anniversary banner hung above the sales floor, though the photograph printed on it showed Frank so young that a stranger might not recognize him. The anniversary was being used to advertise special financing, and no one had thought to include a line about the employees who had been there when the doors first opened.
Kayla Bennett was at the reception desk arranging folders when Frank stepped inside. She was twenty-nine and had been awake since five-thirty, when her seven-year-old daughter Lily woke coughing and frightened that the school bus might leave without her. Kayla had checked Lily's medication, warmed oatmeal, and waited until her daughter could breathe comfortably enough to finish breakfast. Then she had taken Lily to the apartment of their neighbor Mrs. Alvarez, who watched her after school when Kayla's shift ran late.
Kayla's rent was nine hundred dollars a month. Her hourly wage was seventeen dollars, and even with extra shifts the numbers rarely worked without careful planning. A recent change to Lily's prescription coverage had left Kayla paying more than she expected for medicine that could not simply be skipped. She kept the invoices in a blue folder beneath the kitchen sink, along with receipts for groceries and a notebook where she calculated whether there would be enough left for school shoes.
She had once hoped to become a dealership sales consultant. At a previous job she had handled customer accounts and spent two semesters taking business courses at night, but Lily's illness and the death of her mother had left little room for tuition or unpaid training. Liberty Motors offered a receptionist position with steady hours and health coverage, and Kayla took it. She told herself that stable work was not the end of a dream; sometimes it was the ground on which a dream had to wait.
Dean Fletcher, the showroom floor supervisor, preferred employees who did not ask questions. That morning he had already threatened Kayla over a customer who arrived without an appointment and waited ten minutes while she helped an elderly man complete a mobility-access paperwork request. Dean regarded the delay as an embarrassment because Chad had been expecting a corporate visitor at roughly the same time. He did not ask what Kayla had been doing or why the wait had happened.
"I have fifty people who would take that desk for seventeen dollars an hour," Dean told her. His voice carried beyond the glass partition, though he appeared not to care who heard. "One more mistake and there's the door."
"He came in without an appointment," Kayla explained. "I was helping another customer. I try to treat everybody the same way."
"Then learn to prioritize. Today is Chad's big day, and nobody is going to ruin it."
Kayla could feel her cheeks warming. She wanted to say that the dealership had promised customers they would be welcomed whether they bought a truck or asked for directions. She wanted to ask whether Dean would prefer that she send an older customer away rather than help him. Instead, she thought of her rent, Lily's medicine, and the phone call she could not afford to make to her landlord.