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  “It depends on your intention, Honor. Will this move be permanent, or temporary?”

  “I think it must be temporary. I may wish to be closer to Faith eventually and Jared understands that. He does not have a residence he owns, or any family living in London. That brings me to my second concern.”

  All attention was now on Honor’s next words.

  “You see, the matter of our shared last name started as a mere coincidence. Now that we are contemplating marriage, it has become something we need to think about more deeply. In other words, is there a chance that we may be related to each other?”

  Each woman in the kitchen believed, as Honor did, that her only living relative was Faith, her twin sister’s child, who turned up unexpectedly and became a welcome addition to Honor’s lonely life.

  The possibility of Honor finding another family member was very surprising. No one had presumed their elevator engineer might share more than a last name with Honor and Faith.

  “It could be nothing, of course. We both want to be sure for a number of reasons and we won’t commit to a marriage until we know the truth. This puts us in something of a limbo and some of you may have moral objections to us living together in the meantime.”

  Vilma had lived with Andy for some months in her room. Jannice was intending to share hers with Mitchell. No one was about to raise an objection to Honor and Jared co-habiting when the precedent had already been established.

  Mavis and Hilary had discussed this matter long ago and concluded it was a consequence of combining age groups. The younger members of the original six brought so much more to the group that it was inclined to outweigh the other issues. Andy was welcomed and that worked out well as far as the shared living was concerned. Even his break-up with Vilma had not caused a disturbance at Harmony House. Vilma had dealt with it quietly and privately.

  Hilary and Mavis concluded the smooth operation of these personal matters was a tribute to their own ability to choose co-housing partners who could meet their standards of behaviour and cooperation.

  Vilma now stood.

  “I need a sheet of paper to work all this out. It’s getting complicated!”

  Her statement broke the tension apart. No objections were heading Honor’s way and Vilma was right about needing to see the results of all this change drafted out on paper.

  The final plan went like this:

  * * *

  Upper level rooms.

  Vilma’s. Available for the two newcomers.

  Jannice’s. Stays the same for now.

  Eve’s. Available for the two newcomers.

  * * *

  Ground level rooms.

  Guest room. For Vilma and the dogs.

  Winter Dining Room. For everyone’s use.

  * * *

  Basement level area.

  Main room reserved for Honor’s office.

  Small bedroom and bathroom vacant.

  Laundry and storage facilities available to all.

  * * *

  Honor chose to occupy Vilma’s former room, with Vilma’s instant approval. She also stated that the two new young men might want to share her research facilities in the basement area.

  That left Eve’s room for Stuart Ingleby and Grant Caskie.

  It was not said outright, but everyone felt Eve’s old room would not hold memories for the two men and it was close to the kitchen, providing a small living room with fireplace and balcony that they might enjoy using.

  All other rooms stayed with their original purpose and owners. Hilary and Mavis had long before given up on offering their respective tower rooms for the use of others. Those rooms were to remain theirs as long as they wished to live in them.

  It was to be a new era for Harmony House and the four current occupants knew it.

  Vilma was the first to note that there would be three new males living in the house for the foreseeable future and four women in charge. If Jannice and Mitchell took up residence together, the numbers rose to four men and four women.

  Harmony House had never been this full before, or had such a potentially volatile mix.

  Interesting times ahead, was the conclusion.

  Chapter 6

  Honor felt great relief after the Sunday meeting. She contacted Jared at once to give him the good news.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Everyone agreed. We will move into Vilma’s room as soon as she moves the furnishings she wants and resettles the dogs. It’s a lovely bright room overlooking the garden with a double bed.”

  The last item was an unspoken acknowledgement that their relationship could move to another level.

  Honor knew Jared was anxious for this to happen but she held off until she explored the issue in Harmony House to everyone’s satisfaction. She was always conscious of the advantage she received in having the lower level space to herself and she did not want to push for more. That would be ungrateful in Honor’s book and she was immensely grateful to the wonderful women who made room for her in their lives and home in so many more ways than one. Those ways included their acceptance and help with Faith.

  There was always the chance Jared would be excluded. If that happened Honor would have a big decision to make. Did her growing feelings for Jared outweigh her loyalty to Hilary and Mavis?

  Could she bear to relinquish her workspace and the garden access, in favour of Jared’s poky little rented flat? That choice would set her back many years to where all this began and she did not think she could regress that far.

  These musings informed her that Jared was not likely to win out versus all the years and care she received from Harmony House. She did not state it so baldly to him, but she was sure he understood.

  As far as a more intimate connection between them was concerned, it was still an unknown.

  Honor considered herself to be a virgin. An older one, for sure, but none of her early fumblings with the opposite sex qualified as a real sustainable relationship. She had no interest in having a child and Jared felt the same.

