Free The House at Royal Oak by Carol Eron Rizzoli Page B

between, removing and cleaning door hardware, a seemingly endless stream of time-consuming, trivial tasks, the kind of detail that would make or break the place as a bed-and-break-fast. In other words, the kind of soul-numbing work they fast-forward on home restoration TV shows. We were six months behind schedule and falling more behind every day. I asked him again, less than pleasantly, not to tell me.
    â€œLook,” Hugo said, holding up a tissue-thin sheet. Handwritten were our names, address, and this. Balance due, $9,480.
    I looked again. It was a gift beyond belief. We hugged.
    Hugo stuck the bill in his jacket pocket and I saw the weariness in his eyes evaporate. We strolled back to the house, enthusing over a feeble sunset and the bracing wind. Thisentirely unexpected act of kindness was the sort of thing you might read about, but never seems to actually happen.
    George himself worked long hours, had bills of his own to pay, a daughter to send to college. I asked myself why he did it and guessed that it had to do with the day he came to fire the furnace and saw Hugo working alone in the twenty-degree house. He saw and understood. He knew we couldn’t afford help and he knew from experience that after hours of working under those conditions you have to warm your feet and hands slowly in warm water, as Hugo did every night for weeks that winter in a friend’s bathtub.
    This bathtub belonged to Ellen, who had just showed up in our driveway one late fall day. Getting out of her car, she’d called, “Hugo?”
    He came from the garage to see who it was. “Ellen?”
    â€œWhat are
you
doing here?” she asked.
    â€œWhat are
you
doing here?” he answered.
    Ellen was an avid reader who had frequented Hugo’s bookstore with her daughters. He explained what we were up to and she said she had a weekend house less than a mile up the road. Casting a quick eye over our house that day from the driveway, she had asked, “Do you need a place to stay?”
    It wasn’t two weeks before we moved into her guest cottage. Hugo got cleaned up that first night, shaved, did his laundry, and we sat down to dinner in a warm room where we didn’t need jackets and boots. “The bookstore and bookstore friends are still with us,” he said simply.
    I couldn’t think of any way to repay George’s favor so as soon as we both had money in the bank, Hugo and I wroteout checks, half each, and drove down to the town of Trappe to leave them in his mailbox.
    The road passed long stretches of fields with glimpses of icy bay. George’s house, a small brick ranch, was surrounded by fields and bay. I thought his understanding of our situation and generosity must have originated here, where he grew up, where his father ran the business before him in unforgiving isolation, a place of limited possibilities.

CHAPTER
6

The Bay

    HUGO SANDED, FILLED, AND RESANDED THE WOODWORK in the dining room. Examining it in the bright morning light as guests would see it, I decided to go over it again, trying to erase more of the deep ugly marks, not the small gentle ones, the patina of people and time.
    He didn’t mind my going over his work, but when he went over my spackling of the doors, I lost it. I took off a clog and heaved it at the door, cracking the new paint and taking out a chunk of wood. Seeing that only irritated me more, and I felt worse still when he quietly started repairing it. I ranted and said that he was just a better person than I was. Not everyone can be so calm, even, controlled, and such a perfect spackler.
    â€œYou care more about this house than you do about me,” I yelled before aiming the second clog at him. I banged out the screen door and headed down to the water.
    He’s acting like a moody husband with a mistress, I thought. Too bad I had to spend all week in the city earning money to help support this project. Could he be taking advantage of that? Again I