Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Hannah lives in an unfinished house by the river, which is a step up from living in a van down by the river. For the six years she's been at Jellicoe School, Taylor's helped Hannah work toward the steady completion of the house: "It's my punishment for having nowhere else to go in the holidays or breaking curfew or running away with a Cadet in year eight" (2.2), she says.
On the surface, Hannah's living situation is kind of bizarre and doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would someone live in a house that isn't completed? We get the answer later in one of Hannah's manuscript excerpts: The house was always part of Webb's plan for the five. The plan was for them to use the money they'd get at age eighteen from the accident to buy the property by the river. "We come back here and build for a year, then we scatter," Webb says. "But the house is always here to come back to" (24.185). It's home for this band of misfits.
Obviously Webb's death derailed these plans, but evidently Hannah found a way to make Webb's dream of the house happen, even though it took longer and she had to do it on her own. As a result, it's more than just an unfinished house—it's Webb's legacy to the survivors of the original five, including his and Fitz's daughters. When Tate comes back to Jellicoe to die at the end of the book, she really does have a place to "come back to." Aw. Yay.
There's more to the house than just being a house, though. Its unfinished status also represents the undeveloped relationship between Hannah and Taylor. Mostly because of Hannah's promise to Tate that she wouldn't try to be Taylor's mom, there's a distance between them even though Hannah hasn't made an effort to deny that there's a connection between them as well.
"Sometimes we don't say a word and other times she talks my ear off about everything and nothing," Taylor says. "When that happens, there's a familiarity between us that tells me she's not merely my House caretaker" (2.2). Just like the house, then, their relationship is somewhat half-baked. It's only when Taylor comes to know the truth about her past that the unfinished business is dealt with.