Return of the Reborn Princess novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Mud on Marl Street

Poppy and I got to Marl Street at three, wet to the skin, and sat on the top step of number forty-one because neither of us wanted to be inside.

The city had dug a trench along the curb for a water main that week, and the rain had turned the strip beside it to mud.

At twenty to four a long grey van came around the corner and stopped with its lights on us.

The driver got out and looked at me with his cap in his hand.

"Miss Lacey," he said. "He wouldn't wait until morning."

The side door opened, and the ramp came down onto the mud.

Conroy rolled out onto it.

The front wheels went in to the hub.

The chair stopped, and the motor whined.

He tried it again, forward and then back, and the mud held on.

The driver took one step toward him.

"Don't," Conroy said.

He was in his shirtsleeves, in the rain, with his hair flat and the strap dark on his wrist.

He looked up at the porch.

He did not call to me.

He unbuckled himself from the chair, took hold of the arms, and let himself down over the side onto the pavement, on his hands, in the wet.

I stood up.

He dragged himself along the curb, one arm and then the other, with his dead legs behind him, toward the bottom of the steps.

It took a long time.

Poppy said, very quietly, "Do you want me to-"

"No," I said.

I went down the steps in the rain and got my arms under his.

He weighs more than he looks.

I hauled him up and back onto the bottom step, and he sat there heaving, with water running off his chin.

"You could have asked," I said.

"I know."

"Anyone would have helped. The driver was standing right there."

"I wasn't going to ask him." He looked at me. "I wasn't going to ask you either. I was going to get here."

"Why?"

"Because you said Done and I said I wouldn't argue. I'm not arguing." He took a folded paper from inside his shirt, dry in a plastic sleeve. "I'm telling you."

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