Evan had not lived in his aunt’s house for nearly four years. After the death of his mother and father at the age of six and a half he had been placed with his Aunt Phoebe and spent the next three years there. Phoebe was not actually his aunt; she was officially his third cousin but, because of the disparity in their years, he had always been expected to refer to her as ‘Aunt Phoebe’.
When, at the age of 39, Phoebe decided to take a leave of absence from her position as a rural