Kerri’s mother is a school teacher in the public school district in which they live. It is located just outside the boundaries of the Pittsburgh Public schools, and is the district that Kerri and Steve both attended, although Mary was never their teacher.
Mary grew up with very old-fashioned values. Her family history includes steelworkers, and those attitudes: Sunday dinners with the family, women stay home to raise the kids and then if they must work, take on jobs such as teachers or nurses when the kids are old enough to be in school. But even then, the family comes first.
Her secret, and the reason why she and Kerri are so estranged from each other, is revealed in Behold Me.
