Page 25 of Bluebell Promises

Later, after Ben said goodbye to his brother and went home, he looked up Nelly Winston’s address and discovered that she lived three blocks from his place. A shiver ran through him. Since he’d moved back to Bluebell Cove, he’d probably walked past her house sixty times, at the very least. All that time, he imagined, she’d been locked inside, too weak to leave her place. What had made her leave today? Why had she come to the clinic? It boggled his mind.

The following evening, Ben left work and walked directly to Nelly Winston’s place. It was a small red-brick house with a wraparound porch and a willow tree. To his surprise, the windows were all lit up in the front room. Before he could think twice about what he was doing, he walked up to the front door and rang the bell. He was still wearing his vet uniform.

There was the sound of whispering, followed by the clunk-clunk of heavy footsteps. Those footsteps definitely didn’t belong to Nelly Winston. The door opened to reveal a man of maybe fifty, wearing a blue button-down shirt, his feet bare on the foyer rug.

“Hello?” The man didn’t look pleased to see a stranger.

“Hi,” Ben said. “Sorry to bother you. But yesterday, Nelly Winston collapsed at my clinic, and I wanted to make sure she’s all right.”

The man’s face softened, if only a little. He beckoned for Ben to enter, so Ben did.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I came up from Connecticut late last night and haven’t slept much. I’m in a bad state.”

“I can’t imagine,” Ben said. “How is your…mother?”

The man nodded. “Yes, my mother. She’s doing okay. It isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Apparently, her carer quit last week, and we kids weren’t notified. My mother never wanted a carer in the first place, so I imagine she wanted to keep it from us as long as possible. You can see how well that went.”

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Ben said, shaking his head. He didn’t want to say how scary it had been to see Nelly like that. He didn’t want to worry her son even more.

“She looks at me so guiltily,” her son said, his voice cracking a little. “It reminds me of being, well, young, when she’d discovered I snuck a cookie or something.” He tried to laugh.

Ben didn’t want to say that his own parents were dead, that he remembered when they’d been failing, how hard that had been for him and his brother. Most children—if they were lucky—necessarily had to outlive their parents. It was a tragedy, but it was a fact of life.

It was then that Ben noticed the photograph, hanging on the wall. It was of Nelly during happier days, maybe five or so years ago. In it, she was sitting on the porch swing out front, smiling at the camera. There was a cute puppy on her lap. A Frenchie.

Ben’s heart dropped into his stomach. He realized, now, why Nelly had come into the veterinarian clinic. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her to go to the humane society or use the internet. Maybe she’d known where the vet clinic was and decided to come in to ask around.

Poor Pierre, he thought. Pierre the dog lived here, with an ailing older woman. He probably never went for walks. He was probably cooped up here, with a woman too sick to love him the way he needed to be loved. Then again, it was clear that this older woman needed as much love as she could get.

Nelly’s son followed his gaze to the photograph. Ben knew he needed to tell him about Pierre. He imagined calling Wren and explaining that she needed to give Pierre up. He imagined the heartbreak playing out across her face.

“The dog,” Ben said finally. “Someone brought him into the clinic recently with a wound and a broken paw. That must be why she came in.”

The son shook his head sadly. “We told her not to get a dog,” he said. “But she was always so stubborn. She never wanted to listen to us.”

Why would a mother listen to her children? Ben thought meekly. She’d spent her life telling them how to live and protecting them. It wasn’t easy to have that flipped on its head.

“Is he safe?” the son asked, shrugging.

“Yes, he is,” Ben said.

“I’m sure she’ll want to see him when she’s better,” the son said. “Pudding is about the only thing that makes her happy these days.”

“Pudding?” Ben laughed.

“Pudding, yep. That’s what she calls him,” the son said.

“My friend calls him Pierre,” Ben said.

The son laughed at that. “He got a cultural upgrade, I guess. I don’t know. I was never that into dogs. I didn’t know Mom was till she got Pudding. Pierre. Whatever.”

Ben tried to laugh. He wrote down his phone number and handed it to her son, whose name, he told Ben, was Scott. Ben shook his head and left shortly after that, trying to tell himself that he liked Scott well enough. He thought he was cold, sure. But anyone would be cold when they thought they were losing someone they loved.

Back at home, Ben called Landon to explain what had happened with Nelly, Scott, and the dog named Pudding.

“It sounds like she can’t take care of him anymore,” Landon said gently.

“Yeah. True.”