“Yes, I know. Sometimes losing her is so hard I forget to remember how lucky I was to have had her as a mother,” she said.
“That was one of many things that stood out about Meredith,” Janette said. “She always said the cure for the blues is gratitude. It works.”
* * *
“I have some good news and some bad news,” Kaylee said to Landry. He was just lighting the fire in his living room and she was sitting on the couch. He looked over his shoulder at her and lifted a brow. “The good news is I’m going to finish my book in four weeks.”
“Good for you,” he said.
“The bad news is, I’m going to have to get serious and hit it hard. I’m going to work at my house every day for at least six to eight hours a day until I can send it in. This book has been like a monkey on my back for over a year. I can’t separate it from losing my mother so I have to finish it and send it away. And until I can get my writing back, a part of me is missing.”
“That’s not bad news, Kaylee. I’m glad you’re going for it. If you wanted to give it up, I guess I’d understand, but I’m glad you want it back. It’s who you are.”
“Have you ever had trouble with your sculptures?” she asked. “Like when your dad passed away?”
“It was hard to concentrate then, for a little while. I can’t remember how long it took for me to feel like myself again. But I’ll tell you when I really choked. When I realized Laura was probably gone for good, I was disoriented. That’s when I decided to move back here and concentrate on the one thing I had some control over—my work. It wasn’t quick, either. And I spent a lot of time building the little house rather than being creative. But it all came back.”
“Even with Laura’s visits distracting you?”
“She didn’t visit that often, but sometimes she’d call and ask me when my next visit to the city would be and she’d meet me there for a couple of days. I insisted on separate rooms and separate checks and so those visits were less frequent. Her visits to Virgin River were rare unless she needed something. Laura didn’t have that big an impact on my work. If I was upset about her absence, working helped. If I was upset about her presence, working helped. So I know how you feel. We need it; it defines us. Just tell me what I can do to help. Except don’t tell me I have to ignore you 24/7. I won’t be good at that.”
“I will use you for my reward,” she said, grinning.
They had not yet said those three magic words, but Kaylee felt them. She wasn’t holding out, she was just getting comfortable. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say after that. Let me stay here forever? No, that wasn’t what she wanted. Come to Newport Beach with me? She didn’t feel ready for that, plus he admitted he didn’t like Southern California. How about I see you every couple of months? Oh, what was the point? That’s what he’d had with Laura. That didn’t sound like real love, it sounded like an inconvenient convenience.
“Did I mention I have a house in Newport Beach?” she asked him.
“Twenty or so times,” he said.
“It’s very nice,” she said. “My mother had admired it for years, like twenty or so years. When her business started doing well the one thing she wanted was a house that would hold her tight, make her feel safe and comfortable till her last day. She didn’t expect to be only sixty when that day came, but that’s what it was. It has a large patio and backyard and pool. It has a view of the ocean, too bright at sunset so she put up custom outdoor shades. It’s on a hill in a very nice neighborhood. It’s not a huge house, but the rooms are generous. It was all hers, that was the important thing. It’s beautiful and comfortable. Have you ever been to Newport Beach?”
“Can’t say that I have,” he said. Then with a curl of his lip he added, “I have some pretty negative impressions of my few visits to LA.”
She remembered his telling of his feelings for LA, the place Laura wanted to be and didn’t want him to join her there.
“I don’t think I’m a Southern California kind of guy,” he said.
She was glad she hadn’t said, “But I love you! We should be together somewhere!”
“Let me take you to bed, Kaylee Sloan, and see if we can work up some book ideas when I rock you to sleep.”
Which was as good an idea as any.
* * *
For a few days, Kaylee stuck to a very rigid schedule. She did take her walk with Otis, spent some time with Lady and the puppies, and took her laptop to Jack’s, but when she saw that she’d only written a page the whole hour and a half she was at Jack’s, she hustled back home. She worked as hard as possible but still was doing more rewriting than writing. She had wanted to have thirty pages after three days but she had nine. She redoubled her efforts.
