by Robyn Carr
“Have you heard from the Templetons?”
“Not since I talked to him right after the fire. Gerald said he’d give me a call once he learned more about the cause. He thinks he’ll have to come up here and plan some repairs. He or one of his sons.”
The door opened and a tall man came in and walked toward Mike and Kaylee. “Hey there,” he said. “I think I saw you at the fire. I’m Paul Haggerty.”
She recognized him as one of the many men gathered around the dregs of the fire. “Kaylee Sloan.”
“Did I hear you say the Templetons were friends of yours?”
“That’s right. I was going to use their house for a few months.”
Paul pulled a card out of his pocket. “Next time you talk to Gerald, tell him I’m hoping for a chance to bid on the remodel. I have a construction company in town. He knows me, but I don’t know if he’ll remember I’m a builder. I do a lot of remodels and upgrades around here.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on.”
“Thank you. Are you doing okay?”
“She’s renting that extra house out at Landry’s,” Mike said.
“It’s nice out there. I helped Landry tear out a wall in the big house and he works with me from time to time.”
“Oh, this is the girl from the fire,” someone else said.
Over the next hour she chatted with Connie, the owner of the Corner Store; Noah, the minister; Colin and Luke Riordan, names she’d heard before, and then of all people to drop by, Landry came in, greeting her as if they were old friends. There was a lot of hand shaking and howdies, a couple of beers, a couple of sodas, a black coffee. Mel came in to take her afternoon break with her husband. Kaylee met the cook, Preacher, and his wife. Before she realized what had happened, she’d been in the bar for two hours and the place was beginning to fill up with construction workers or farmers or people from businesses around town.
At five Jack asked her if she was staying for dinner. “Not tonight,” she said. “I have a kitty to feed.”
“Something to go?”
She’d been to the store; she did a mental inventory of what she had on hand, but somehow it didn’t create a picture of a meal in her mind. “A salad to go?” she asked.
“Sure. Can I give you a chicken breast with that?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “And a hunk of bread?”
“You got it.”
A few minutes later she made her way out of the bar with her sack of takeout. She had noticed that Landry left just before she did and when she got home she saw that he was in the fenced yard with the dogs. He waved to her.
“You need anything, Kaylee?” he shouted.
She lifted her bag. “I’m all set, thanks.”
“Have a great night,” he yelled.
“You, too,” she called out, waving.
Now, that wasn’t such a big deal. Just neighbors being friendly, that’s all. But there was much about him to enjoy, not the least of which was his kindness. He didn’t have to ask if she needed anything. He was also handsome. And sexy. And right next door.
She fed her kitty, ate her salad, put on her pajamas and sat on the big bed with her laptop. The sun was setting but she had not achieved much by way of writing, so she opened the laptop while the kitty played beside her on the bed, frequently jumping onto the laptop keys. She forced herself to deal with the dead body in the story, though nothing could have interested her less.
Then she flipped over to that other document, to the fantasy world of her new fictional characters Caroline and Landon. She decided that her own life story lacked pizazz so she made a few adjustments for Caroline. Instead of grieving the loss of her best friend, she decided it would be more interesting if Caroline was a young widow and no one in her new town knew the details.
The only job she could find was a temporary position as an assistant to a producer who happened to be shooting a docudrama in the small town she chose for her escape, for her second chance. It was nothing but busywork, handing out scripts, setting up chairs for a reading, making sure everyone had what they needed, whether that was a coffee or a masseuse. Once, just a few days into her new job, the director stopped her and said, “Do us a favor and read this scene.”
“But I don’t act,” Caroline said.
“No problem, we’re not looking for acting from you. Just read so my leading man can do his thing. It’s only a rehearsal. And he needs it.”
“Okay,” Caroline said. “But don’t hold it against me.”
“Of course not.”
There were about ten people total around the set. She could fake it. She took the script, gave it a quick read, understood the emotion and pauses, silences and outbursts. It was all of two pages. She stood before the outrageously attractive leading man. He gave her a reassuring smile, coincidentally just like Landon’s.
They began. It was an argument that would end with her in tears and him putting his arms around her to reassure her. She accused him of being interested in a woman named Carla, snapped back when he tried to make excuses, stood speechless before him while he fought back, and then (because it said so in the script), she began to cry and fuss about the pain his indifference caused.
The small set was on location in the woods, and when the rehearsal of the short scene was at an end, there was a deafening silence all around. Stillness. Everyone was frozen.
Caroline wiped away the tears she had forced. She had wanted to cooperate as well as possible, after all. She looked around. Silence and open mouths faced her.
“Well, holy shit,” the director said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Was it terrible?”
“Terrible? Darling, you’re an actress,” the leading man said.
She came back to reality and stopped typing.
Crap, Kaylee thought. Why can’t I fantasize like normal people? The next door neighbor waves at you and you write a scene that reeks of romance and yearning. That’s not normal.
I think it’s adorable, her mother’s voice said. What can it hurt?
“A man is the last thing I’m looking for,” she said aloud.
