Chapter 18: Home

They let my daughter go home on a Thursday, nine days after she was born.

The neighbor drove us in her old Buick, at twelve miles an hour, with her hazard lights on the whole way.

The car seat was brand new. She had bought it herself and told me it was a shower gift from my grandmother's whole street.

The bungalow smelled of lemon polish when I carried the baby in through the back door.

Someone had scrubbed the kitchen, and the yellow kettle sat on the stove.

I put my daughter down in the bassinet beside my bed, under my grandmother's crib quilt, and she slept through it.

I stood over her for an hour, listening to her breathe.

At dusk I heard wheels on the shell road.

I knew it was Quinn before I saw him, because the sound stopped at the bottom of the back steps and did not start up again.

The porch had a ramp now, a long gray slope of new plywood with rails on both sides.

I hadn't built it. The neighbor didn't know anyone who could.

I opened the screen door.

Quinn sat at the bottom of the ramp, in the half-light, looking up at it.

"A guy from my crew came by this morning," he said. "He had the lumber in his truck."

"You asked him to build a ramp for my house?"

"I asked him to build one for a wheelchair. It happens to be at this address."

"That sounds like a tally."

"It's a ramp. Tallies are for things you owe." He looked up at me. "I won't come in. I just wanted to see if you'd let me up the first step."

I stood in the doorway with the light behind me and a dish towel on my shoulder.

I had a lot to say to him. I had been saying it in my head for nine days.

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