From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Walk Down

I woke at six with the sun already on the wall.

Tancredi was awake beside me, on his back, looking at the ceiling.

"You're going," he said.

"I'm going."

"Do you want me with you?"

I thought about it honestly, because he had taught me to.

"At the top," I said. "Not at the bottom."

He got dressed without another word, and drove me across the river to the hospital in the early light.

The Memorial Wing was a frame of steel and plastic sheeting now, with a crane standing over it.

The east stairwell survived. They had scrubbed the smoke off its walls, and a painter had left a ladder on the third landing.

I stood outside the fourth-floor door.

In my first life I never got to walk these stairs at my own pace.

"I'll count to a hundred," Tancredi said. "Then I'll follow, ten steps back. Where you can see me if you turn."

"I won't turn."

"Then where you can hear me."

I almost smiled.

"Fine," I said, and pushed the door open.

The stairwell smelled of paint and cold concrete.

There was a window on every landing, and it was full of morning.

I went down slowly, one hand on the rail.

On the third landing I passed the painter's ladder and the paint cans, and a radio somebody had left playing a ballgame in Italian.

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