Nella’s Voicemail for Kendra Rae

Nella’s Voicemail for Kendra Rae is the message that reopens Kendra Rae Phillips’s connection to Wagner after years spent trying to escape its reach. Nella, an assistant at Wagner Books who wants to become an editor, calls an unknown recipient in distress over her job and Hazel. Kendra initially hears the recording as an intrusion; as Nella’s panic becomes legible, it turns into the reason Kendra can no longer keep avoiding Wagner—and finally moves her to call Lynn.

Recording and Circumstances

On September 26, 2018, in Catskill, New York, Kendra listens to the voicemail again. She has tried to put it off by walking a trail for an hour, buying groceries and a case of pinot noir, and doing a little writing. None of it quiets the caller’s squeaky voice in her mind. The message has already filled her kitchen repeatedly; Kendra sighs and presses play once more.

Nella sounds frantic and self-conscious. She says she does not know who keeps contacting her or why she is calling, insults the unknown recipient, and then breaks into a tearful, rambling account of her life. The audible snort after her insult gives way to another after she describes her troubles, marking the distress beneath her attempt to dismiss the person on the other end. Kendra recognizes the sounds as those of someone who has been crying.

What Nella Reveals

Nella says Owen is angry with her and Vera considers her an unreliable assistant. She expects she may lose her job, and admits that she is not even sure she wants to keep it. After a pause, she corrects herself: she does want it, because she wants to be an editor and sees almost no young Black women in that position. Her uncertainty is not a simple rejection of the work; it is a crisis unfolding alongside an ambition she still claims as her own.

She also says that the unknown person keeps telling her to leave, but that she cannot leave while Hazel is involved. Nella does not explain the full danger or what Hazel has done in this recording. The withheld details make the appeal unsettling: Kendra hears enough to understand that Nella’s panic reaches beyond ordinary frustration at work, but not enough to know precisely what has happened. Nella ends by questioning why she has disclosed so much to a stranger.

Kendra’s Reaction and the Wagner Connection

At first, Kendra resents the message. She thinks the caller is an unhinged stranger who contacted her, and recalls that Trace is the only person she herself has stayed in touch with. She has avoided former colleagues and most of her remaining friends from Harvard. She had even left Diana Gordon behind, in part because she believed Diana should have apologized to Trace for leaving her unsupported and for trying to change her.

The name Wagner changes the recording’s weight. Hearing it for the fourth time brings back the decades Kendra spent running from it, the threats against her life, and letters from Black parents saying she would no longer be a role model in their homes. She had changed her hair, found another job, and settled in a small upstate town where she hoped not to be bothered as a Black neighbor. A prior contact from Lynn about Wagner and the work her team was doing now makes Kendra suspect that Nella’s message is connected to Lynn, perhaps sent to force her to act. She does not know this for certain; the connection is a fear, not a fact established by the voicemail.

From Avoidance to a Call

Kendra’s phone goes black, but she keeps staring at it and wishes Nella had not blocked her number. She now wants the caller to call again and explain more. What first sounded like self-absorption, she realizes, runs deeper than the frustrations of a young adult whose plans have gone wrong. The recognition unsettles her: for years she has let the need to stay hidden decide where she lives, shops, and whom she speaks to. She had already told Lynn she would not return to the city, fearing the risk and believing she had finally found peace.

That peace appears less secure when Kendra considers her approaching seventieth birthday, her isolation, and her being two weeks late sending notes to a client; she attributes the delay to drinking wine alone on a weekday. Just ten minutes earlier, she had wanted to tell Nella that being an editor was not worth the danger and that she might become someone like Kendra, or worse. She had also wanted to smash the phone against the wall. Instead, she returns her attention to a Jacob Lawrence print showing strong Black arms pushing a cart of library books, places the proof and program on the couch, and calls Lynn. The voicemail does not resolve what is happening to Nella or establish that Kendra will return to Wagner. Its consequence is narrower but decisive: it turns Kendra’s guarded listening into a choice to make contact.