Whatever. He seems like a pleasant distraction.
“Hush, now. You know that’s not what I want.”
But she played around with that scene, went back to the beginning of this totally outrageous story and reset it, giving it a proper beginning, and typed for three hours. Kitty fell asleep next to her and when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer she closed the laptop. She slept like that, a laptop and a kitten sharing her space on the bed.
She slept well and with a smile.
4
THE UPSIDE TO being known as the girl from the fire was, she was not considered a stranger. She might be learning the names of the folks around town and their connections to each other slowly, but they all had her down. No matter where she went—on her daily walk, shopping, stopping at the vegetable stand, hanging out at Jack’s—she was greeted as if she were a friend. And because of the fire, she had a history here. There was something comforting about that.
She was still feeling a little lonely, especially in the evenings. This was naturally time she would either phone her mother to share events of the day or maybe she’d drive the few miles from her apartment to her mom’s house. They often ate dinner together. There was no changing that history so she often reached out to some of her friends who were not yet sick to death of her grieving and would talk to her, FaceTime with her.
“I’m sorry that the only thing I seem to be able to talk about is how much I miss my mom,” she said to Janette.
“That’s okay, cookie. It won’t always be like that but while it is, I’m here to listen. I listen for a living, you know. Now tell me a story. Tell me about the book.”
“Which one?”
“Are you wor
king on more than one?” Janette asked, surprised. She knew Kaylee hadn’t been writing much since her mom was diagnosed.
“Well, the one that’s due, that was due before Christmas, is a suspense novel, and right now the suspense is whether or not I am ever going to finish it. It is two and a half chapters in length. It’s boring and disjointed and I have very little interest in it. But I had a wild idea about a woman starting fresh in a small town. She’s working for a local movie producer. She rents a small house from a man who trains dogs and of course, she’s afraid of dogs.”
“Kaylee, what’s that story for?”
“For me. It’s alternative journaling. Fictionalizing my experience while I make sure to add a few legitimate feelings and thoughts. I won’t do anything with it.”
“That’s brilliant,” Janette said. Janette, as it happened, was a counselor. A marriage and family therapist. “I sometimes recommend that to my clients. But why don’t you just keep a diary? I bet in ten years it would be really interesting.”
“You have no idea how not interesting that would be,” Kaylee said. “I went to counseling after my divorce and at the insistence of the counselor, I kept a journal. I read through it about six or seven years later and found it so embarrassing, I destroyed it. It’s a terrible experience—expose all your deepest, darkest feelings and emotions and take a clear look at them later. Oh God, that is humiliating. It’s much better to make up a story without naming names.”
When she was dead and gone and someone unearthed these stories, they might see some similarities between her and her fictional heroines, but they’d never be entirely sure. And she was writing down her real experiences and feelings, which the counselor said never hurt. She didn’t advocate mailing the vitriolic letters Kaylee wrote to people like her ex, her estranged father, women friends who ultimately turned out to be crappy friends. But giving all of them new names and faces and exposing them secretly inside a novel... There was a real satisfaction in that.
One of Kaylee’s writer friends kept killing her ex-husband in book after book. He never went easily. He suffered. It was delicious. Kaylee had a little fun with the demise of her ex as well. It was kind of irresistible.
* * *
The next day, Gerald Templeton called Kaylee. Bonnie had been sick. That was why Kaylee hadn’t heard from them. Bonnie was feeling better, but not good enough to take a big road trip. In another week, if she was up to it, they were going to come up and have a look at the fire damage. Their oldest son, Rick, lived in Oregon, and he was hoping to meet his parents there.
“That reminds me, Gerald. I met a man named Paul Haggerty. He said he knew you and to please remind you that he’s a builder. He’s hoping you’ll consider him when you get around to repairs and renovation.”
“I remember Paul,” Gerald said. “Did you get his number?”
“I have his card,” she said, happy to be assisting in some small way.
Kaylee had been there a couple of weeks, wandering around by day, calling friends and writing in the evenings. She was a frequent visitor at Jack’s Bar and often had dinner there. Sometimes Mel would drop by and they stole a little girl time. She walked the roads up, down and around the mountain near her rental house. Given the elevation of this little mountain town, the weather was not as hot and steamy as those towns in the valleys. Right now Sacramento would be simmering. But in the mountains, it was so pleasant. She discovered that on the side of Landry’s house there was a large garden and if it weren’t for the frequent barking around his property, she might have taken a closer look. She did see Landry from afar now and then. He could usually be found having his morning coffee on the porch or maybe watching the sunset or, most often, working with a dog or two in the yard.
She bought her own bear repellent, a can so large she had to wear a backpack to carry it. And the upside of that—it was too heavy and bulky for her to run. It would bang her in the back. Thank God, she thought. No running or even jogging.
It was early evening, the sun just starting its downward path, when she was returning from her second walk of the day. As she passed in front of his house, raising a hand in hello, the rug beside him appeared to jump up. The dog.
“Hey, Kaylee, how’s it going?”
