“Tom!” She set the flowers in a big pile on the table. Kissed me on both cheeks and waved me back to the chair. I thanked her and Maria for the breakfast and made some joke about French hospitality. Simone laughed. She and Maria divided the flowers into several bouquets. Each went into its own vase.

Simone ticked off the various parts of the house that the flowers were supposed to end up in. Maria had suggestions of her own. They were like an old couple. I figured it was a Sunday ritual. Church and then flowers. I asked again if I could help and they both waved me away. So I nursed my coffee cup.

Madame Vaugeois finished with her flowers and sat across from me at the big table. “Tom,” she said. “You can help me with one thing, if you agree.”

“Sure I can. Anything you need, ma’am.” I said.

“Bon. Thank you. I would normally ask Daniel to help but he’s taken the Renault and won’t be back until the afternoon.”

She led me up a narrow flight of stairs to the top floor of the house. This had been the old servants’ quarters. There were about six or seven little rooms up there. Now they’d been stuffed with old junk that the Vaugeois hadn’t wanted to throw out. One little room was full of black garbage bags, each bag stuffed with clothing.

Vaugeois said, “I’ve decided to give it away. I was going to wait for Father Bousquet to arrange something, but since you’re here I thought we could just get it done. What do you think? They’re doing a donation trip today and we can load these in.”

Truth is I’m always interested in a little manual labour to polish up my genetic inheritance. I lifted a couple of bags and figured they weighed something like twenty pounds each. Two-handed that made forty pounds. There were around twenty of them. Which made ten trips up and down two flights of stairs, give or take a couple. No problem.

I took my time. Simone had backed the big S-600 Mercedes up to the house. She’d opened the trunk and the back doors. I started loading the bags in. The trunk had a nifty organizer with emergency triangle, rope, and a high visibility vest. Probably had a flashlight in there as well. I pushed that back to make room for the black bags.

The bags filled up the trunk and the entire back seat. I was still in bare feet. She inspected me. “Why don’t you take a shower and then you can help me take all this over to Fanny’s, if you don’t mind.” I didn’t. I went upstairs. Found the shower and took a long and hot one. Felt great after the little run up and down the stairs.