Return of the Reborn Princess novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Marl Street

Eden tells Amos and Poppy one plain fact, puts her only savings on their kitchen table, and Adele pulls up outside with a lawyer and a check.

"Can I help you?" the girl said.

She had a dish towel over one shoulder and a pencil behind her ear.

Her voice was rougher than Adele's, but it had the same low note under it.

I held on to the railing.

"I'm looking for Amos Lacey."

"That's my dad." She leaned on the doorframe. "If you're from the hospital billing office, he's not home. And if he is, he's asleep."

"I'm not from billing."

"Then you're lost."

"I don't think I am."

Behind her, a man's voice called down the hall. "Poppy? Who is it?"

"A girl who won't say," Poppy called back.

She looked me over again, the good coat, the bag, the shoes that cost more than her father's rent.

"You're not selling anything," she said.

"No."

"Then come in before the neighbors start taking bets."

The row house was one long narrow hall, and the kitchen was at the end of it.

A man sat at the table with two metal crutches hooked on the back of his chair.

He was thin, with grey stubble and a cardigan out at the elbows.

A pile of envelopes sat at his elbow, the top one stamped in red.

"Dad, this is a girl," Poppy said. "She wants you. She doesn't want billing."

Amos Lacey looked up.

He looked at my face for a long time.

His cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Eden Drummond."

"That's not a name I know."

"It isn't my name either," I said. "I think my name is Lacey."

Poppy laughed. It was short and surprised, and then she stopped.

Nobody else had made a sound.

I told it the plain way, because I had no better way.

I was born at St. Brendan's Hospital in Pittsburgh on March ninth, twenty-four years ago today.

I was raised in the house on Carrick Hill by Adele and Howard Drummond.

There had been a test, the result comes tonight, and it will say I am not theirs.

I did not tell them about the lake house.

I had decided that on the bus.

That could wait.

"The test also says something about the girl I was switched with," I said. "I think it's her."

I looked at Poppy.

She had gone very still, with the towel in her hand.

"That's not funny," she said.

"I'm not trying to be funny."

"My mother had me in that hospital on March ninth. I have the birth certificate in a drawer."

"So do I," I said. "Paper says whatever the hospital typed."

Amos had not moved.

Then he said, quietly, "Come here."

I went around the table.

He reached up and turned my chin toward the window light with two fingers.

There was a small white scar on it, the one I got falling off a swing at five.

His breath went out of him.

"My wife had that," he said. "Same place. Her father's dog knocked her off a porch when she was four."

Poppy took a step back and sat on the stairs.

"Dad."

"She has her mother's chin," he said. "I've been looking at it for two minutes and I didn't let myself say it."

His hand was shaking on my face.

I did not cry, because I had not been given the time to cry at the lake house, and it seemed I still did not have it.

But my eyes were hot.

"I'm sorry I came in like this," I said. "I'm sorry for all of it."

"Don't you be sorry," he said. "Sit down. Poppy, get her a cup."

Poppy did not move for a second.

Then she got up, and her hand knocked into the counter, and she took down a mug with a chip in the handle.

"Twenty-four years," she said, mostly to the mug. "And you were across the river the whole time."

"I was."

"Was she good to you?" Amos asked.

I thought of the dinners and the piano lessons, and the hand on my shoulder that had held a lamp.

"She was very good to me," I said. "That's the problem."

I took my bank card out of my bag and set it on the table, on top of the envelope with the red stamp.

"It's the one account that's only in my name," I said. "My grandfather's trust. Forty-one thousand dollars."

Poppy looked at it. "What's that for?"

"Whatever's in that pile."

Amos pushed it back with one finger. "We don't take money from a girl who's been here ten minutes."

"It's not from a girl you met ten minutes ago."

"Eden."

It was the first time he'd said my name, my other name, and it was the wrong one, and my knees almost went.

"The pile is eighteen thousand dollars," Poppy said flatly. "It's the hospital. It's the surgery he can't get. Dad, she's looking right at it."

"Then let her look."

"Dad."

Outside, a car door closed.

It was a heavy, expensive sound, the sound of a very good door.

Poppy went to the front window and parted the curtain with one finger.

A black sedan stood at the curb.

A man in a grey suit was getting out of the back, carrying a briefcase.

Behind him came a woman in a cream coat, with silver-blond hair pinned in a low knot.

She was holding a long white envelope, and she was smiling at the whole street.

"Who is that?" Poppy said.

I did not answer.

Poppy turned and looked at me, and then she looked at the window again.

"Why does that woman have my face?"

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