Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers #5) - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,8

she still had both parents and grandparents, and so many others would be depending on him.

Without another word, he turned and walked inside. With each step, he wondered if he’d ever feel anything except pain for the rest of his life.

Chapter Three

Twenty Years Later

While her grandfather slept in the four-poster behind her, Evie stared out of one of the arched windows of Gloriana House as an early October afternoon painted the hills around Bitter Bark in the golds and russets of autumn. Her gaze took its usual path, drifting down the hill, over the upscale homes of Ambrose Acres, and then toward the brick buildings and the clock tower over town hall.

Even from here, she could spot the bronze statue of Bitter Bark’s founder, Evie’s great-great-great-grandfather, Thaddeus Ambrose Bushrod, standing sentry in the middle of it all.

The view had thrilled her as a child when she’d slip up here to her grandparents’ bedroom and look out over the town. In her mind, she was a princess surveying the kingdom, part of a venerable bloodline, the sixth generation of Bitter Bark’s first family. The Bushrods, then the Hewitts, were as much a part of the town’s fabric as the enormous hickory tree that “Big Bad Thad” had erroneously called a bitter bark and then named the town after it.

The view had broken her heart when she was living in Raleigh, as she had for the past twenty-some years with only occasional visits to see Granddaddy Max and Grandmama Penelope. From up here, she could see the fire station, and she used to imagine Declan Mahoney hard at work, saving lives and protecting the people of this town. But never, ever picking up the phone to call his onetime best friend.

Because after the fire, there’d come the ice. She and Declan had entered into what Evie thought of as “the frozen years,” where they remained to this day. The burned wing of the glorious Victorian mansion that Thaddeus Bushrod Jr. had built at the turn of the century had been repaired after the blaze that had started when rags soaked in chemicals combusted in the heat.

But no team of architects, historians, and contractors had come to fix the damage done to a friendship that was supposed to have lasted a lifetime.

Declan had changed the morning his father died, withdrawing from everyone but his family. Evie had tried to break through the walls grief had built around him. At the funeral, before she left for school, and many times that first year, she’d reached out to him, but all she’d gotten was…distance. Excuses. And silence. He’d never been mean or mad or even shed a tear, but he could no longer connect with her.

Did he blame her? Did he believe that if they hadn’t gone to the mountains, the outcome might have been different? Did he resent her mother, whose painting rags had started the fire that collapsed the second-floor veranda and trapped Captain Joe Mahoney? Did he hate Gloriana House, or her family, or just life in general?

She didn’t know, because the boy who told her everything wouldn’t share anything, so after a while, it became easier for Evie to try to forget how much she missed Declan. With the exception of the occasional unexpected and awkward encounter, neither of them had the courage or strength to break the ice that had formed around their friendship. After a decade or two, the very idea of some sort of reconciliation or revival seemed hopeless.

So now, this view made Evie feel bittersweet. At forty years old, an only child with no children of her own, Evangeline Hewitt was the last in a long line of Bushrod descendants who’d called Gloriana House home. When Granddaddy passed away, the great Victorian manor would enter a new phase, whatever that would be, with no family to live in it.

Not long after the fire, which her Bohemian mother had called a sign from the universe that they should “follow their dreams” and live on a sailboat in the Caribbean, her parents had moved. Dad didn’t follow dreams, he followed Mom like a loyal lapdog, so off they’d gone. Those two had zero desire to live in a rambling, three-story, one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old mansion that still had the original oil lamps and woodwork in some of the rooms.

And Evie had made her life more than three hours away, becoming one of the top specialists in her field, now the head of the Neurology Department at the NC State College of Veterinary