Page 73 of The Kidnapped

“Would you be available for another two to four hours this week, if I needed you?” her client asked right off the bat.

“Oh, sure,” Raleigh replied, surprised.

“Can you wrap up the two projects I have you working on this week instead of next week, then?”

“No problem. Did the deadline get moved up?”

“No, Raleigh. I’m moving into an office in a month.”

“Okay,” Raleigh replied, confused.

“I was going to wait to sign a lease on a place until the end of the year, but a friend of mine found an office space in their building that’s within my price range, and that would make us office neighbors. We’re going to knock down the wall and share the place.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Raleigh said, still not understanding what this had to do with her needing to put in more time this week.

“Raleigh, she has an admin already that I can share for now while I decide if I want to hire another one or if one of the new employees I’m looking to hire can fill in the gaps.”

That was the other shoe dropping.

“I see. So, you need me to finish the two projects this week and send you my final invoice,” Raleigh replied.

“Yes,” the woman on the phone said and sighed. “I’m sorry, Raleigh. You always knew this was temporary, though. I told you I was expanding.”

“No, you’re right. You did.”

“And I talked to Mitch,” the woman continued. “He mentioned that he’d let you go, too. I’m sorry about that.”

Mitch was Mitch Roman.

“No worries. It happens a lot. I want my clients to be successful, so when they expand in office, that’s a good sign. It just sometimes means they don’t need a VA anymore.”

“Exactly. And I’ll still be a referral for you. Mitch said he had some issues, but I never have. You’ve been good for me. So, thank you.”

“Thank you,” Raleigh replied. “I’ll get everything done by Friday end of day and send the invoice over.”

“Great. And good luck, Raleigh.”

“Thanks,” she replied.

This had been her best client for the past year and a half. She was polite and never demanding. She only called during regular business hours and didn’t seem to get stressed. Raleigh also could always count on her for extra work, and the woman paid all of Raleigh’s invoices on time, which had been something that not all of her clients had been able to do. It meant that recently, paying bills by their due dates hadn’t always been a guarantee since she counted on her clients to pay on time, but she’d been getting by. Now, though, things would really get tight, so she pulled up her finance spreadsheet, being a bit old-school like that. Well, old-school with a computer: Raleigh didn’t like any desktop or online software programs to record her bank info, preferring to create and maintain a spreadsheet. She felt closer to the numbers this way anyway, enabling her to keep better track of where her money was going.

A while ago now, right after she’d joined the support group, she’d hired a private investigator, and that had been yet another thing that had cut into her savings. He’d come highly recommended by someone she’d met there, but that person hadn’t shown up to group in a while. Raleigh could guess why. After the PI had taken her money and had hardly done any actual investigative work, Raleigh had cursed the person out before the meeting had begun. They hadn’t been to the group since. She’d known that hadn’t been fair, but the PI charged hundreds of dollars an hour and hadn’t done anything. His notes had been sloppy, and he’d presented her with no leads and only a big bill that she’d paid because she hadn’t known any better.

The current state of the spreadsheet didn’t yet have any red on it, but it also barely had any black, so she’d need to make up this client, and not with extra work from other VAs. She went to her own website and decided to put out an email blast to a few networks. She did this whenever she needed a new client, but this time, she needed more than one. Raleigh could really use three to four new clients to get her savings moving in the right direction again. That college fund she’d started after Eden had been born was gone now, and she wanted it back, even if Eden never got to use it.

Blasting the networks with the exciting news of her availability to take on more clients, Raleigh decided to take a break and go to the kitchen to make herself another cup of coffee. Having done that, she walked back to her office but stopped at Eden’s door. Pushing it open, she looked at her little girl’s bedroom and then stepped inside, staring at the safe space she’d worked so hard to create for her kid. The walls were a pastel green because Raleigh hadn’t wanted a stereotypical pink for a girl. Green, on the other hand, meant rebirth and renewal, so she’d gone with that. It had also worked out that Eden had loved the color green.

“Dinosaurs are green, Mommy,” she’d said once.

“You’re right,” Raleigh had replied, watching Eden color outside the lines.

The bed was a toddler bed, but before, she’d had a crib in there against the side wall with a mobile of the solar system hanging above Eden’s bed, playing soft music to her each night as she’d stared at the planets and the moon. Raleigh sat on the toddler bed now, missing the mobile again. The first time she’d missed it had been when she’d changed the crib out for the bed because Eden had started to jump high enough to touch the planets. Taking it and the crib down all at once had been a hard parenting day for her. It meant her baby was growing up. Raleigh wiped the tears from her eyes as she looked at the floor where Eden had colored that morning.

“This is it,” she said to herself. “This is my life now.”

She knew that to be true; this would be it. She’d work to make ends meet while she spent everything she could to find her daughter. She’d call the cops once a week, check on Dylan’s progress for as long as Dylan was willing to put up with her, and she’d come into Eden’s bedroom and cry. Every so often, some other crime show like Kenna’s would come calling on an anniversary. Maybe it would be a local newspaper next time. Raleigh would do the story because there was always a chance someone would see something.

When she went back to her office, she pulled up the dedicated Facebook page she had for Eden. She checked the posts and comments of people praying for her, finding nothing new in there otherwise. Then, she opened Eden’s website. Nothing new there, either. How had Molly done this for a decade now? Raleigh was miserable, and the only thing that had made her not miserable in over a year had been Hollis.

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