The Lost Husband Read Online Free PDF Page A

if they need us.”
    I glanced back at the kids again. “Are there ever snakes in the garden?” I asked, trying to seem casual.
    “Oh, no,” Jean said as she opened the door. “You just stomp around nice and loud when you first get there in the morning, and that scares ’em off.”
    It’s uncommon to move into a place sight unseen. Usually, even if you’re going to a hotel on vacation, you’ve at least seen the website. As we walked over, it hit me that I had probably never been less prepared for what I was about to see. Though after all these years of living with my mother’s fierce jealousy and bitterness over the house, I couldn’t help but expect something big. Big enough to sustain a thirty-year feud.
    Of course, nothing in life is ever what you’re expecting.
    It was not a mansion, as my mother had claimed. I stopped in my tracks and gaped. It looked like a plump little Englishcottage—like something from a magical forest. It had exposed crossbeams, rounded dormer windows, planter boxes with flowers, and plants all around it in full bloom. The whole thing was lopsided, almost like a life-sized gingerbread house.
    “Whoa,” I said. “Is that roof made of license plates?”
    “Yep,” Jean said. “Frank collected them.”
    “Who’s Frank?”
    Jean turned to study my face and frowned a little, as if she thought I should have known. Then she turned back to the house again. “I guess Frank was like my husband. Except we were never married.”
    I nodded. Frank was the hippie boyfriend.
    “He’s been dead ten years now.”
    Something about the emotion in her voice made my eyes fill with tears.
    Without looking up, she seemed to know it. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “It gets easier, sweetheart. It really does.”
    I glanced back to check on the kids, who did not appear to be in grave danger, and then turned my attention back to the house.
    “Frank was a recycler,” Jean explained. “Almost everything here came from the junkyard.” He had pressed decorations into the wet cob—broken glass, smooth stones, animal bones—as he built each wall. The front door was rounded at the top, and the front porch, which ran the width of the house, had posts of cedar and an awning made out of enormous antique metal gas station signs welded together side by side: HUMBLE OIL, MOBIL, SINCLAIR , and TEXACO .
    It was pure whimsy. It was folk art you could live in. And each thing you noticed seemed like the best—until you noticed the next thing.
    “Frank was amazing!” I said, and Jean nodded.
    We went inside.
    We stood face-to-face with an enormous river-rock fireplace.
    “Is that part of a car?” I asked, staring at the red mantel.
    “A tailgate,” Jean answered. “From the junkyard.”
    Furniture-wise, the house was spare, with a mixture of handmade pieces Frank had created in his workshop and heirloom family pieces. A red-painted drop-leaf table in the kitchen, some iron beds in the bedrooms, and a rocker in the den had all belonged to Jean’s great-aunt Cortie.
    “Which makes her your great-great-aunt Cortie,” Jean said.
    “And the kids’ great-great-great-aunt Cortie.”
    At the mention of the kids, I realized I’d done something completely inconceivable: I’d forgotten about them.
    And then, as if in response to that fact, I heard Abby scream.
    I was out the door in less than a second, and Jean was right behind me. I crossed the yard full tilt, knowing for certain it would be a snakebite. Knowing for certain Abby would die in my arms from venom as we sped toward the nearest hospital.
    When I made it to the garden, Abby was standing with fists on hips, looking less mortally wounded than mad.
    “What? What happened?” I asked, out of breath.
    “Tank!” Abby shouted. “He bit me!”
    A bite. I was half-right.
    Tank copied Abby’s stance, affecting his own outrage. “She took my watering can!”
    “Oh, God,” I said, and leaned over to put my hands on my face. “You scared me to