(939) A Week in Winter by Marcia Willet

This is an incredibly involved story which is a joy to read. Maudi married Hector, a widower, and was resented by his daughter Selina for most of the latter's life. Hector's first wife, Hilda, apparently was a perfect wife, mother, friend and woman. Interestingly, through the years, Hilda's best friend became Maudi's best friend too.

While Selina hated Maudi and was able to influence her two sons to stay away, her youngest daughter (Posy) loved Maudi. After Hector's death, the story really started with Maudi renovating Moorgate and then putting it on the market. The contractor fell in love with the house while he worked on it. The real estate agent was very fond of the house too. A woman who was terminally ill decided to house hunt for her brother and infant nephew. She drove to view Moorgate and met the contractor when both of them spent nights without the owner's permission. Stranger than fiction, they fell for each other and had a sweet week together. The contractor fully intended to commit to her not knowing she was near death. They put up all they own and purchased Moorgate.  

After the young woman died, her brother took the trouble to travel to Moorgate to hand her good bye letter to the contractor. Somehow, the brother and the contractor became friends. Subsequent to that, the brother visited often with his son. Meanwhile, Maudi asked to visit Moorgate and decided to take Posy. At Moorgate, a second couple fell in love with each other: the brother and Posy. As the contractor realized that he could  not stay on in Moorgate, much as he loved the house but it reminded him too much of the dead girl friend; he sold the house to the brother.

With the sale, the house returned to within the family, as Posy married the deceased's brother. By now, you probably think there is too much co-incidences in the story. But as I flipped through the pages, the story line flowed naturally. Moorgate seemed to be one of those places that weaved its own magic.

In the last part of the book, we saw Hector and Hilda for who they were. Their marriage was not as perfect as others perceived. Selina's own marriage broke up. She found that a close friend was actually her step sister by blood. All that had a ring of truth, someone close to me actually found that out of  her five siblings, three are not the children of her father, revealed by blood types. Ordinary people who appear normal actually had deep and dark secrets.