“How did it start?”
“No idea yet. It was contained quickly, though.”
Not quickly enough. “But what happened?” How could his father, a skilled and vigilant firefighter, not walk out the way he’d walked in?
“All we know is a second-floor overhang collapsed on him, and he…” Daniel swallowed. “They haven’t even started the investigation, son.”
“Anyone else?” Declan asked, his voice tight.
“George Rainey, his partner, managed to…” He heaved a sigh. “He got out in time.”
But Dad didn’t?
How was this possible? Declan closed his eyes, seeing flashes of white behind his lids as he bent over and let out a silent scream.
No. Not possible. Not Dad. Not Joe Mahoney. Not his hero, his mentor, his whole world. His father.
“Oh, Dec. I’m so sorry.” Evie draped over him, but her body felt heavy and hot, and he couldn’t bear the weight of her grief on top of his.
He eased her off, standing straight, digging deep for reason and sense and the ingrained responsibility that his father had carved into his heart. If he was broken, what about the rest of his family?
“Where’s Mom?” he asked on a ragged whisper, looking at the porch where Gramma Finnie stood arm in arm with his cousin Molly.
“She’s inside,” Uncle Daniel said. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”
Waiting for him to come back from the mountains, where he’d been having sex with Evie while his father had been…covering his shift. And dying for him. And saving her family.
On their birthday.
No. This didn’t happen. It didn’t. How? Why?
He turned to Evie, but her face was soaked with tears and red from the same agony whipping through him.
“Dec.” She pressed her hands to her mouth, tears flowing.
“Your family is staying with the Langleys, dear,” Aunt Annie said gently, still holding Evie like she could crumble any second. “Your father’s on his way now to bring you there.”
“Dec,” she whispered again.
He tried to answer, but stared at her, his head buzzing, sobs ready to strangle him.
He dropped his head back and endured the next wave of pain, then turned away, the emptiness that engulfed him so indescribable that he just wanted it to stop. He wanted everything to stop. He wanted to run and be alone in the depths of darkness that he knew would never, ever lift. Away from them. Away from her. Away from everyone.
But he couldn’t run. He had three younger siblings who’d depended on Dad and a mother who’d lived and breathed for her husband.
“Dec, I’m so sorry.” Evie managed to get hold of him and wrap her arms around him, her whole body quaking as she wept. “I’m sorry,” she murmured into his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
But he stood stone-still. He knew what he should do. Hold her. Hug her. They should cry on each other’s shoulders.
Didn’t he just promise her all that?
But nothing in him worked. Everything had shut down, like a plug had been pulled and the power had gone out for good.
She gazed up at him, looking desperate for something he couldn’t give her. Not now. Maybe…not ever.
“I’ll wait for my dad,” she said. “You go. Take care of your mom. Your brothers. Ella.” She broke again when she said his little sister’s name.
All of them…fatherless. They were his job now. His responsibility. Not Evie. His family was all that mattered.
“I’m going into the house,” he said, his voice thick. He didn’t wait for her response, mostly because he knew he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t help her when 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,
