“So sorry.” Declan took a step forward, his hand still on Evie’s back. “This is Dr. Evangeline Hewitt, the head of the Department of Veterinary Neurology at NC State.”
“Declan, it’s okay, I—”
“Oh, Dr. Hewitt!” The woman’s eyes widened. “I’ve read your work in myotonic dystrophia. I’m writing my senior thesis on the subject, and your paper has been gold to me. I’m Valerie Kaufmann, by the way.”
“Hi, Valerie, and…thank you. So happy the work is helping with your thesis.”
“Are you lecturing at Vestal Valley? Because, oh my God, I’m there.”
“Goodness, I didn’t expect to be recognized.” Suddenly self-conscious, she felt her cheeks warm with a light flush. “No, I’m not here as staff or faculty, though. We brought in a dog for an MRI.”
“Oh, sure, sure. And jeez, I hate to be the one to boot you out, Dr. Hewitt, but that little fellow…” She nodded toward BooBoo’s cage.
“Is waiting for meds,” Evie said quickly. “So sorry to get in your way.”
“Not at all!” She smiled at Declan. “Are you Mr. Hewitt? I can tell you’re proud of your wife. She’s a legend in neurology.”
This time, the blush burned full force on Evie’s cheeks.
“Evie’s a talented doctor,” he said gracefully, too classy to embarrass the young woman for the mistake.
“But I don’t belong in here,” Evie said. “And you have work to do.” Back in the hall, she let out a noisy breath. “Nice save, Mr. Hewitt.”
“That’s Captain Hewitt to you,” he said, lightly elbowing her. “And who knew you were famous? A legend, no less.”
“Only to veterinary students.” But the feeling was nice—being here, talking about things that mattered to other vets, not messing with department administrivia. “I actually like it here, back in the trenches where the real vet work is done. But I shouldn’t be poking my nose in other doctors’ cases.”
“Come on.” He nudged her toward the reception area. “You’re going to crawl out of your skin with the need to heal every animal in the place if we don’t at least take a walk.”
“But the doc could come out at any minute.”
“They’ll text you.” He led her to the door. “I want to talk to you about something anyway.”
Finally, an explanation and apology? That she would take, gladly. “Okay.”
He didn’t let go of her hand as they walked out into a hall, then through some glass doors to the sunny campus of Vestal Valley College.
“There’s a little coffee shop around the corner that way,” she said, gesturing. “It used to have the most insane pecan pie. Super rich and gooey, and the crust could bring you to tears.”
“Gotta have a crust that will make me cry.”
They took a shady path that meandered through the heart of the small college campus.
“You sure know your way around here,” he mused.
“I went here for a semester, remember?”
“Vaguely. During graduate school?”
“I did one neurology rotation here. Molly was an undergrad then.” She eyed him as they neared the coffee shop. “You were, uh, otherwise involved at the time.”
He nodded. “I recall that now.”
“What was her name?”
“That I don’t remember,” he said, then laughed at her surprised look. “Okay, I remember, but it didn’t last.”
“Kept me from coming to Sunday dinners, though, when Molly invited me. I didn’t want to run into what’s-her-name.”
“Bethany,” he said softly, opening the door to the coffee shop and holding it for her. “Her name was Bethany Tate, and she worked at the fire station for a while.”
“Ah.” The ping of jealousy was light, fast, and not really surprising. “What happened?”
They picked an open booth by the door, sliding in across from each other. “Now that I don’t remember,” he said. “But if you ask my sister, she’ll say I kept the woman at arm’s length and sabotaged the relationship, because apparently that’s my MO.”
She had to smile at his tone, which was rich with sarcasm.
When the waitress greeted them with menus, Declan held out his hand. “Do you have any of your famous pecan pie?”
“The best in Bitter Bark,” she said.
“Don’t tell that to Linda May, but we’ll have an extra large slice, two forks and two coffees. But don’t fill hers to the top, because she likes almost half of it cream.”
Her jaw loosened as a little shiver of surprise ran through her. “Declan.”
“That hasn’t changed, has it?”
“No, but…thanks for remembering.”
He tipped his head as if to say, How could I forget? Which only sent a second shiver through her. So, time for a third shiver, she supposed, ready for whatever he wanted to discuss.
She put her elbows on the table and dropped her chin on her knuckles. “So. What did you want to talk about?”
He flashed a split-second deer-in-the-headlights look at her. “Um…” He shifted in his seat. “What was that thing the vet tech mentioned? Myopic…dysfunctionia?”
She laughed from the belly, the way only Declan could make her laugh. She’d forgotten how much she loved that feeling. “Myotonic dystrophia. I headed a study on it at NC State. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“It’s really impressive,” he said softly, leaning back and looking at her.
“Nah, the study had a terrific team, and all I did was give orders.”
“I meant your whole career, Evie. I knew you were going to do well, but wow, you’ve knocked it out of the park.”
“Oh please, just because one student knew my work.”
“Don’t be modest. You’re amazing.”
A thread of a memory wound its way around her heart. To your unparalleled amazingness.
She brushed it away, more from habit than anything else, and then the waitress returned with their order, including what looked like a quarter of a pecan pie.
