Coincidence or Fate?
Brittany Cole came from money, as they say. Hank Delacroix was an auto mechanic. The two met when the twenty-year-old woman's car broke down on a stretch of road in upstate New York, and he happened to be driving by and stopped to help. A year and a half later, the unlikely couple married and Kaydence Lee N. Delacroix was born. The child never wanted for anything. Her father kept her down-to-earth, while her mother made sure she was well-dressed, well-fed and well-mannered. And so, a young girl grew up into a young woman.
All For A Reason
While she had dabbled in her father's work and helped to run his modest auto repair shop (really, a time filler and certainly not the family's bread and butter), she knew she would never do well for herself as a mechanic. Whether capable or not, women simply aren't perceived well in the profession. Even though she found the work challenging and engaging, she gave it up in order to attend college, pursuing a different way to test her intellect. Kaydence Lee Delacroix enrolled in law school at Cornell University. Things did not all go according to plan, however. On Friday, December 13, 1996, having stayed late after her night Psychology course to speak to her professor, Kay was walking home a little before 11 p.m. when she noticed she wasn't alone on the dark path back to her dorm. She picked up the pace, and was spooked to discover the other person doing the same. She began to run and quickly found herself pursued. She easily had the advantage in speed, out-distancing him quickly, until she hit a patch of ice and her feet went out from under her. The back of her head hit the snow-packed pavement hard enough to daze the woman and she was overtaken. She screamed as the man took a knife to her clothes with the intent to rape her. He hit her across the face and told her to be quiet. When she screamed again, he took the knife to her ribcage. Not a stab, but a slice so she would know he wasn't messing around. Blinded by tears and a will to shut the whole thing out, she didn't even hear her saviour arrive. Neither did the man on top of her. Another boy smashed the man in the head with a rock from the path and proceeded to beat him unconscious with his fists while Kay called campus security. With the attacker out cold, Kay's rescuer took off his coat and wrapped it around the shaken girl and introduced himself as Spencer Damaris, a second year student. He was studying Criminal Justice with the intent of becoming a police officer. To stop things like this from happening to people. At that moment, with all four of their hands pressing the remains of her shirt to her bleeding ribs, Kay decided that that was what she wanted to do, too.
Cinderella Hope
Spencer kept in touch with Kay, checking in on her not because he felt she needed looking after, but because he felt the need to get to know the girl who didn't cry in the ambulance, or when she had to testify as to what the creep did to her and show her wound to a courtroom full of strangers. He wanted to get to know this woman so determined to become a police officer and protect other women. Not just other women - everyone. Kay was only too pleased to share her time with Spencer and the two began dating. On December 13, 1998, two years to the day they first met, Kaydence Lee N. became Mrs. Spencer Caroll Damaris. She graduated from Cornell in 2000 and immediately found work with her husband on the NYPD - though he worked Special Victims while she worked Vice. They loved their work in the City. Even the events of September 11, 2001 couldn't drive them away. In 2002, the couple welcomed their first child, Colene Marcella Rozlynn into the world. Cole, as her parents called her, was quickly the light of Kay and Spencer's life. The three were truly a happy family.
Everything, Always in Time
On November 4, 2006, the Damaris family packed up the car and drove out to Schenectady for a week to visit Kay's parents to celebrate her 28th birthday. On November 8, the world as they knew it would change forever. Leaving Colene Marcella with her parents, Kay and Spencer returned home once it was declared, well, not exactly safe, but they knew their city needed them. Over the course of the next several months, the couple only saw their daughter on weekends. And only if travel out of the City was feasible and one of them wasn't too exhausted to drive upstate to see her. And yet, the family endured. To make things easier on the young couple, Hank and Brittany Delacroix moved nearer to the City. Even in a world as topsy turvy as theirs had become, the Damaris family was starting to feel almost as if things were back to normal again. Spencer and Kay both earned promotions, with Kay moving out of the Vice squad and joining the ranks of Homicide detectives.
Running Toward a Catastrophe
Christmas Eve, 2007, Kaydence had planned a nice get together for her small family and she and Spencer's respective partners, and three or four friends from the precinct with no families to go home to. When the small troupe showed up at the door that evening, she didn't suspect anything was amiss. Then, her partner, Judah Demsky, told her Spencer had been shot while his unit busted a pimp. He took a bullet meant for a young prostitute. Kay was devastated. She called her mother and Brittany came straight away to take Cole home with her so she wouldn't have to watch her mother grieve. Judah stayed with Kay overnight to ensure she wouldn't eat her gun - at the behest of her and Spencer's friends. She moved her daughter permanently to the Delacroix house. Even though Brittany insisted she would pay for childcare so Cole could live at home with her mother, Kay wanted her caretakers to be family, not strangers. Kay's moods were so erratic at home without her work to distract her, and she couldn't let Cole see her that way. After only a week, she was back at work. After all, the man who murdered her husband hadn't been caught.
