Three Story House: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

the word “condemned” six times, with random letters capitalized. Who does that? There was something about the sheer number of texts coupled with their insanity that made her finally want to call her mother. It wasn’t that Lizzie and her mother hadn’t been speaking to one another, but since her grandmother’s death, the distance between them had widened from a chasm to a canyon. She steeled herself for the painful conversation. Talking with her mother was like trying to walk after her foot fell asleep—all pins and needles and awkward stumbling. As the phone rang, Lizzie figured the time difference. California was a little more than half a day behind Yekaterinburg and sometimes when Lizzie spoke to her family, she felt as if she were calling the future. While it was Wednesday night in Los Angeles, it was already Thursday morning in Russia. Early. Maybe too early to call, but as she was about to hang up the phone, her mother’s voice came across the line as clear as if she were in the next room.
    “It’s the house,” she said. “They’re threatening to tear it down or auction it or—”
    “The house?” Lizzie asked, thinking of all the places that were important to her mother. She knew, even as she asked, that it would be her grandmother’s house, the one they’d lived in until her mother married Jim.
    “Spite House.”
    “Condemned,” Lizzie said, finally understanding her mother’s frantic texts. The nickname for their family homestead wasn’t one her mother often used. It came from the sign, one of those historical markers, cemented into the brick sidewalk at the base of the home’s front yard. Lizzie thought of the place as her grandmother’s or, on occasion, when describing it to friends, as Skinny House. The implications of “spite” had been lost to her for many years and even now, when she understood all too well how anger had a way of warping actions and turning them vindictive, she hesitated to call the house by that name. It was a name for outsiders. Lizzie had lived in the house, loved it, loved her grandmother, and she found the name wouldn’t form on her lips.
    “Condemned,” her mother echoed.
    “What happened to that couple? The ones you hired from your church to watch the place while you and Jim do this mission thing?”
    “I don’t know.” Her mother sniffed and let out a ragged breath before continuing with her explanation. “I wouldn’t even have known, but Sister Henderson e-mailed Jim to tell us it was on the news. It’s awful, so awful, and they weren’t kind at all—said the house was rumored to have connections to the Nazis. The Nazis!”
    “Does it?” Lizzie didn’t know much about her extended family. Maybe her grandfather who’d built the house had a secret history.
    “Of course not. That’s some rumor started by one of your grandfather’s brothers because the cupola on the top looks like one of those tanks.”
    Lizzie, who’d spent most of her time in the house in that cupola, had a difficult time imagining the space at it would appear from the street. “I know what the house means to you, Momma.”
    “To you, also.”
    She should have recognized the trap. Her mother had been using the same emotional blackmail tools on Lizzie for as far back as she could recall. If something were important to her mother, by default it became important to Lizzie. But instead of finding a way to back out of the conversation, she plunged ahead, acknowledging what the house meant to her. “It’s where my childhood lives.”
    “So you’ll go?”
    “I’m doing rehab here. It’s not something you can leave.”
    “You could do it in Memphis. You did it before.”
    Lizzie sighed. Even if it were technically true, she’d planned to stay as connected to the team as she could. The last two times she’d blown out her knee, she’d rehabbed at her mother’s house. The trouble with the life that Lizzie had set up was that she didn’t have a home. She moved into