“A four-Kleenex crust,” Declan joked as he picked up his fork and broke off a bit of the piecrust. “Anyway, your career is what you always hoped it would be. You never let anything stop you. That’s…something.”
“I guess,” she said, stirring the extra splash of cream into her coffee, trying to figure out where he was going with this. For some reason, it wasn’t what she expected. “I’ve always been focused.”
“Laserlike,” he agreed. “Nothing ever made you want to get off that track?”
She looked up at him, not sure why he’d ask that question. Why was he dancing around that wretchedly overdue conversation?
“Not really.” She curled her fingers around the warm mug and studied him while she lifted it to her mouth. “Did anything ever make you want to stop being a firefighter, or get off the track toward captain and, ultimately, chief?”
He shook his head. “It’s different for a woman.”
She damn near dropped the cup. “Do you need a time machine to get back to the 1950s, or can you make it all by yourself?”
He smiled and stabbed his fork into the pie with a little too much force. “I’m not trying to be some kind of chauvinist. But I do see this in firefighting. A lot of women have to, you know, make a choice. Work or…” He gave her a pleading look, but she was not helping him out of this hole he was digging harder than he was poking at that pie. “You know. A family.”
She lowered the cup without taking a sip, looking down at the table, knowing it would be easy to give him grief about the old-school mind-set and keep the topic off her personally. Did he really not know why she never married and had a family? Did he really think it was because of work?
But how could she look across this table and say, Work was my consolation prize.
He gestured toward the plate. “Come on. Have some cry pie.” He lifted his brows as if he expected at least a smile for that attempt.
But she couldn’t smile or eat. The subject was too raw. And was he nev
er going to mention that he’d created a twenty-year gap that might just be the reason they were having this conversation in the first place?
“I will.” She finally took a sip of coffee, then set the cup down and leveled her gaze on him. “Why haven’t you had a family, Declan?”
He shifted his attention to the pie. “I think I just told you. Arm’s length and sabotaged relationships, or so says Dr. Smella Mahoney, my personal psychiatrist.” He gave a soft laugh. “She’s smart, though, and probably right.”
“Why wouldn’t that be true for me, then, too? Why would you assume it was work?”
He studied her for a moment, collecting his thoughts like he so often did. “I figured you wanted kids.”
“I figured you did,” she fired back without hesitation.
“I have oodles of nieces and nephews, and the way things are going, I’ll have more.”
She accepted that—and the fact that if she was going to get an explanation or apology, she’d have to ask. And she just didn’t want to do that.
After a moment, she finally took a piece of the sweet and sticky pie. “I…tried,” she admitted as she angled her fork into the crust. “Didn’t work out for me.”
He studied her intently, a hundred questions in his eyes. Did he want to know about exhaustive and stressful donor insemination attempts? About the tests that showed absolutely nothing was wrong except bad timing? About how she filled out a mountain of paperwork to adopt, but gave up after a sleepless night of sobbing because she absolutely did not want to do that alone?
Should she detail how every time she turned around, another year had passed, and she was still single and childless, but her career was skyrocketing? Or about how every time she dated someone or got intimate with a man, she ended up feeling weirdly empty and scared and lonely because that man wasn’t…who she wanted him to be?
No. That was all too much angst for pie and coffee the second day they were together after a twenty-year freeze that he wouldn’t even acknowledge.
“I’m a working-woman cliché,” she said simply, finally bringing the fork to her mouth. “No kids for me.”
“But you’re the end of the line,” he said quietly.
Damn it, was she never going to taste this pie without choking?
She put the fork down without taking the bite. “Now you sound like my grandfather.”
“It’s a noble line, that Bushrod-Hewitt family. I’m sure he wants to continue it. And your parents, too. Right?”
“My parents only want me to be happy, and my grandfather…” She narrowed her eyes, a picture she probably should have seen sooner beginning to emerge. “What exactly did my grandfather say to you yesterday, Declan?”
He paled slightly. “Oh…you know.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask.”
“Evie, come on. Eat your pie.”
“Declan, come on. Answer my question.”
He smiled at her. “I just had déjà vu so hard. We always used to talk that way, remember? Echo words and sentences.”
“I remember.” Everything, Dec. I remember everything. Don’t you? “I also remember that you’re really good at changing the subject and managing to use as few words as possible when you don’t want to talk about something.”
“Hey, I brought it up.”
“Then answer. What did my grandfather say to you when you went upstairs with him yesterday?”
He put his fork down and pinned his gaze on her, dark, intense, and unwavering. “He said you should have a baby.”
“Well, that ship has—”
“My baby.”
All she could do was stare at him, speechless and stunned. Had he said…
“Hey.” He tapped her knuckles and pointed at her phone, lighting up on the table. “Doc’s texting.”
She glanced at the message. “Judah’s waking up,” she whispered. “We should go.”
“But we haven’t finished—”
“Why don’t you eat the pie and meet me there? I really want to check on Judah.”
“I meant we haven’t finished our conversation.”
She closed her eyes. “Clearly, my sweet Granddaddy has lost his ninety-two-year-old marbles. So, yes, we have finished the conversation.”
