Free Three Story House: A Novel by Courtney Miller Santo

anger at the dismissal of her and the house.
    “You think about it,” the officer said, taking the driver’s license she held out to him. He looked down at the plastic card. “Florida, huh? You’re a long way from home.”
    “It isn’t home,” Lizzie said. “It’s where I sometimes stay.”
    “Don’t go anywhere. Not that you look like a runner,” he said, explaining that he was going to go to his car and run her information.
    She took her phone from her purse and texted her cousins. Elyse sent back a frowning face, and Isobel assured her they were on their way. In the few moments she had to herself, she navigated to the city’s code enforcement website and tried to figure out how much trouble she’d gotten herself into.
    The oversized cop thumped back into the house, waving Lizzie’s license in front of him as he walked through the beaded curtain. “You’re clean. No warrants, no arrests.”
    Unlike that of his partner, his uniform fit well. “Will that help?” she asked.
    “Standard procedure in situations like this”—he gestured toward the ceiling, indicating where, she presumed, his partner and the enforcement officer were cataloging violations—“is to cite you and escort you off the property.”
    Lizzie didn’t listen closely to the rest of what he had to say. She put her head in her hands and held her breath in a vain attempt to hold back the tears. Her knee twitched with pain. The larger officer put his hand on her arm. His palm felt rough and calloused against her skin.
    The laughter of the other men echoed above them. He stepped away from her. “It’s not so bad as you think.”
    The back door opened, and a rush of wind blew dead leaves and small clumps of dirt over the threshold. Isobel threw out her arms, and said, “I’m here. Elyse is in the car calling some lawyer she knows in Boston.”
    “It’s hopeless,” Lizzie said.
    “Nonsense.” Isobel shrugged out of her coat and took off her sunglasses. She appeared oblivious to the officer, who hadn’t stopped smiling since her cousin entered the house. If Lizzie were a gambler, she’d bet that he’d seen every episode of her cousin’s show. Like most child actors, Isobel was often recognized but not identified. People tended to think she was someone they knew in school—a familiar face from their childhood. And in a way she was, especially for anyone close to her age. From the time Isobel was eleven until she was twenty, she’d played Gracie Belle Wait on Wait for It —one of the first attempts by a cable network at a sitcom.
    She turned toward the officer. “What can we do to fix this?”
    He looked over his shoulder and then in a low voice said, “Play dumb and flirt a little. Code enforcement spends their days dealing with slumlords and squatters. Pretty women like you ought to be able to change T. J.’s mind.”
    The tinkle of the beaded curtain announced the arrival of the other men. Lizzie watched her cousin transform into someone else. She pulled her shoulders back and lowered her chin, striking a pose that made her breasts seem larger. The officers snuck quick glances at her chest and, as if to encourage them, Isobel leaned toward them as they spoke. Lizzie saw that by closing the space between them, her cousin had made the men seem like old friends. She lowered her voice when she introduced herself; instead of shaking hands, she ran her hand down each man’s arm and then gripped his outstretched hand in both of hers.
    By the end of the visit, T. J. Freeman had explained their options—which consisted of paying a $500 fine for contempt and asking Judge Hootley, who ran the court where their case would be heard, for an appeal of the court’s decision to auction the property. As he spoke, T. J. kept wiping his shaved head with his hand and then drying it on his front-button shirt. Unlike the other men, he didn’t look at Isobel. Whenever Lizzie glanced at him, she found he was already looking at her. Before he