The House by the Lake by Ella Carey Read Free Book Online

else had kicked in, a sense of . . . what was it? Home?
    She turned right after several hundred feet, following the impenetrable wall until the road stopped at another pair of gates. These were not as elaborate as the previous ones—in fact, they looked as though they belonged on a humble farm.
    Anna saw another set of outbuildings to her left. A small, derelict house—its windows boarded up and weeds grasping its walls—stood just beyond them. Although these buildings had not been on Max’s map, they appeared to be part of the estate. Washhouses, perhaps? Had a caretaker once lived in that house?
    Anna walked up to the simple set of farm gates and craned her neck to see over them. She could just glimpse a bank of trees, a sloped lawn, and . . . she caught her breath.
    There it was.
    She was looking at one side of the palace, which was still breathtaking despite its age and the abuse of multiple wars and governments and upheaval and changes of ownership. The sight of the old Schloss, sitting there like some steadfast shipwreck, caused Anna’s heart to falter. The wall was peppered with bullet holes as though pocked by some foul disease.
    The windows were boarded up. Weeds and bracken climbed up the walls. Several pieces of iron in unidentifiable shapes lay about near the Schloss, relics of the Soviet era or, perhaps, old farm implements from . . . before that time.
    This gate was not only padlocked but crisscrossed with barbed wire to ensure that no one could get in.
    Anna hated to imagine what Max would feel, standing here, looking at this. It was as if his entire childhood, his former life, had been left to rot.
    What was she supposed to do now?
    She continued to stare at the part of the house that she could see. The image of a young Max running through the gardens, down to the lake that she knew lay beyond the palace, flashed through her mind. And then, Max as a young man, strolling down to the lake, looking thoughtful. A book in his hand, perhaps, going for a solitary row in a boat. Anna almost felt as though she’d been there, as though she’d known Max back then. She felt more crushed at the sight of the rundown property than she’d ever imagined possible. After all, she’d never given much thought to the past—but there was something about this house and all that it had suffered that threatened to overwhelm her.
    Her family, Max’s family, had lost everything. She tried to imagine what it must have been like for them to leave their home, a place layered with centuries of family memories and stories.
    And yet, had it been fair for them to have had all of this?
    Anna shook her head and turned away. All she knew right then was that she wasn’t going to get any answers by standing there. The Schloss and the park were impenetrable. She’d have to find another way to get inside.
    If whatever Max had hidden under the floorboards in his room in 1940 had survived the years of political turmoil, gunshots, and looters—not to mention the current owners, who may have ripped everything valuable out of it and left the rest to rot—it would be a miracle.
    But she had to find out. Anna forced herself to return to the village.
    As she followed the road back into the tiny town, a plan began to form in her head. There had to be some sort of civil office that she could visit there. If not there, there would be someone she could talk to in another town nearby. Someone had to know who owned Schloss Siegel, and Anna had to get in touch with them.
    She walked around the village’s central square, but there was nothing there except the shop, the hotel, the church, and several private, rundown houses on the other side. She turned up the first street she came to and found only a few more cottages.
    She couldn’t help imagining what it must have been like once. The village, alive with children and voices and laughter and families and shopkeepers and noise. The fact that the hoteliers wore traditional costume seemed to make