She froze. She’d seen this dog from a distance. This was the closest she’d been to it and it was a very big dog. He was there on the porch with Landry. There was no fence and, of course, no leash. She couldn’t move. She imagined the dog would leap off the porch and fly like a torpedo toward her and take her down.
“How about a beer?” Landry said. “Or maybe a glass of wine?”
She was speechless. Didn’t he realize there was a monstrously large dog standing beside him, glaring at her?
“Kaylee?”
She was paralyzed. She held her hands clasped in front of her and took a cautious step backward.
“You okay?”
“I... Ah... I have some stuff to do.”
“Okay. But are you okay? You look a little...freaked out. Hey, are you afraid of Otis?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I have to—” She took slow and very cautious steps backward, then turned and forced herself to move unhurriedly down the road toward her house. Her heart hammered in her chest and her breath came in short gasps. She tried telling herself that Landry wouldn’t let anything bad happen, but fear was in charge.
She looked back at Landry’s house. The dog wasn’t actually all that big. Too big for her, that was for sure, but a moment ago it seemed as big as a horse, teeth bared. Now he stood relaxed beside Landry, casually wagging his tail. He almost looked like he was smiling. The place on her calf where she’d been bitten so many years ago ached. She knew that was in her mind because that was not a chronic pain she had.
She lifted her hand and gave him a wave and went inside. She leaned against the door and waited until her breathing evened out. “Sheesh,” she said, unnerved. She was shaking. She sat on the couch and concentrated on just calming down. Once she was under control, she drank a large glass of water. Then she poured herself a glass of wine. She turned on the TV.
In ten minutes, her scalp stopped sweating and dried out. Her hands stopped trembling. The voice of the news anchor became familiar and calming, even if the news was not. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, cradling her glass of wine. All she was acutely aware of was that her door was closed and she was alone. Safe.
There was a sharp rapping at her front door and she jumped in surprise, sloshing her wine. She brushed at the spill with her hand, annoyed by her jumpiness. “Who is it?” she asked, but she knew.
“It’s me. Landry. Can I have a minute?”
“Do you... Is there... Is the dog with you?”
“No, he’s in my house. He’s staying right there.”
She let out a breath. Whew. She opened the door and he stood there holding two beer bottles by their necks.
“Let’s have a beer and talk,” he said.
“Talk? About?”
“Come out and sit on the porch,” he said. “I think you just had a panic attack. About the dog.”
“I’m not comfortable around...”
“We can talk about that.”
“I don’t think talking about it is likely to change anything,” she said. “I’ve talked about it before. It’s a very old trauma.”
He lifted the beers toward her.
She sighed. “I have a glass of wine. I just poured it. Let me get it.” When she got back to the porch, he was seated on the porch swing.
He took a deep drink of his beer. “Here’s the thing. I think I told you, I’ve dealt with this before. You should always be careful around dogs you don’t know. They can be unpredictable and sometimes unfriendly. You did the right thing—you stayed still and didn’t bolt. That’s good. But Otis gave no sign of being mean or vicious. I think if you’re going to work through t
his, Otis might be a good place to start. He’s very gentle and he’ll take commands from anyone. Like anyone. He follows the commands of a two-year-old if necessary. He’s been a good companion to several children who are trying to get over their fear.”
“What’s the point? I’m not likely to want a dog. Not after being badly bitten. I was only six. I had to have a couple of surgeries.”
“It’s not so you can be a dog owner,” he said. “You don’t even have to be a dog lover. It’s so your heart doesn’t pound so hard you faint or throw a clot. The point is not to get you to love dogs. It’s so you don’t have to feel that terror every time you see one. If you feel better when you avoid dogs, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a question of taste, isn’t it? Probably you’re a kitty person. It’s just about getting over the fear. Not the healthy, reasonable fear. The irrational fear.”
“How do you suppose I do that?”
“With the right dog, for starters. A dog you can absolutely trust.”
“Hmm,” she said, thinking she really didn’t like the idea of being around any dog. “How did you get into this?” she asked, taking a sip of wine.
“Kind of the reverse of your situation. I found a dog who had been abandoned and abused. I was just a kid of fifteen and I carried the dog home. I called her Izzy. I wanted to keep her and get her strong and my dad thought it was a bad idea. He thought the dog’s temperament might be permanently damaged, that she might get scared and attack or run off or just hide in a corner and shake for the rest of her life. But I talked him into it and then I looked everywhere for someone who could show me how to help her gain trust again. There was a trainer over in Fortuna and I went to talk to him. Then I took Izzy with me. He thought she might be about two years old and based on her physical condition, might have been used for fighting from the time she was a pup. Even the trainer said I’d probably be fighting a losing battle. I had to hand-feed her for months. I slept with her and took her everywhere but school. In six months she was the best dog that ever lived. And she was happy. I think she forgot about the abuse.” He looked at her and flashed his grin. It was an engaging, infectious grin that demanded a smile in return. “And I got hooked on training. To have a dog, especially a difficult dog, follow your commands because she wants to—it’s exhilarating. It gives you a friend for life.”