Her book about Caroline and Landon, however, was growing. They had fallen in love and fallen in bed and it was delicious. That book made her heart sing; poor Caroline had been a lonely widow in need of a fresh start when she found Landon and her world was suddenly twirling. It was certainly reflective of Kaylee’s experience, but she had learned it was also very like Mel’s and Vanessa Haggerty’s. She learned from Mel that Vanessa had been pregnant with her first child when her marine husband was killed in action, and Vanessa ended up marrying his best friend. Whew. And now they had five children.
Her autobiographical fiction was getting more fulfilling by the day and she wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to show it to anyone. She wasn’t very confident of her ability in this women’s fiction genre. But even though she was struggling, she knew what she was doing in suspense. She was surprised to find herself finally closing in on the end and called her editor.
“Simone, it’s Kaylee,” she said. “Are you in the middle of something?”
“Everything can wait for you! How are you? I think about you all the time!”
She used to talk to her editor at least every other week. They had a great rapport and had become friends. Kaylee had worked with her for eight years now and Simone was not her first editor.
“I’m in good shape, actually. I’m going to be sending you this manuscript before Christmas.”
“So your getaway is paying off?”
“I love it here,” she said. “In a perfect world I’d have a house in Newport and one up here, in the mountains.” And she told Simone about the weather, the leaves, the giant trees, the Halloween party, the people she’d met and had developed friendships with like Mel, Jilly, Jack and Preacher. And eventually she told her about Landry. Before she knew it, they’d talked for an hour. “And there’s this other thing,” she said. “While I was having trouble getting into the book, I dabbled around a little bit on a different story. I was just doing it as an exercise, something to get me moving. And now that I’ve written quite a bit of it just for fun, I kind of like it.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“You know what I’d rather do?” Kaylee said. “I’d rather just send it to you. I think it’s a romance, not a genre I know that much about. But you know romance and women’s fiction very well. Maybe you could take a look and tell me what’s missing.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I’ll concentrate on finishing the suspense as a priority. Am I still on the schedule for next fall?”
“Of course,” Simone said. “But you know you have time if you need it. I don’t want you to feel pressured. We can drop you out and put you back in a few months later, depending on how slammed we are. Kaylee, I don’t want you to worry—you have a publisher and when a good writer has an emergency, we don’t kick them when they’re down. We’re here to work with you.”
“You’ve been so good that way. Please know how much I appreciate your patience and understanding.”
“As long as you know how much we love publishing you.”
* * *
Kaylee put in a tough week but produced forty pages that she liked, and the protagonist was getting closer to discovering that it was her photographer’s jealous brother who was murdering models. But she was exhausted. At the end of a hard writing day her neck and shoulders ached. Sometimes Landry would give her a nice shoulder rub in the evening and revive her spirits.
They were sitting in front of his TV, the fire roaring against the cold night, when her phone rang. She looked at it and declined the call.
“I don’t mean to be nosy, but you’ve done that a lot lately,” he said.
“It’s my father,” she said. “I really don’t feel like dealing with him now.”
“Do you know why he’s calling?” Landry asked.
“Yes. He’s hoping we can get together sometime around the holidays. You know how I feel about the holidays.”
“Like you wish they weren’t happening,” he said.
“Exactly. I know there’s no avoiding them but I really don’t want to try to add Howie to that stress.”
Landry frowned. “Did he do something really traumatic that makes you want to avoid him at all costs?”
“He did absolutely nothing. Nothing at all,” she said. “Can we just not talk about him?”
He gave her silky hair a soft stroke. “We won’t talk about it if you don’t want to, but I’m here for you if you do. I’m a good listener. And I care.”
“I know, that’s very sweet.”
“Because I love you, Kaylee.”
She felt the tears begin to gather in her eyes. Then they spilled over and there was a catch in her voice when she said, “I love you, too.”
“I’m no expert, but shouldn’t that make us happy?”
“It does make me happy, but what about us? I came here to get away and try to ignore the whole Christmas thing, but then there’s you and you live here and I live there and what’s going to happen to us? I’m supposed to go home after Christmas. I want to be in my mother’s house again but you don’t like Southern California and I can’t stay here, this isn’t my home. I have a home. You have a home! What am I supposed to do? We haven’t talked about—”