Free Disguised Blessing by Georgia Bockoven

doing what he wanted to do exactly the way he wanted to do it. He drove a ten-year-old truck and had a ten-thousand-dollar bathroom in his master bedroom. He’d personally gathered every stone for the fireplace in the living room and spent six months making all the raised panel doors throughout the house. He cooked in a portable microwave or on the gas barbecue on the patio, and ate off a door suspended between two sawhorses. When finished, the kitchen would have granite counters, a tile floor, and washed pine cupboards, constructed from wood he’d rescued when he’d happened upon a barn being torn down.
    The new cupboards, completed over the past two winters, stood in a corner of the garage, covered with sheets of plastic, protected from accidental bumping and scratching by a specially built frame. All he needed was some hardware, money, and time for the installation and the pieces would come together. The hardware was easy. The money was almost there—a couple more paychecks and he’d be at his budgeted goal for the granite countertops and tile floor. The time he’d think about later.
    The house was his hobby, the only one he’d been able to afford once he and Barbara came to the conclusion they’d given a hopeless situation their best effort and decided to go their separate ways.
    With an intense dislike of apartments as his guiding factor, he’d taken his share of their accumulated assets and bought a partially burned house on five acres in the foothills. Rundown would have been a kind description of both the house and property. He’d rented the largest Dumpster he could find and had it emptied weekly. Even at that, it took three months to clear the lot.
    Now, after eight years, all he had left to do were the kitchen, dining room, and some odds and ends like the closet in his bedroom. Last Christmas, at their annual neighborhood get-together, Sandra had wondered aloud if Rick had slowed the work because he was reluctant to see it come to an end. He’d laughed at the idea, but had given it a lot of thought since. What was he going to do with himself once he finished the house?
    Standing at the refrigerator waiting for inspiration, he absently broke off a piece of hot dog and gave it to Blue. The dog took it as if it were ice and he had a toothache, carrying it to the middle of the room and looking back at Rick with a disheartened expression.
    “All right, so it’s not steak. Bring it back and I’ll see what else I can find.”
    Blue dropped it on the exposed plywood floor.
    “What part of ‘bring it back’ didn’t you understand?” Rick picked up the offending piece ofprocessed meat and tossed it into the freestanding sink. “How about a tuna fish sandwich?”
    This brought a soft whine and frustrated bark. “Okay, dog biscuit it is.” He took the box from the single kitchen cupboard he’d left standing and tossed Blue one of the bone-shaped biscuits. “Not even going to offer to share, huh?”
    Blue ignored him and headed outside with his prize. His toenails clicked on the metal weather stripping on the garage doorsill and then the concrete floor. Rick listened closely, timing the steps. Sure enough, they stopped at the wallboard.
    He was on his way to remind Blue that the wallboard was off limits when the phone rang.
    “Rick—it’s Lyn. How did the meeting go?”
    “Not as well as I would have liked, but I’m going to give it another try tomorrow. Her brother came in from Japan and I took off to let them talk. I got the impression there’s something going on with the fiance that could cause some family problems down the line, but I might have read it wrong.”
    “We had another boy come in a couple of hours ago. He’s in pretty bad shape, but right now they’re saying they think he’ll make it.”
    “The one from Fairfield?” Rick had heard about the fire on the news coming home and wondered if it was the same boy the nurse had mentioned.
    “He’s the only survivor out of a family of