A House in Good Repair
Ruth Mercer knows what a building can hide. As a municipal inspector, she has spent years reading water stains, weak framing, and repairs meant to last only until the next owner arrives.
Then her aunt leaves her a worn Providence duplex, a balloon loan due in ninety days, and a tenant Ruth never expected to meet again. Nina Vale is the woman at the center of Ruth’s oldest family wound. She also has twenty years of rent receipts and a promise that she would never lose her home.
As the walls open, Ruth discovers that her aunt’s quiet protection was built from borrowed money, unfinished paperwork, and sacrifices no one agreed to name. Saving the house will require Nina’s wary son Eli, a preservation carpenter who distrusts easy fixes; Ruth’s estranged father, who has always mistaken payment for responsibility; and a plan that costs Ruth the clean exit everyone insists she should take.
With the lender’s deadline closing in, Ruth must decide whether a house can be repaired without restoring the lies that held it together, and whether staying open to another person is a risk she is finally willing to inspect.
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READ A LITTLE
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to begin with.
A short preview from A House in Good Repair.
Read a little
The complaint concerned a back deck built without a permit, which the owner called temporary despite its concrete footings and satellite dish. Ruth Mercer was enlarging a photograph of the ledger board when her desk phone rang.
“Building Department, Mercer.”
A woman asked whether she was Ruth A. Mercer, niece of Mara Mercer.
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