“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 working 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.”