  She was willing to co-habit with Jared on a trial basis in Vilma’s old room, but if things did not work out well in the romance department, she was prepared to dismiss the entire experiment. She had a satisfying business to run and she was a valued part of a household in which there were few dull or boring days. She would be well content with this.

  There was one other way in which Honor covered her bets, the matter of co-sanguinity. Although the childbearing issue did not feature, she was uncomfortable with the thought of sleeping with a man who might be a close relative. She thought back to the years when she lived with her parents and Felicity.

  Her mother and father were religious and their standards of conduct were extremely high. These unforgiving standards drove Faith’s mother into a rebellious lifestyle that led directly to her death from drugs. Honor’s version of rebellion took a different path, but her departure from the family home was equally final when she took the route into education.

  In those early years, she could not recall talk of other Pace family members. Neither did she remember any visitors related to her mother or father. Anyone who entered their home, was usually connected to the church. It was possible there had been a split in the family because of the extreme religious views.

  She tried to visualize the walls of the living room. Were there photographs of other families? Her mother wore a locket. Were there photos inside it of people other than the twins?

  She was getting nowhere with these enquiries. The old home sold when her parents passed away. She had not attended the funerals. She was never contacted by anyone with regard to a legacy or keepsakes.

  There had been no communication from her parents for many long years prior to their deaths.

  The ‘old’ Honor, the one prior to the advent of Harmony House, was content to have left everything related to her childhood behind her. The ‘new’ Honor, was required to revisit and re-evaluate her life when her niece Faith popped up out of the blue.


  Faith’s teen years at Harmony House were busy and filled with problems and the thought of Honor returning to her roots in a practical way, was not an option. She had done so in a virtual way at Faith’s request. She did not know much in the end. It was when she revisited Felicity’s trauma-filled years through Faith’s own memories, that she understood the truth. It was enough to keep her away forever. Yet, that journey into the past had produced Mason Jeffries, the only man who had any decent role in Faith’s early years and whose own happy family had become a substitute family for the girl.

  Honor had not been able to supply a normal family life for Faith. Through her own efforts online, Faith had tracked down a family that fit the bill and gave her a firm foundation.

  Venturing into the Pace family background again might be a mistake. What Honor knew was not reassuring. She hoped to discover Jared Pace had nothing to do with her branch of the Pace family but she feared he might be tainted in some hidden way with the religious intolerance and punitive behaviours that marred the life of Honor, and that of her twin sister, and also of Faith. It was too much of a risk to take at this stage in her life. She decided to have some kind of test done and conceal the results until she could make up her mind what to do about her future with Jared Pace.

  As soon as the Sunday dinner meeting was over, Vilma went downstairs to check out the former guest suite that had been Faith’s lair. All of Faith’s belongings were gone. Honor had stored them in the spare garage. The room looked bare. Now Vilma must consider it as a future home for herself and her dogs.

  The shape of the room was quite different. It had a window looking onto the front porch and another one facing across the side lawn toward the garages. The second small window was previously concealed behind Mavis’s piano. It would bring added light into the room once the piano moved across the front foyer to the dining room.

  Vilma thought about the placement of the dogs’ cage. She had always used a large mat under the cage so its location on the guest room’s white carpet was not a problem. She never locked the cage unless she had the need to be out of the house for a long period. Then, it prevented damage to soft furnishings if, and when, the dogs grew restless.

  She mentally estimated where her new bed should go. Faith had slept on the pullout bed. Vilma preferred to restore that bed to its couch purpose. As her bed upstairs was part of the furniture on the long bookcase wall, that bed had to stay. She thought a nice fresh double bed…. no, a queen-sized bed, to accommodate the dogs at night, was a better choice. Two large items would take up most of the floor space, however, and it could be a problem.

  She went over to the washroom to examine it. The usual features were there, a shower, and countertop with a washbasin and mirror above it. She examined the lighting. It was not good enough for applying make-up. The storage below the countertop was not great either. It looked like a washroom make-over was required. She would replace the glass shower door and have a shelf added inside the shower as well as better lighting everywhere. The mirror could have the type of lighting around it that was used in theatre dressing rooms.

  As soon as she began to think of updating things, her mind expanded.

  Lose the couch. Repaint the walls, enlarge the clothes closet to include a few inches from the guest closet in the entrance hall. Add bedside tables with drawers. Reorient the room entirely to make the best use of its dimensions. Bring her favourite chair from upstairs and make a little nook at the window from where she could be the unofficial visitor-welcoming-committee. Buy new furnishings for the porch so she could sit outside, undercover, with the dogs, whenever she wanted to. She could also place a mat there and clean off the dogs’ muddy feet before going inside.

  Her attitude improved as she considered all the advantages to living on the ground level.

  Quick access to the front door.

  Extra space in the winter dining room, across the foyer. The fire in there would be particularly welcome on winter days.

