“It Was Never Yours,” My Mother Said — Then the County Recorder Pulled Up the Deed

like something from a ghost story. But somewhere underneath all that damage was a structure that had survived a fire, survived years of neglect, survived being forgotten.

Maybe, I thought, I could survive this too.

The renovation happened slowly, in the margins of my life. I took a job at a bookstore café downtown—morning shifts that left my afternoons continue reading …