Chapter 6 - The Girl Who Owned the Doll
I drove with the doll in my tote bag and my daughter humming in the back seat. The address I'd found was twenty minutes away, just over the county line, above a laundromat on Main. I kept checking the rearview mirror. Not for traffic. For whether I was actually going to do this without calling my husband first.
I was.
That morning I'd told him I was taking her to the library. It wasn't a lie but it wasn't the whole truth either, and my hands were tight on the wheel the entire way.
The apartment was on the second floor, exterior stairs, peeling gray paint. A young woman was already outside, leaning against the railing, smoking was not allowed so she just held an unlit cigarette between her fingers. She was maybe twenty-two, dark hair pulled back, wearing scrubs that looked like she'd come straight from a shift. I knew it was her before she looked up. She had my father-in-law's eyes.
"You the one who messaged?" she asked.
I nodded and unbuckled my daughter. "I'm Sarah," I said. I didn't give my last name right away. "This is Ellie."
She looked at Ellie and her face softened, just a little. "I'm Maya."
We stood there in the parking lot with the dryers thudding through the wall and cars passing on Main. I felt suddenly stupid for bringing a four-year-old to this. Maya glanced at the tote bag.
"You said you had something that was mine," she said. Her voice was flat, not unkind. Just careful. Like she'd rehearsed not getting her hopes up.
I knelt and zipped open the bag. I didn't take the doll out and hand it over. I held the bag open so Ellie could see too. Ellie reached in and pulled it out herself.
Maya's breath caught. It was audible.
She stepped forward one step and then stopped herself. Her hand went to her mouth.
"Where did you get that," she whispered.
Ellie held it out, a little shy. "It's my doll," she said, then looked up at me, confused. "Mom?"
I put my hand on Ellie's back. "Honey, can you show her the shoes?"
Ellie turned the doll over. One pink plastic shoe was scuffed white on the toe. Maya stared at it and then laughed, a short, wet sound.
"I did that," she said. "I scraped it on our driveway learning to ride a bike. My dad —" She stopped. Swallowed. "He bought it for me when I was five. Right before she made him stop coming."
She wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at the doll like it might disappear. "He said I could leave it at his house so it would be safe. So she wouldn't find it. Then one day I came and my room was gone. Everything was gone."
I felt my throat tighten. "Your room at his house?"
"His workshop," she said. "He had a little corner for me. With a mattress. He told his wife I was a coworker's kid he tutored." Her mouth twisted. "That pedestal in your yard? He built that for my mom. Said it was for a statue he never finished. It was the only place he could put her name without his wife seeing it."
Ellie was watching Maya's face, quiet in a way that wasn't normal for her. She walked the two steps between them and pushed the doll gently against Maya's scrub pants.
"You can hold her," Ellie said.
Maya knelt slowly, like her knees hurt, and took the doll with both hands. She held it to her chest for a second and closed her eyes. When she opened them they were full.
"Thank you," she said to Ellie, not to me.
I had to look away, at the cracked sidewalk, at the laundromat's buzzing sign. I thought about my husband sitting on our couch every night for four years, telling me his father was a private man, that there was no one else. I thought about Ellie growing up thinking she was an only grandchild.
"He never told my husband either," I said quietly. "Not really. He let him think you just... went away."
Maya nodded. She was still holding the doll, tracing the pink dress with her thumb. "He stopped answering my texts when I was twelve. I figured he chose them. I didn't know he kept this."
"He did," I said. "My mother-in-law threw it at the base of that pedestal and told my daughter to keep quiet about it."
Maya's jaw tightened. She looked up at me then, sharp. "She told a four-year-old that?"
I nodded. "That's why I'm here."
We stood there a long moment with the air smelling like dryer sheets and hot asphalt. Ellie leaned against my leg and Maya handed the doll back to her, carefully, shoe and all.
"Do you want her back?" Ellie asked.
Maya shook her head. "No, sweetheart. She's yours. Just... take care of her, okay?"
Ellie hugged the doll hard and nodded.
I reached out without thinking and touched Maya's forearm. "I don't want any more secrets between my kids," I said. My voice was low and it shook a little. "You are her sister. If you want to know her, I won't hide it again. I promise."
Maya looked at Ellie, then at me, and for the first time her shoulders dropped. "I'd like that," she said. "But slow. I don't want to get pulled into their house."
May you like
"We won't go there," I said. "Not yet."
I buckled Ellie back into her seat with the doll on her lap. Maya stood at the bottom of the stairs and waved once as I pulled out. In the rearview, I watched her stay there until we turned the corner.
