The Long Way Home Read Online Free

of the chill outside, the house was warm—
Thank you, Jesse
—and very still, as if it had been holding its breath, waiting for her.
    Ellie stood for a very long moment in the hushed foyer, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. The stairs to the second floor stood directly in front of her. Straight ahead to the left of the stairs was a long hall that ledclear through to the back door, which also had a shade tightly pulled. There was a room to her right and another to her left. The furniture in both was covered with white sheets, giving what she could see of the downstairs the appearance of a ghostly landscape.
    “Well.” She spoke aloud to break the silence. What to do first, now that she was here?
    After some deliberation, she walked into the room to her left and lifted the shades from the four windows—two facing front, one on either side of a fireplace. Paintings on the walls were draped with fabric and it took Ellie a moment to realize that the only things in the room that weren’t covered were the carpets and the andirons on the hearth. She backed out of the room as if afraid of disturbing it, and went across the hall, where she found more of the same. There was no way to disguise that this was the dining room. A crystal chandelier, its ovoid drops covered with dust, hung over a long flat surface that lay beneath the expected white sheet. Against one wall, furniture lay hidden beneath more sheeting, and a peek under the draping on two smaller shapes revealed a sideboard and a tea cart. Peeling back the thin quilt from the side of the tallest piece of furniture, she found an empty china cupboard, the former contents having left round marks in the dust on the shelves. The placement of the windows and the fireplace exactly mirrored the room across the hall. The architect, she thought, clearly appreciated symmetry.
    A feeling of déjà vu swept over her, and was promptly dismissed. Her mother must have describedit all to her, she reasoned, and somehow she’d retained the images.
    A door on the back wall swung open with a push and led to a butler’s pantry that had glass-doored cabinets on one wall, and an expanse of counter with a small soapstone sink on the other. The cabinets were crammed with dishes, plates and bowls, and cups and saucers, all stacked haphazardly on top of one other.
    The kitchen, a large square room, lay behind the pantry. Ellie pulled up the shades and looked for a switch for the clumsy overhead light fixture. Near the back door were the controls for a security system that obviously wasn’t on, and the black push-button switch that served to turn on the light.
    She wasn’t sure the room hadn’t looked better in the dark.
    Chipped Formica in a truly terrible shade of yellow covered the counters. On the floor, there was dark linoleum of indeterminable age and a dreadful mustardy color. Wooden cabinets were built in along one long wall.
    “I’ll bet there isn’t a thing in this room that isn’t older than I am.” She paused to consider the refrigerator, which looked much newer than everything else. “Well, maybe
that
. But not much else.”
    She walked to the stove. It, too, appeared newer than she’d expected. Not brand-new, but not 1950s, either. Curious, she thought.
    A table with four chairs stood against the side wall under the windows. When she raised the shade, the last bit of afternoon sun spilled across the floor, high-lightingthe cracks in the old linoleum and the faded paper and paint on the walls.
    Ellie stood in the center of the room, her hands on her hips, feeling more than a little bewildered, and stared at the wallpaper, blue-and-white-patterned teacups on a background that was probably once white but was now yellowed with age. She’d seen that same paper—those same teacups—somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.
    She went to the back door and unlocked the dead bolt, which looked relatively new compared to just about everything else she’d seen so far, then stepped