*Author's Note: Any persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least eighteen years of age.
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Chapter 1
Kenneth Kay came to in the rear of an ambulance as it screamed west on I-10, racing toward Lafayette General. Great, retching coughs began to wrack his body and the EMT gently assisted him in rolling onto his side to help clear the airway of any mucus or regurgitation.
"What the fuck happened?" Kenneth coughed out.
Factory caught on fire," the EMT said.
"What?" Kenneth asked, horrified. "Everyone all right?"
The EMT didn't answer him, just continued to monitor Kenneth's vitals and then adjusted the mask back over Kenneth's mouth and nose so Kenneth's lungs could fill with oxygen.
The emergency room of Lafayette General filled with the victims of the Bender factory fire and were triaged and seen in order of severity.
"No, no, you see her first," Kenneth demanded as the orderly began to wheel him into a station ahead of Patsy Bordelon.
"You got head injuries; she got burns," the orderly corrected him.
"What?" I ain't got no..." Kenneth said then blacked out again.
When he came to, there was bright sunlight streaming through his window. The room was a semi-private room; Big Mike occupied the other bed. They called him 'Big' Mike as a joke; the man was just over five feet tall. Big Mike was also very stocky, back chest and arms a mass of rippling muscles.
"Man, we fucking lucky even be alive," Big Mike groaned out when he noticed that Kenneth was awake.
"Uh huh," Kenneth groaned, not feeling very lucky.
"Heard some of us died," Big Mike went on, then Kenneth heard Big Mike sob softly.
"Oh God," Kenneth moaned, morning the loss of his friends and fellow workers.
"Man, what the fuck happened?" Big Mike asked.
"Man, I don't know; was getting me a coke out the machine, next thing I know there I am, waking up in some ambulance," Kenneth admitted.
Four days later, Lafayette General released Kenneth Kay. Big Mike had sustained a broken back and would be in the hospital for several more days.
Jennifer Kay, Kenneth's wife, drove the forty miles from Bender to Lafayette to pick her husband up. The tall blonde let him know she wasn't all that thrilled to have to have to make the long drive.
Kenneth sat next to her and wondered, not for the first time, why he had ever married the shrill woman. Yes, she was beautiful, or had been beautiful nineteen years ago, standing behind the counter of McDonald's, but beauty alone was not enough to justify her attitude or behavior.
Their marriage was the usual 'guess what dear' arrangement and Kenneth agreed to do the right thing and marry the frightened, angry Jennifer Moore and give the child that grew in her belly a loving home. He put his dream of becoming a professional baseball player on the back shelf, along with his dreams of becoming a rock star bass guitarist and took a gob at the Bender mattress factory. When he found out that the Midnight to Eight shifts paid twenty cents more an hour, he leapt at the chance.
"No, no, see, the more we can save up, Sweetie, the sooner we can get out of this dumpy apartment and get our own house for you, me, and Kenny," Kenneth said, rubbing his wife's swelling belly.
Jennifer gave birth to a beautiful little blonde girl and named her Jadia Ann Kay.
"Jadia?" Kenneth screwed up his face at the odd name.
"Yeah, see, I was in school with this girl; her momma named her Veresa, you know? Instead of like 'Theresa' and I remember thinking that was so cool that her momma loved her enough to give her baby her very own name, you know? I mean, there's like a hundred Jennifers all over the place, but how many Veresas you know, huh?" Jennifer explained.
"Jadia?" Kenneth asked again. "Where the fuck that come from?"
"Yeah, it's like Nadia, but with a 'J,' get it?" Jennifer said.
Kenneth sighed, knowing that it would do no good to argue the point with Jennifer; her mind was made up.
Before Jadia was even walking, Jennifer announced that they were again expecting.
"Fine, but I get to name this one," Kenneth insisted.
"Uh huh," Jennifer said, having no intention of letting him name her baby.
Jelissa Amy Kay came out also sporting a thick head of blonde and her mother's mean blue eyes.
"Jelissa?" Kenneth asked, frowning.
"My mom's name is Melissa, so it's like Melissa, but with a 'J,'" Jennifer explained, then continued to coo and croon to the wrinkled up baby.
"Sounds like a n*gger name," Bernice Kay, Kenneth's mother whispered loudly to Kenneth.
Kenneth had scrimped and saved, despite Jennifer's ability to spend extravagantly and managed to put together a tidy sum toward his dream of owning a house for his family.
"Fine, you can buy it, but I'm not living here," Jennifer snarled when Kenneth showed her the home they could afford.
"It's a starter home," he patiently tried to explain. "I've got enough saved up to where we can buy it outright and then we fix it up and sell it and put that money toward a bigger house."
But Jennifer decided the bigger house would come now, not later and forced Kenneth to put the tidy sum toward a much larger house. At fourteen percent interest, the mortgage easily swallowed more than half his paycheck.
As the three women and Kenneth settled into their home, Jennifer announced that they were again going to be blessed with another baby.
"God damn, Honey!" Kenneth whined. "I can barely keep us fed! And now we're going to have another baby?"
Six year old Jadia and five year old Jelissa decided that they hated Jacy Alice Kay and tormented the small brunette infant as often as they could.
Kenneth did not even ask about the baby's name, nor did he ask about the parentage of the infant. He and Jennifer were both blondes and both had light blue eyes. In Kenneth's family tree, there had been only one other brunette in the last hundred years and no one was quite sure of Oliver Kay's parentage either. But even Oliver had light blue eyes, not the deep brown eyes of Jacy Kay.
Of Jennifer's lineage, very little was known; most of her kin had lost contact with one another years ago. So, it was possible that brown hair and brown eyes was a recessive gene somewhere in Jennifer's genealogy.
But Jacy was, from the very day of her birth, a Daddy's girl. Jennifer contented herself with caring for her two girls, leaving Jacy's care to her father. And leaving Jacy's protection to her father as well.
"Mom! He hit me!" Jelissa screeched at the top of her lungs after Kenneth administered a spanking.
"I caught her about to drop this on Jacy's head," Kenneth explained, holding up the large ceramic piggy bank.
"I wasn't," Jelissa lied. "I was just showing it to her!"
"While she was asleep?" Kenneth sneered and Jelissa did have the good grace to blush at being caught in such an obvious lie.
Kenneth did not catch the fact that Jelissa referred to him as 'He' and not 'Dad.' He did not catch the fact that Jadia did the same thing, calling him 'he' or 'him,' but never 'Dad' or any other term of parentage.
