Read The Family Plot for Free Online Page B

take half the sale price, or let Andy have the whole house, and walk away.
    Dahlia pushed her own house out of her mind. She had work to do. She concentrated on the clean-stamped footprints she’d left in the dust—little trails from the front door, through the foyer, to the staircase, then back across the sitting room to the dining room where, yes, there were pretty built-in cabinets. A whole wall of them, thank God.
    She went to the nearest one and leaned her forehead and palm against it, touching it like she’d reached first base, and now she was safe.
    â€œSafe from what?” she muttered. “Jesus, what the hell is wrong with me?”
    Deep breath. There you go: pretty built-in cabinets. Push the fog away; it’s only dust from plaster and pollen. It’s only an antihistamine away from being solved. Concentrate. Ignore it, and you can beat it. Talk through it.
    â€œWe can save these. Some of them.” She didn’t speculate how many, or what they would cost. “That chandelier—oh, God, look at it. Original, I bet. Somebody wired it, somewhere along the way—but whoever he was, he did a nice job. I’ll be super careful when I take that out. And this table…” Solid and heavy. Quartersawn oak—with too many layers of varnish, but that was easy enough to fix. It was old, but not as old as the house. “Maybe I’ll keep this for myself. I’ll find some chairs to go with it, and put it in my new place. My home is not as nice as this, but better than letting anybody throw it away.”
    She went on speaking to the house, instead of to herself.
    She found her bearings again, and the strain behind her forehead retreated to a dull nuisance. A good sneeze might banish it altogether, but her nose only rustled up a dull leak. She wiped it away with her sleeve.
    Onward, to the kitchen. She found it on the other side of a door—a Dutch door, which was kind of odd for an interior feature, but you couldn’t let anything in an old house surprise you. “People love Dutch doors,” she said, checking the fastener and seeing that yes, it worked just fine. It would open in one piece, or just the top half alone. “We get asked for them all the time. People want them for back doors, and porches … they want to keep pets and kids inside.”
    The more she spoke, the calmer she sounded, and the calmer she felt. Back on solid ground, even though she was parting out the body before it was dead. It was awful, but it beat a migraine.
    She kept talking, and the headache kept going away.
    â€œThe kitchen’s tiny, but I could’ve guessed that. It was all redone … maybe in the sixties? Seventies? Most of this is garbage, and I don’t expect you’ll mind if we toss it, now will you?”
    She paused, half afraid she might get an answer, since she’d asked the house so directly.
    When nothing replied, she continued. “Anyway, I’ll check the attic … or wherever some of the old appliances might be stashed, if anybody thought to keep them. I’d love to find an iron stove, or an icebox, or that sort of thing. Oh, I ought to check the carriage house,” she remembered suddenly. “Fingers crossed that the Withrows never threw anything away.”
    Outside, she thought she heard the distant crunch of tires on turf. Time was running out. Soon, she’d switch into boss mode, business mode, whatever mode would get the job done. But for just a few more minutes, this wasn’t a job. It was a sanctuary.
    This sanctuary had a porch, and a pantry, and a door that likely hid a back staircase. Dahlia skipped those for now. She wanted to see the second floor, while she still had a moment of privacy.
    Back to the grand entry with its swooping staircase. Each step Dahlia took added new prints in the dust. Up on the landing, there was a hall with a carpet runner that was a sad and total wreck; moths had gotten to