By the time he got to Jack’s, he could barely conceal his cranky mood, though he tried. They had dinner and he hoped he’d come off as a little quiet but not much worse. Fortunately Bonnie and Gerald were talkative enough to cover his silence.
But on the way home, Kaylee said, “I get the feeling that something is wrong.”
“It’s nothing much,” he said. “I’ll fill you in later. Right now I’m stewing.”
“I hope it’s nothing I’ve done.”
“Not at all,” he said, reaching for her hand. “You’re perfect.”
When he and Kaylee went to bed, he turned off the ringer on his phone. He slept poorly, of course. He was consumed by the unfairness of it all. In the morning, he didn’t look at his phone until they’d had breakfast and gone to their separate work spaces. Then he looked and saw there were six missed calls from Laura, the last one coming in at 1:00 a.m.
He was not fooled. He couldn’t remember when she’d ever called him so late. She wanted to know if he was alone.
When he finally called her in the late morning, she actually answered.
“I take it you got my message,” he said. “Do you want to explain what it is you’re doing and why?”
“I just want a chance,” she said softly. “I want you back. Obviously you’re doing this because you have someone else now. And you know I know who that someone is.”
“I’m not even going to respond to that,” he said. “It’s not relevant. I made a life for myself. I’ve lived alone for ten years, I built myself a house and a business and you took off to pursue your dream. I helped you. I gave you money when you were behind on rent or whatever. A couple of times I took out loans for money that you were never going to repay. If you think I’m going to buy my way out of a nonmarriage, you’re crazy. I won’t give up easily and I won’t pay you off. Damn you! I would have helped you, but you had to get a lawyer to fight me!”
“You said you’d always care about me.”
“I’m not likely to care about a person who uses me. Taking what little I have, Laura? That’s not generating a lot of goodwill. Think about it.”
He disconnected and sat in his shop, seething. Eventually he got out his clay and began to sculpt. By midafternoon he was feeling better and he had the beginning of a small statue of an old man, then wondered what the significance of that was. He carved and shaped the old man’s head with his loop and ribbon tools, wet it down with sponges, bent his stooped frame and added detail to the old man’s shapeless sweater with modeling tools.
He heard his front door open and realized he’d pretty much used up almost a whole day. The sun was sinking. Kaylee came into the shop and he smiled at the sight of her. She was tired. And beautiful. He lifted his arm to her and she came to him, standing beside him.
“Wow, Landry, look what you’ve done. That’s unbelievable. Someone you know?”
“Me, I think. In about forty years.” Or four years, depending on the stress level in his life, he thought.
“It’s magnificent,” she said. “Oh, what I’d give for your talent.”
“You don’t need my talent. You have your own.”
10
IN HER SUSPENSE NOVEL, the model-detective was being held captive by her photographer’s jealous brother and no one knew where she was or that she was missing—a very stressful scene. In the other book, Caroline and Landon were madly in love and couldn’t keep their hands off each other, kind of like another couple Kaylee knew intimately, but Caroline and Landon were having a little trouble in one department—they didn’t know where they were going as a couple. Or if.
Kaylee was getting her contracted book closer to the end but she was addicted to her love story. Both her own and her fiction.
There was a knock at her door and she wondered what time it was. She hardly ever wore a watch; looking at her computer she saw it was only three. It was not likely to be Landry. He respected her work time and space to a fault. He waited for her to come to him.
She opened the door and there stood her father. “Howie, what are you doing here?”
He winced. “I wanted to see you,” he said.
“I’m on a deadline here!”
“I know that. I also know you’d say that even if you weren’t. Look, this is my problem and not yours, but you’ve been putting me off for months. I know we both miss your mother terribly. I thought maybe we could lean on each other a little bit. I’ll do whatever it takes to make amends, Kaylee. We’re family.”
She turned from the door and walked into her house. She picked up Tux and held him close. “You have more family than you know what to do with.”
“I have two ex-wives, both have remarried, but I’m working on mending things with my kids as best I can. It’s not the same with them, though. They didn’t lose their mother, for one thing. They don’t really need me and I don’t blame them, but I’m trying. I see them, at least.”
“You should,” she said. “But Howie, I don’t say this to be cruel, but I don’t really need you, either. Not that you’re such a bad guy, it’s just that you were never there for me before. I got over the fantasy of having a daddy a long time ago.”
Howard had three other children. Two with his second wife—they were now in their twenties and one was engaged to be married. There was a third child, also a daughter, with his third wife. She was in college. Kaylee didn’t keep up with them and they hadn’t made any efforts to have a relationship with her.
“You’ve made that pretty
