Kenna stood back as three men jumped down from the truck and, with an apple, helped convince the horse to get in the trailer.
“Thanks for the help with him. I look forward to our lunch. It was great meeting you and welcome to Keeneston,” Paige said as she and Kenna walked to their cars.
Kenna’s legs had finally stopped shaking when she slid into her car. Pulling out after Paige, she headed into town, wondering what her new home would be like.
* * *
Just shoot me now, Kenna thought as she squeezed her eyes closed. She slowly opened them, hoping against all odds the scene before her had changed, but to her utter despair, it was the same scene she had just driven upon. Kenna had pulled her M6 to the side of the road and stared at the town before her with a critical eye. She was sitting on the edge of Main Street and could see the other end of what she guessed to be downtown just two stoplights away. The town was straight out of Mayberry, she thought. She couldn’t help but start whistling the theme song to “The Andy Griffith Show” as she looked around her new hometown: perfect trees lining both sides of Main Street, American flags waving from every light post, and the people wandering down the sidewalk seemed to know each other since they were tipping their hats and smiling to each person they passed by.
Kenna had spent the last eleven years in the Big City. So when she took a deep breath that lacked pollution and listened to the honking of cars that were strangely not honks of anger, but honks of greeting as they passed someone they knew, she felt out of her element. Not for the first time, Kenna wondered how she ended up here. Just a month ago, she was at the hottest nightclub in New York City with her best friend, Danielle, celebrating her twenty-ninth birthday with all her friends from Greendale, Thompson and Hitchem, the largest law firm in New York. Kenna sighed wistfully as she thought about the six figure salary, the hot clubs, and a condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that she had left behind in a hurry.
With her eyes closed and her mind firmly set in what might have been, Kenna thought about how she had dined with professional athletes and actors at the best restaurants on the company dime since they were clients. Standing only five-foot-four but blessed with what she called womanly curves, Kenna had not only wined and dined famous people but had dated and been pursued by some as well. Kenna’s auburn hair, milky skin, and dark green eyes that hid an intelligence and sharp wit had made her sought after inside and outside the courtroom.
Kenna continued her trip down memory lane by giving herself a moment to gloat. She had just made junior partner, one of the youngest associates to have ever done so and the only woman to ever do so.
She cringed as she remembered the night it all changed. The night she fled from her six figure salary and left her amazing condo. She had fled from New York City with her ex-boyfriend hot in pursuit of her. Kenna fought a shiver as she remembered Chad trying to find her to prevent her from leaving not only the city but most likely her beautiful condo ever again. It was in the early morning hours of the city that never sleeps that Kenna found herself running for her life and looking for a place to hide. She had sat in her car and thought about what always made her feel better - chocolate. She had suffered a chocolate craving to end all other chocolate cravings that night.
Now sitting in her car in Keeneston, she remembered the shivers of fear that had wracked her body and the feel of the cold bite of the February wind. And all she wanted was chocolate. That’s when the idea hit her, the perfect place to hide and the perfect place to indulge in the mother of all chocolate cravings. She had turned her car toward the interstate and headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Kenna’s lips twitched. She had been right. Since he had no idea where she was, she was left alone. And in turn, Kenna was surrounded by chocolate for a month. The second night she spent in Hershey, Kenna knew it was time to develop a plan for the rest of her life, or at least for the next phase of her life. Even though she was tempted to apply for the taster’s job opening at the Hershey plant, she decided she couldn’t waste the law degree her parents’ death had paid for. They died when a drunken truck driver jackknifed his semi truck on a patch of ice, leaving no place for her parents' car to go. The trust they established for Kenna was more than enough to pay for her attendance at law school, and she even had a good part of it left to be able to live off of if she wanted. However, after her parents’ death, Kenna had lost the carefree ways that the life of privilege provided and had gone to law school to learn how to put away drunk drivers for the pain they caused innocent families.
Kenna sat on her bed in the extend-a-stay hotel with the smell of chocolate in the air and started looking for a job. She started with Alabama and worked her way through the states alphabetically, looking for places that were hiring. She kept an eye out for cities that were small but not isolated, cities where Chad the Bastard wouldn’t think of looking for her. But most importantly, cites that were looking for prosecutors. One week later, Kenna pumped her fists in the air and jumped up and down on the bed when she saw the opening for a prosecutor seventeen states later. Not too big, not too small… just right.