Chapter 23: The Porch on Marl Street

The neighbors built the ramp in six days.

I did not ask them.

I came down Marl Street on Saturday morning in the back of the van.

There it was beside the porch steps of number forty-one, pale new lumber with a rail on each side.

The man from number thirty-nine stood next to it with a hammer in his belt and his arms folded.

"We had some wood," he said.

"You had a lot of wood."

"Don't make it a thing."

The woman from next door was hanging paper lanterns along the railing.

She was the one who used to water her plants while she watched us.

She was wearing a bathrobe over her good dress.

"Sorry," she said. "I couldn't find the hooks."

The whole street was out.

Folding tables stood down the middle of the pavement, covered in sheets, and somebody's grandmother was frying onions on a camp stove.

The boy with the bike sat on the curb with his phone in his lap.

"Is it okay if I film?" he said.

"You can film."

"I'll post it after."

"You can post it after."

Poppy came out of the front door in a yellow dress.

She had her hair pinned up, and a flower in it that she kept touching.

"Don't cry," she said. "If you cry, I'll cry, and then Dad will cry."

She pointed at the boy on the curb.

"Then the whole street ends up in the video with red faces."

"I'm not crying."

"You've got your lip doing the thing."

"It's wind."

"Sure."

She straightened my collar, then stood back and looked at me for a long time.

"I never had a sister," she said. "I can't say I'm good at it."

"You've been great at it."

"It's been a month."

"Twenty-four years," I said. "You just didn't know."

The retired judge from the Drummond lunch stood at the top of the steps in a rumpled suit.

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