Horace released a happy bark into the night, and she turned her head. With a groan, Myrtle slapped a hand over her eyes. “Do not go telling your father,” she ordered. Softening the rebuke, she stretched her hand over the side of the sofa she’d turned into her bed these past nights.

Horace promptly sent his tongue unfurling and licked her fingers.

“No, I know. You are a loyal friend to me, too, and I appreciate your keeping my confidences.” Rolling onto her side so that she was face-to-face with Val’s dog, Myrtle considered him. “It is just . . . I don’t know what to make of him, Horace.” She articulated this quietly, that introspective admission spoken as much for her benefit as the dog’s. “Some moments, it is as though he cannot stand the sight of me.”

Horace barked.

“No, I know. He’s like that with everyone, surely. But other times, he’s smiling and kind and”—Myrtle’s cheeks warmed, and she dropped her voice to a whisper—“kissing me.”

Unable to meet the dog’s enormous brown eyes, she pulled a pillow over her head. “I cannot believe we are speaking of this.”

The pillow shifted and then was gone.

The lacy edge caught between his white teeth, Horace looked at her from over the top of that frilly piece that had been her nighttime headrest.

Myrtle edged closer. “We are friends and can speak of anything, you say?”

With a little whine, he cocked his head.

She scratched him between the ears and then on the nose, alternating those pets that she’d come to learn he preferred. “Well, I thank you for that. I . . . have not had a friend in a very long while,” she whispered. The girls at Mrs. Belden’s had been more acquaintances, never the manner of friends to whom one poured all the secrets within one’s soul.

Horace gave her cheek a lick, his tongue rough, before ambling over to the fire. She watched distractedly as he paced back and forth, as if attempting to find the most comfortable spot, and then sank onto the floor.

Releasing a noisy little huff, he dropped his head between his paws and stared at the flames.

Restless, giving up any and all hope of finding sleep that night, Myrtle came to her feet. Belting her robe and then adding a blanket around her shoulders for additional warmth on this frigid night, she padded over to the window.

She drew the curtains aside and peered out at the residence opposite her family’s.

How funny; her family and Val had lived across from one another all these years, and yet with Myrtle having been gone at Mrs. Belden’s, until these past days, she and Val may as well have been strangers in a crowd.