by Robyn Carr
* * *
Landry didn’t have any deadlines or pressing work—he wasn’t showing anything and he sold some of his pots from his website, but he was ahead of schedule. Still, he kept mostly to his shop working and designing because he didn’t want to get in Kaylee’s space. After having a good cry, she’d snapped out of the blues for a while, but she was hard at work and a little more serious than usual.
She’d had a call from Bonnie Templeton and asked Landry if he wanted to go with her to see the house, so they drove across the mountain to the other side of Virgin River and he was the witness to an emotional reunion. Kaylee, whose feelings seemed to be on a trip wire, cried as she embraced her old friends. It took a little while to get it under control and then they walked through the house with Paul and Landry.
“You’re going to want to start a list of things that aren’t quite right or damaged or any imperfections you find,” Paul said. “As far as I can tell, there’s nothing to prevent you from staying here. Everything has been tested and passed inspection.”
“I can’t believe how beautiful it is,” Bonnie said. “Better than when we originally bought it!”
“I think over the past twenty years it got a little run-down,” Gerald said. “It was past due a little facelift, but I wasn’t sure we were going to keep it.”
“Were you thinking of selling it?” Kaylee asked.
“We’d always intended to keep it in the family,” Bonnie said. “We thought the boys would want it, but they’re undecided. They’re scattered all over the place—two in California, one in Oregon, one in Arizona. They vacillate on whether they’ll actually use it. Each family has other ideas, their own vacation spots, closer to where they live. We might keep it a couple more years, then sell it if it doesn’t see much use.”
“It’ll be easier to sell in its current condition than before,” Bonnie said. “I’d offer it to you for the rest of the year but I suspect you’re settled where you are.”
“I’m pretty comfortable,” she said with a slight flush. “Plus, there are important dogs there.”
“You? Dogs?” Bonnie said.
“She’s come a long way,” Landry said.
“Will you break away from the writing long enough to join us for dinner? I haven’t been to Jack’s since last summer.”
“Sure,” she said. “And he would love to see you.”
Landry felt his phone buzz, pulled it out of his pocket and read a text. It was from Brie, asking him to come by her office at his earliest convenience.
“Kaylee, can you go with the Templetons to Jack’s and I’ll meet you there? I just got a text from a friend asking me to drop by. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Sure,” she said. “Take your time.”
Landry left while Kaylee and the Templetons continued to look at and praise the renovations on the house, much to Paul’s satisfaction. Landry wasted no time texting Brie that he was on his way.
It had to have something to do with the divorce. It could all be over in no time. Surely Laura had signed off on it. They had agreed long ago, if one of them wanted to divorce, the other would not make it difficult. And they had no common property.
When he repeated that to Brie she said, “Oh, but you do. Any property you acquired during the marriage or jointly own is considered part of the divorce settlement.”
“As I said, we don’t have any jointly owned property.”
“Don’t you have a house? Land? Maybe a retirement account? Equipment that you use in your business?”
“It’s not jointly owned. I inherited the house and land from my father a few years ago and Laura has never been a part of my business.”
“It would very likely be considered part of the marriage assets, since you’re still married. Just as her assets would be considered part of the marriage assets.”
“Unless she’s keeping something from me, she doesn’t have anything. In fact, I told you that over the years she’s had to borrow money from me, not that I was fool enough to consider it a loan. I think Laura spends whatever she has when she gets paid and isn’t much of a saver or investor. She lives well when she’s working and not as well when she’s not.”
“Explain your situation to me again,” Brie said. “You haven’t lived together in ten years, you discussed divorce due to your separation eight years ago and agreed on the terms—”
“There were no terms,” he said a little hotly. “I didn’t have anything but my art supplies, she didn’t have anything. We agreed we weren’t going to live together. We were friendly and she visited sometimes.”
“Define sometimes,” Brie asked.
“I saw her three or four times a year. I haven’t sent her monthly money or slept with her in eight years. I didn’t support her. I gave her loans because she was short. I knew they weren’t loans and I did it anyway.”
“I received a very polite email from her lawyer that said she’d be happy with half of your house and land and support payments.”
“She never lived in that house! I’ll call her and get to the bottom of this!”
“As your attorney, I advise you not to make contact with her. She has an attorney, you have an attorney. I’ll recommend mediation supervised by family court and you can lay it all out.”
“And just because I didn’t divorce her a long time ago, I’m going to lose my home and half my possessions?”
“I do think under the circumstances we’ll get out better than that, but there’s no question that now that lawyers are involved, it’ll be more expensive. Listen, the law is the law and believe it or not it’s written that way to protect the innocent. No-fault divorce means it doesn’t matter who does what to who and community property is simply half or whatever can be negotiated. Right now, feeling like you’re being robbed, you don’t have much empathy, but this is meant to protect men or women from falling at the mercy of powerful spouses who want to turn their backs on their responsibilities. That is not your situation. So—we’ll try mediation and fight it. Your marriage was over a long time ago.”
“I’m still going to call her and ask her why she’s doing this.”