  Mavis’s large tower room was nearby and Mavis loved the dogs, especially since her lovely Marble died and was buried in state under a white marble stone in the garden.

  Using the wraparound porch, Vilma could exit into the back garden without trudging across the front lawn.

  Honor had coffee and a small fridge in her office. It would be nice to get to know Honor better.

  In conclusion, Vilma decided the former guest room offered conveniences to make up for the lack of floor space. She had things to do to make it perfect for her. There was time. Honor had not seemed too anxious to move in with Jared.

  Vilma would get a piano mover first. She would pay them a little extra to take the old couch over to the garage storage. In the meantime, she could look for paint colours and buy matching rugs to protect the original white carpet. She must find a Bathroom Design company to explore other options in the washroom and closet.

  It was a project. Nothing excited Vilma Smith’s imagination like a project. Oscar would benefit and the three of them would have a new start while still held within the secure embrace of Harmony House.

  Chapter 7

  Mavis soon figured out another use for the soon-to-be-vacant single bedroom in Honor’s work area.

  A decent-sized garden shed was something she badly needed to store all the paraphernalia that an active gardener requires. She was piling spare pots under the bench at the rear of the garden and her tools were currently stored in a plastic container, under a bush to keep them dry. She did have some space in the third garage but that was not convenient for the daily stuff like her spare aprons and gloves.

  She thought she could lay plastic sheeting over the carpet in Honor’s small bedroom and cover up the bed itself. A few lightweight storage units for gardening equipment would prevent the bending up and down that she seemed to be doing all the time. Best of all, the washroom was readily accessible for quick visits and washing up.

  Although Honor always encouraged her to use this washroom, she did not like to trek dirt from the garden into Honor’s work area unless it was absolutely necessary. The truth was, as she got older such quick washroom trips were increasingly required and it took far too long for her to traipse round the house to her own facility in the tower room. She dreaded an embarrassing accident.

  She had long considered building a garden shed with composting toilet inside. Every time she began to plan the location, she stopped at the thought of how it would affect the views from the upstairs bedrooms. The garden stretched right across the back of Harmony House so all the bedrooms, including the kitchen window and balcony, could benefit from the views of the raised flowerbeds, the neat gravel paths, the vegetable patch, the rose trellis and the backdrop of the dark woods behind. To disrupt that view, carefully created by Mavis over years, was a crime in her estimation. So, she toiled on without the shed and without complaint.

  But now, at last, the situation was changing in her favour. She was sure Honor would not object.

  Mavis smiled a secret smile of pure happiness.

  She had only one more garden wish.

  It was too bad about Andy Patterson. He was a born gardener. His replacement was willing, but he lacked the natural skill Andy had. Cutting the lawn was about the new lad’s level.

  Surely, one of the three men about to join them at Harmony House would be fit and able to lift a shovel, or wield a tree trimmer, now and again? Her line of fruit trees to the west of the house was really

  taking shape now and a little masculine assistance would not go amiss.

  Hilary asked Vilma for a copy of the new bedroom plan.

  Even with the plan in front of her, she could not seem to grasp the changes it represented. During the meeting, she kept silent while one after another made announcements that turned the entire operation of Harmony House upside down. In her mind, however, she was questioning everything.

  Who was this Jared?

  Why did Honor want to move upstairs?

  Was Vilma leaving altogether?

  A
nd what was the need for two other completely unknown men to invade their premises?

  The whole thing made her deeply uncomfortable.

  Her attention had faded in and out during the meeting because it worried her so much.

  Now that she could study the actual changes, she was in no way reassured.

  This was too much. What was happening to the happy little group of six women that started out together?

  Where was dear Jannice who cared for Eve during her last days?

  Why was no one telling her about all these changes?

  A little warning was not too much to ask? After all, she and Mavis were the ones who initiated the entire project of living together in this house.

  Were all of them leaving her behind?

  Some days she did feel a bit behind.

  Behind the times. Things moved so fast these days. Why, in Byron that used to be such a quaint, quiet little village on the edge of London, there was so much new building going on that sometimes she did not recognize where she was. The main intersection in the middle of Byron that she had driven through so often, now had so many advanced this, and delayed that, and so many lanes of traffic going in different directions that she felt positively afraid of it.

  This was not good sign. She knew it. But what could she do?

  If only old doctor Leonard? Lawrence? If only he was here to tell her everything was going to be fine. He would calm her nerves and give her something concrete to do like exercising every day.

  The new doctor was a young blood who rarely took his eyes off his computer. He did not know Hilary’s history. As far as the young doctor was concerned, Hilary Dempster was just another elderly woman. He did not know the years she spent in education nurturing children’s minds. He did not know about the husband she cherished. Whenever she tried to tell him anything, he cut her off and said she would get a prescription on her way out.