What is the importance of Birchie's house in the novel, The Almost Sisters?

Leia stays in Birchie’s house to look after her grandmother. She worries about Birchie and Wattie living here in a big house with a lot of stairs. Birchie has lived in this house her whole life and does not want to leave. Leia has many childhood memories connected to this house, including spending a lot of summers playing dress up in the attic. It is only after the discovery of Ellis Birch’s bones that Leia realizes that she had been playing amongst the crime her grandmother had committed.