“If I were you I’d probably ignore my lawyer’s advice and do that, too. Try very hard not to give her more ammo. Okay?”
Landry was so angry that he didn’t wait long. He called Laura on his way to Jack’s. Of course she didn’t answer. Now that he thought about it, she rarely did. She almost always returned the call. On the other hand, if he saw that it was her and he wasn’t in the middle of something important, he would answer. But clearly Laura’s life was more important than his. To the voice mail he said, “I’ve just heard from my lawyer. My lawyer heard from your lawyer. So you’re going to make this difficult and you’re asking for half my father’s property? Property that you visited maybe six times in as many years? Property that you never shared with me, but now you want it? What the hell is going on, Laura? We agreed years ago that we’d chosen to live separately and if the time for divorce came, there would be no altercation! This is altercation, my wife. I’ve given you patience, kindness, money, and now that I just want to end it, you’re going to drag every dime you can get out of my kicking, screaming body? If you’d come to me and told me you need a little help... Haven’t I always been willing to help you? But this—after you left me—”
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 clear. I’m going to keep trying. With you and with them. I’ve wasted enough time.”
She sat down on her couch. “Do you have a terminal disease or something?” she asked.
“What a thing to say!” he said.
“Not to be mean, but it’s like you never worried about your relationship with me until my mom was literally dying. What’s the deal?”
“Kaylee! I care about you very much. I wasn’t such a good dad after your mother and I divorced, but I still cared. And I came around when I could.” He stepped farther into the room. “May I sit?”
“You should have called,” she said. “How did you find me?”
“I called the Templetons,” he said. And he sat. “Bonnie told me where you were staying, though she didn’t have an address. I had your landlord’s name. The guy at the bar in town gave me directions.”
“Well, that’s good for security,” she muttered.
“I hope you’re not unsafe. Do you feel safe here?” he asked.
“Of course, or I would be somewhere else.”
It was obvious why Howard had had so many wives and girlfriends and girlfriends who became wives. He was a good-looking man. He had a full head of silver-and-black hair, was sixty-five, very fit, and about six-foot-two. He was tan from hours on the golf course. He was still working as an account executive for what was once a phone company and was now a “communications corporation” that produced everything from wireless services to cell phones.
“I know the holidays are especially hard for you,” he said. “They are for me, too.”
“Why so?” she asked. “You and my mom haven’t had a holiday together for thirty years.”
“There was the last one,” he said. “We weren’t exactly together, but I was there almost every day at the end.”
She almost said too little too late, but stopped herself. “Just out of curiosity, why were you there so much at the end?”
“Kaylee, I loved your mother,” he said. “She forgave me for hurting her. And I couldn’t let you go through that alone. I was worried about you.”
“You loved her?” she said, but her lip curled.
“And she loved me in her own way. We mended our fences the best we could. I hurt her very badly and my apology came far too late but believe me, it didn’t take all that long for me to realize that giving her up was the biggest mistake I ever made. I just didn’t come to that realization in time to make a difference. But despite that, after some years and the fact that I hadn’t done anything to improve my life by marrying and divorcing, we had formed a nice friendship. Talking to your mom... Even though we’d never again be a couple, I loved talking to your mom. She was brilliant and funny and probably the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
“Which begs the question...why?”
“Why other women?” he asked. “Your mother said I had a weak ego. I suspect she was right. I never tired of having beautiful women tell me how fantastic I was
, even when I knew it was a lie and I’d regret it.”
“Yeah, she said you had half a brain,” Kaylee said.
“I’m not entirely stupid,” he said, straightening his spine. “Not entirely.”
She smirked and just shook her head. He was pitiful. He lost the most wonderful woman in the world because he liked being flattered by pretty women. He was quite successful in business, at least in his forties and fifties, but he was clearly an idiot who thought with his little man.
“Your mother, on the other hand, was incredible. The way she started that business from practically nothing and made it into one of the best furniture companies in the area. You must be so proud of her.”
“I didn’t pay that much attention to it at the time, to be honest. It was patio furniture. And it ate up so much of her time. I didn’t realize until right before she got sick how much she’d achieved, and against all odds. Once I understood, I did tell her how much I admired her. But I admired her for so many things. She was a good person. She had great compassion. She was always kind. She cared about people in a genuine way. She forgave you!”
“How are you going to spend the holidays, Kaylee?” he asked. She noticed that he was a little misty-eyed.
“I’m going to write, lie low, let it pass. I really need to get through Christmas, and then maybe in a year or two I can endure it again. Last Christmas was the worst day of my life.”
“What about Thanksgiving? Have you made any plans?”
“Sort of,” she said. “My landlord and I have become good friends and he’s alone, too. We talked about maybe getting some fresh seafood in Eureka and having the meal together. Also, knowing I’m alone, the cook at the bar in town said I’m welcome to join them. I guess they cook for their families at the bar and keep space open for anyone who wanders by. He says no one goes hungry in Virgin River on Thanksgiving and he prepares a feast. I am going to help the local midwife with her charity baskets—just a couple of afternoons of stuffing them full of food and helping to deliver them before Thanksgiving.”
