The First Generation - Candice

  “Will you be in the office today?”

  “No – Miles, handle this yourself”

  Candice walks down the River North sidewalk in a long, very expensive, overcoat carrying a handbag and cell phone in the same arm. The *click-clok* of her designer heals can be heard though the speaker phone.

  “Ok but I will need you to weigh in on the reply to– “

  “I have told you before the contract needs to be redlined by our in-house legal counsel before the global contact can be signed. Do you have Red-lines from my in-house counsel yet Miles!?”

  “No”

  “No you don’t! Get it done and do not send a response to the global team until I have reviewed it”

  “Understood”

  Click*

  Her long blond hair bounces on her shoulders as she walks towards her. She was a natural blond in her youth. Now it takes 4 hours in a standing monthly appointment with her very expensive hairdresser to keep this look. She is an imposing woman, fit, and always well made-up.

  *Click-clock*

  “Good Morning Ms. Walsh” the door man say, pulling to door open as she approaches.

  “Morning Terry” Candice does not break stride as she heads to the elevator.

  No one joins her on the elevator ride to her floor. Wonderful. She feels a small relief as the door closes. She presses the round “32” button and checks her phone.

  The penthouse condo is worth a fortune but her family purchased it years ago. She grew up in the Chicago Suburbs. In highschool during her parents divorce and her father purchased this penthouse. She is an only child. When her parents spilt it was hard on her. Her childhood made her not want to be a mother of an only child. Kids need playmates.

  Candice uses the key fob to unlock the front door and hangs her bag and jacket on the hook.

  Baby Lyra is awake in the baby-sitters arms. Lyra is 9 months old.

  The tension in her shoulders relaxes…she quietly walks and takes her child from Sara, the babysitter.

  “She just fell asleep” Sara says

  Her phone buzzes drawing her attention to her pocket. Immediately angry that the notification may wake Lyra.

  3 new Messages (Kyle)

  “Good Morning – how did Lyra sleep”

  “Things are going well here…I miss you”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “How’s Lyra? Can you send a photo?”

  Candice’s jaw tightens

  I never should have married that man, she thinks. Their “separation” began six months.

  Candice begins softly singing Lyra’s favorite lullaby and begins wrapping the SmartBaby sleeping monitor onto Lyra’s foot. She starts the app from her phone while she takes the baby into the nursery. Canidce bends slowly and sets her in her SimpleSwing. Before clipping her in the seat, she gently removes one hand at a time not to wake her. Standing, she selects “soothing rocking chair” from the SimpleSwing’s settings menu. She pauses, and takes cautiously takes two steps backwards.

  After tip-toing to the door, she pauses with one hand resting on the door frame and and steals one more glance smiling at her sleeping baby. The kind of smile a mother gives her child – happy, worried, and debating if she should pick her back up all at the same time.

  With a deep sigh, she turns into the hallway and begins walking normally as she heads into her office. She sits down at a high backed chair in front of a modern glass-topped desk and opens her laptop. The screen is slow to load. Impatiently she hits “Enter” and receive a message that her password has been entered incorrectly. After a grimace and a curse, she logs in and her work picks up right where she left it.

  A message from her paralegal regarding one of her clients.

  A few of the firm’s major clients have been engaged privacy lawsuits. Data privacy has become a fast-growing litigation trend. This is her third case on privacy law and Candice is becoming the firm’s owner of all things related to privacy law. The US is highly litigious country with no indication that will change any time soon.

  The digital world is the new frontier and the ways of working in this world have not yet matured. For the time being, outside council legal defense is a budgeted line item that is not likely to shrink. Firms like Candice’s are well positioned to navigate in the muddied waters of the legal system.

  Her behind the scenes viewpoint has left her with a cynical view privacy and public communications on how companies value the protection of personal and health data. Her clients – fortune 500 giants – have no idea what they are doing. But, they tend to respond quickly after a data breach.

  Candice reviews the comments provided by her paralegal and starts typing her reply with a nagging frustration. She has written this same reply 3 times now with only the client’s name changing. Everyday consumers have stopped reacting to news on privacy data breaches. Litigation attorneys are the enemy she is hired to combat.

  She checks baby monitor video. Lyra is beginning to stir.

  She has Kyle's nose.

  Before COVID they were happy, her and Kyle. Young people living in the city. She worked 60+ hours a week, but when she left the office, they were alive, taking in all that the city had to offer. Things changed when the pandemic hit. Cities were not the best placed to quarantine. When the firm pivoted to remote work, their apartment got a lot smaller. Kyle survived one round of lay-off, but became one of the many caught up in next wave of firings.

  He did not take it well. He was home all day growing more and more frustrated being out of work. When Kyle’s father became sick, he went back home for what was supposed to be a week or two. The timing was actually a healthy distraction for him, but Candince knew the farm was not where he wanted to be.

  Kyle had made it out of his small town. He got a degree, good job, and moved into an apartment in River North like he had always dreamed. Candice knew the disappointment he must be feeling to be pulled back into the life he thought was left behind. Family has its own special kind of pull on a person and Kyle past was pulling hard.

  Candice was struggling with the isolation of quarantine as well. Joining Kyle at the farm was welcome change of pace for her.

  At first.

  It was all so different and at that stage in her life. Different was kind of exciting. Kyle worked the farm and Candice worked out of the home office. She missed the restaurants, coffee shops, and time with friends, but they made it though. When the world re-opened its doors after the pandemic faded, the balance they had found was upset. The tug of two powerful forces, her to the city and her firm and him to the farm and his family legacy, began pulling harder than ever. Candice’s career could not continue working remote. She had to return to city. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.” That’s what she told Kyle. That is when the problems began.

  The distance really strained their relationship, but her pregnancy took things to a new level.

  Shaking her head, Candice says out loud in the quiet of her office “Stupid girl…maybe a baby – having a family – would fix things…?” She realizes she has been starting at Lyra sleeping on the monitor, lost in thought.

  Kyle always wanted kids. She wanted to wait. Sometimes things have a way of deciding themselves. You can’t undo the past, but you can take action on the future.

  It hard for people to realize when it’s over. Rarely is there one moment that defines a separation. For Candice, becoming a mother changed her. She knew what she wanted in life for her and her daughter. The unclear became clear and she decided. She had to leave.