Re: lakeside mansion; hugh c./dietre a.
Hugh caught up Heart in his hands, folding down even as tall as he was to put himself more on the dog's level, and catching her behind the ears with obvious fondness. At Dietre's question he looked up, the question asked so that Hugh took it seriously despite the fact that the'd just met. He'd treated it lightly, but he knew there had been days since he'd moved to Repose where he'd barely kept himself together, but even if he was at times still lonely and restless, it was better. He nodded and he stood back up, catching Heart's head as she moved back and forth glad to be back in the same area as the humans.
"Yeah, I'm doing a lot better," he told Dietre seriously, and he hesitated, trying to figure out how much to tell someone who was largely a stranger. "I had... a few bad break-ups, and not much going on professionally, and it kind of all piled up. But um, professionally things are a lot better." Which definitely gave him reasons to not make stupid choices with alcohol, and to eat well, and to generally not be stuck in his house wondering if anyone would care if he was gone. "I think we all have bad spells, probably, but I'm working on it. Stuff like this, helps a lot too."
He smiled at Sieglinde, even as he tried to put his finger on the language Dietre was speaking, not Spanish, which he knew a little. And not probably one of the romance languages then. "You should bring her when you come too. Maybe I'll get really ambitious and do like, I don't know fancy food for the dogs. We'll spoil them crazy." A beat and a quick grin. "Is she bilingual?"