Instead, she left the office without another word and went to the sunroom to retrieve her dog. She had to fight the urge to head straight to the doggy boutique—not because she didn’t have the money to spend on him, but because retail therapy wouldn’t make her feel any better. She had enough shoes in her closet to attest to that.
“We don’t need to buy stuff to prove our worth,” Evie told Waffles, strapping him into his car seat.
“And I sure as hell don’t need Cameron to prove it,” she muttered as she rounded the circular driveway.
She pulled up to the first stop sign and spotted her dad’s bright yellow Lamborghini coming toward her in the opposite lane. Evie waved at him as she drove past and thanked the Lord for perfect timing.
She loved her father. She loved her mother. She did not love her mother and father together.
Even before she understood how to properly categorizewhat her parents shared, they had shown her what a loveless marriage looked like. It looked like two people who actively hated each other but stayed together for appearance’s sake. The sole purpose of the anniversary party Constance was planning was to continue shoring up the lie.
Despite the fact that her father’s philandering was the worst-kept secret in New Orleans, her mother was prepared to smile and pretend the last forty years had been wedded bliss, because as two of the city’s most prominent Black doctors, their partnership mattered more than their vows. Or their happiness.
Evie refused to settle for that type of relationship. She’d made that promise to herself as a fifteen-year-old, when she first learned of her father’s infidelity.
She could still remember the hot, embarrassed flush that rushed over her when he walked through the doors of the French Quarter restaurant where she had been invited to celebrate a friend’s sixteenth birthday. Even worse than seeing her father out with that other woman was her mother’s lack of a response when Evie told her about it two days later. She had prepared to see her entire life change. Divorce, separate homes, having to choose who to spend holidays with.
Instead, her mother had brushed it off and told her to get ready for violin lessons.
Evie had quit the violin a few months later, just about the same time she’d quit trying to understand her parents’ relationship. She would rather be alone than endure such a pitiable excuse of a marriage.
Despite what her mother believed, she did not need Cameron or his practice to give her life meaning.
“And just what do you plan to do with your life, Evelina? Go back to rescuing every stray you find on the street?”
“Why the hell not?” Evie said. She looked at Waffles in the rearview mirror. “I rescued you, and look how much it’s changed my life already.”
She couldn’t take in every stray in New Orleans, but she knew how she could help save them.
CHAPTER TEN
Bryson bobbed his head to Nas’s collaboration with Lauryn Hill, “If I Ruled the World,” as he secured the final suture in place. He secured the knot, then snipped the pink nylon.
“And that’s that,” he said. He smiled at the surgical tech. “Thanks for your help with the surgery. I appreciate it.”
“Are you kidding? I had to win a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to make it into this operating room,” Eli Parker said as he lowered the volume on the sound system. “Competition to work with you is fierce.”
Bryson laughed. “Is that what’s going down in the employee break room?”
He did his best not to let that tidbit go to his head, but hearing shit like that was like a steroid shot to his ego.
“I’m sure there will be the opportunity for every surgical tech to join me in the operating room,” he said. “I just started here and don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.”
Eli shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. All the techs will want to say that they’ve performed the most surgeries with you. Next time, I’m challenging them to a dance-off.” He did a hand and shoulder move circa a 1980s hip-hop video.
“Doesn’t seem like a fair fight,” Bryson said as he inspected the site where he’d made the small incision to remove the Egyptian mau’s bladder stones. The feline was one of the most expensive domesticated cats in the world, but it was just as susceptible to common ailments as the strays living on the streets. Bladder stones showed no mercy.
“If not for the pink stitches, I wouldn’t know where to find the incision,” Eli said from just over his shoulder.
That’s the point, young grasshopper.
His unwillingness to come off like an arrogant dick prevented Bryson from speaking the words out loud.
“I just do the best I can to reduce the recovery time as much as possible,” he said instead. “Bianca’s owner asked us to call once the surgery is done, but I want to hold off until she comes out of anesthesia. I’ll be in my office. Just give me a ring once she’s awake and produced her first post-surgery urine.”
After cleaning up, Bryson checked in on Bella, who was frolicking around the playroom with her new best friend, a cockapoo named Ginger, before going into his office. He pulled his cell phone out of the desk drawer where he’d stashed it and grimaced at the forty-plus text messages waiting for him.
He read the two from his mother first, telling him that she’d cooked his favorite—beef stew with potatoes and carrots—and was putting some in the freezer for him. She’d followed it with another text that their neighbor Ms. Lucille Green had brought over a container of shrimp étouffée thatwould be placed in the freezer alongside the stew. Bryson hadn’t factored in the added bonus of having both his mother and her friends filling his freezer with food when he’d made the decision to move back home. It more than made up for the few nights he’d had to sleep on the lumpy mattress in the short-term rental.
