla rolled her eyes before rubbing them like a little kid who had stayed up past their bedtime.
“You want dinner?” she asked her mom with a yawn. Now it was Liz’s turn to give her an appraising glare.
“I can cook for myself, you know,” she said, shutting the cabinet door with a snap.
“Can you, though?”
“Kayla, I’m the mother here, in case you forgot.”
“But I like cooking,” Kayla protested, which was true. It was her favorite part of the day. Some people painted, some people took dance classes, Kayla had always cooked. You could give her five different ingredients at random and she loved nothing more than making something from scratch.
“You look dead on your feet,” Liz said, in a tone that meant there was no way that Kayla was going to win the argument. “You can order Thai food just this once. It won’t kill you.”
Despite the fact that Kayla wouldn’t come out on top and would probably end up ordering Thai food just like her mom had said, Kayla opened her mouth to argue and was rudely interrupted by her phone.
Tony’s number. Great. More work. Kayla groaned as she reached for the phone.
“Honestly, honey, you’d be happier folding shirts at this point?—”
“Ma! Hello, Tony, how are you?”
Tony Whitman was one of the best lawyers in New York, both the city and the state, and probably one of the best in the country. And Kayla was his number one go-to for telling people they were about to have a very bad time.
“I’ve got an exciting one for you, kid,” he said, traffic blaring in the background, and she assumed he must be power walking through the city somewhere.
“Exciting?” Kayla asked, feeling her eyebrows rise skeptically even if he wasn’t there to see it. “That’s not usually a word I’d use.”
“It’s a big client, and it’s going to be a big case…”
“Look, Tony, I really…” Maybe now wasn’t the best time to halfheartedly quit, but was there ever going to be a good time?
“Don’t tell me you’re already booked,” Tony said with mock hurt. “Come on, I need my most creative field agent out there. This guy is already being slippery. He’s completely dropped off the map.”
“So how am I supposed to find him?”
“Because you’re amazing.”
“Flattery is great and all, Tony, but unless you actually know where he is?—”
“How does Italy sound?”
That gave her pause. “What?” Even Liz looked over, curious, hearing the change of tone in her voice.
“He owns property out there, dual citizenship. The first sign of smoke and he was on a plane out of the country to escape the fire. Which is why I need you to be the one to serve the papers. You’ve got the smarts to get creative if you need to, and you’re so stubborn that I know you won’t give up either.”
“You’re really leaning into the flattery angle, aren’t you?” Kayla said dryly.
“Is it working?”
Kayla sighed, hating herself for folding so easily.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Tony said triumphantly, knowing her well enough by now that she didn’t even need to say the word “yes.”
“I’ll email you tickets and line up accommodation. If you need anything else, just call me. Okay, kid?”
“Yup. Will do.” She hung up feeling a strange mixture of dejected and thrilled.
“What was that about?” Liz asked, looking through a menu for the local Thai restaurant, her phone in hand.
Kayla swiveled in her chair to better look at her. “I just got asked to go to Italy to serve papers.”
Liz’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “That’s exciting. You’re going, right? You better go or I’ll disown you.”
“I’m going,” Kayla said with a smile, the feeling of dejection fading faster and faster as the reality of it sunk in. “But it’s a work trip, Ma. Work. So don’t expect a whole bunch of happy snaps and touristy photos, okay?”
Liz shrugged, unperturbed. “I’m glad you finally get to set foot there. It’ll be good for you to go there, even if it is for work.”
Liz had never kept her dad and his heritage a secret, even if Kayla had never met the man. Fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for him, it seemed, so Liz had raised Kayla by herself. But Liz had also been stubborn about keeping Kayla informed about her ancestry. If ever there was a school project about different countries, she’d encourage Kayla to research Italy, to learn more about the place, to take Italian in high school even though Kayla had now forgotten half of what she’d learned because she’d never had a use for it. Well… she had a use for it now, it seemed.
“I’ll be boring and have a red curry,” she said, pushing her computer away.
Liz’s grin was smug as she placed the order. Kayla stood to go and find her suitcase. If this was going to be her last time serving papers, there were worse places to do it than Italy.