She slipped out of the booth and headed toward the door, more surprised at the sting behind her eyelids than the unexpected and insane turn that conversation had taken.
Sure, they could try. Might even succeed, since there was apparently no reason she couldn’t have a baby.
But then what would happen when he looked at her and remembered that if it wasn’t for her, he’d have a father? What would happen when she went back to her life in Raleigh, and he wanted to take the baby to Waterford Farm every weekend? What would happen when she fell head over heels in love with him, and he went skulking back into his dark place and froze her out again?
No. Of all the options for a baby she’d considered over the years, Declan fathering one as some kind of bizarre favor was out of the question.
Hustling toward the animal hospital, she swiped under her eyes. Well, what do you know? That pie crust really did bring her to tears.
Chapter Nine
Jeez. She was worse than he was when it came to difficult topics of conversation. No wonder they’d gone twenty years without saying all that needed to be said. Which was so wrong for two people who used to tell each other everything.
Declan was still stinging with the frustration of that unfinished conversation when he caught up with Evie at the animal hospital. How could he find out what she wanted, like Ella suggested, if she refused to tell him?
Dr. Rafferty ushered them right into his office, launching them into yet another conversation Declan didn’t quite understand. This one was spoken in the language of vets that unintentionally shut him out as they discussed ambulatory tetraparesis and ataxia and a lot of other terms that were almost as incomprehensible as, Granddaddy lost his marbles, and the conversation is finished.
Sure, he agreed with the first one, but did the idea have to be finished? Not even discussed? Even laughed about or toyed with? Couldn’t they even think, What if?
Or had too much time and silence passed? Or, oh God, worse. Maybe she thought he was offering some kind of quid pro quo for all the lost years. Was that it?
“It is most definitely not cervical stenotic myelopathy,” the doctor said, pulling him back into the current conversation.
“Sadly, no,” Evie agreed.
Sadly? Declan leaned closer, forcing himself to focus on Judah. “It’s not Wobbler Syndrome?”
“It is,” Dr. Rafferty said. “But not bone-associated.”
Evie turned to Declan and put a gentle hand on his arm, the way he imagined she talked to dog owners. “Judah’s symptoms are disc-related, within the spine. Essentially, he has chronic bulging discs,” she said. “Which could lead to a sudden herniation, if not treated. And his problems walking will only get worse.”
He cringed. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Evie turned the medical image toward Declan. “See that circle? Imagine his spinal cord is made up of pieces of pepperoni, and this is a slice.”
“Not a perfect circle,” he noticed.
“Exactly. His is badly misshapen.”
Dr. Rafferty leaned forward. “Judah has a more uncommon form of Wobblers, the kind we can’t treat with meds and nutrition.”
“Surgery?” he asked.
Evie tipped her head and looked at the vet across the table from her. “I know what I think, but I’d like your opinion, Dr. Rafferty.”
“I don’t think a dorsal laminectomy will work in this case. Definitely a CVS.”
“So, no surgery?” Declan asked.
“No simple surgery,” Evie explained. “We’ll have to do what’s called a cervical ventral slot procedure, which means we’ll remove damaged discs.”
“A very tricky operation,” Dr. Rafferty said. “The surgeon needs to know exactly how to operate that drill.�
�
A drill. Yikes.
“I’ve done this surgery a hundred times, and I’ll gladly do it one hundred and one,” Evie said. “If I’m allowed to use these facilities.”
The other vet looked uncertain. “Policy says no, I’m afraid. We can only let surgeons associated with Vestal Valley College’s Veterinary School operate here.”
“Could you do it at Molly’s office?” Declan asked. “You did Rusty’s surgery there. Brain surgery. That was tricky, too.”
“I’d need the scope to see in the actual spinal column,” she said, then looked back at the other doctor. “I did a rotation here when I was in graduate school. Would that help my case?”
“Honestly? Your impressive credentials are probably all we need,” the other doctor said. “But I have to clear it with the powers that be. That’ll take a few days, though.”
“Can Judah wait a few days?” Declan asked.
“He can.” Dr. Rafferty pushed up. “Though I’d like to bring him back in a day or two and have Christine, our top PT, do a physical and perform some acupuncture for pain control.”
“Great idea,” Evie said. “I’d love to meet with her and discuss post-op therapy, too, no matter who does the surgery.”
“Why don’t you two discuss your options while I check on our patient and get you on Christine’s schedule?”
When he left and closed the door, Declan turned to her. “I want you to do the surgery, Evie, here or wherever.”
“And I want to do it. This is not an easy surgery, but I respect that they have to follow protocol.”
“Should we take him to Raleigh and do the surgery at your hospital?”
She gave a wry laugh. “I can’t do surgery there, either.”
“You can’t?”
“I’m on sabbatical, remember? But Dr. Rafferty will get me clearance. He just has to jump through a few hoops.”
“Don’t forget we have twenty-four/seven access to Waterford Farm and two of the best vets in the state in my uncle and cousin.”
“I’d love to have Molly as my backup in the OR.” She nodded, thinking, then lifted a brow in question. “Even if I do the surgery, the whole thing is going to be pricey. You know that, right?”
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