“What’s going on?” he asked, leaning down to give his dog a little affection.
Kaylee yawned. “Pajama party,” she said tiredly. “I think I fell asleep. Come in and see what Otis found today.”
He followed her to the corner of the room where Mama and the puppies were sleeping with a little black-and-white kitten curled up among them.
“Kaylee, where did they come from?”
“Otis found them in the woods,” she said. “And he wouldn’t let me pass until he showed me.”
7
THEY CALLED HER LADY. For a week the rescued dog was referred to as Mama, but that wasn’t a real name, so Kaylee stepped forward and declared she would be Lady. Landry fixed up a cozy pen for her in his kennel. He built a two-foot-high barrier around a large dog mattress so that the puppies couldn’t wander off but Lady could step over with ease. He would have put her in the house in a warm corner of the kitchen, but he didn’t really know her and there were too many opportunities for trouble, so the kennel it was.
Lady liked the kennel and the new bed for her and her family. Right outside the door was the fenced yard and Otis was willing to run and play a little bit, but Lady was still a new mother and underweight and had four puppies who didn’t even have their eyes open to take care of. And she did a wonderful job of keeping them clean and quiet.
It was no longer necessary to sit beside Lady’s box and feed her by hand as Kaylee had done in the beginning. Her appetite had returned and she was enjoying a special kibble with a high calorie content. In no time at all she began to look more fit, healthier and, to Kaylee at least, beautiful. But Kaylee still spent a great deal of time sitting beside her, picking up a puppy to cuddle, then another, then another. Lady patiently allowed this. She would often show her approval by licking Kaylee’s hand.
“I wonder what happened that made her owner go to such cruel lengths?” she asked again and again. “She’s the sweetest thing in the world.”
“I think you’re pretty much over that fear of dogs you had,” Landry said.
“At least with these two, I am. Do you have new dogs coming anytime soon?” she asked.
“I didn’t schedule any training sessions for the fall because I’m visiting those fall festivals and I won’t be home to be sure they get out, get fed, get exercised. I’ll be too busy with pots.”
He called them pots but they were really masterful works of art, clay and ceramic and brightly colored designs in every imaginable shape. Since Lady had come to stay, Kaylee spent a little time just watching Landry in his shop. He’d sometimes wear protective headgear with goggles, especially when he was using a blowtorch on glass or metal designs. He had a kiln and a couple of ovens and long metal tables; when he refinished two bedrooms into a shop he left the floor cement, nailed metal and flame-resistant sheets to some parts of the walls and inserted a metal garage door in the back wall. When the weather permitted, he raised that door for a working outdoors effect. Sometimes the heat in his shop could become intense. The door into the shop from the hall was extra large and metal reinforced. He liked making decorative wind chimes of metal, ceramic, glass or clay.
Then there were the sculptures, shaped and molded with clay. He had just finished one that was a partial female torso with an obvious pregnant middle. It was armless and headless, like an old Greek statue. “Are you going to put a head on that woman?” Kaylee asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I like the look for one thing. And if there’s a head and a face, it will be hard for another woman to look at it and imagine herself. Do you want to see some of my earlier work? I have pictures.”
She sat on his couch with albums and paged through photos of beautiful sculptures, pots and chimes. One that caught her eye was a bust of a woman with a man behind her, kissing the side of her neck. Her head was tilted to give him access to her neck and the look on her face was rapturous. The man’s eyes were closed. It was one of the most romantic things she’d ever seen.
His glass pieces were her favorite, all shapes and sizes and many colors in beautiful designs, especially the vases, which went from round to oval to square. There was a huge clear glass vase with a narrow slit on top with silver, black and gold stripes running through it—it was stunning.
She watched him blow designer glass a couple of times, keeping her distance and wearing dark protective glasses. He would create pieces that a gallery might get six hundred to twelve hundred dollars for. She was mightily impressed with his talent and his success.
Every day was a new adventure. She walked, usually with Otis if he wanted to come along, but with his “dad” at home working, he usually stayed close to Landry. She made it a point to go to town. She might stop at the corner store and grab a few items. She’d spend some time in the bar with her laptop open. If this were a coffee shop in Newport Beach the sight of that laptop would ward people off out of respect for her space as she was working. Not in Virgin River. It was common for everyone who passed through to talk to her, sometimes going so far as pulling up a chair at her table or right next to her at the bar. This, of course, was why she
