Carolyn McSparren - The Only Child

“They didn’t see her is why,” Molly said practically. “I was using my bathroom sink to cast the vinyl head while Rick finished plumbing the workshop. The Dulcy doll was there so I could refer to her if I needed to. I just got her dressed and back down to the workshop today.” She shook her head. “Specially for MacMillan and Zoe. My timing is as flawless as ever.”

“My God, just think how awful it would be if they saw a thousand of her sitting around in some toy store next Christmas!”

“Wouldn’t happen. These two are perfect likenesses, but if the company mass-produces them, I’ll give them a more generic prototype. The new doll won’t look like the little girl who disappeared.”

“Molly—she did more than disappear. Dulcy MacMillan has been dead for two years.”

Molly stared at Sherry.

“That’s impossible! She was alive and well a year ago when I modeled the doll.”

LOGAN MACMILLAN CAME to his senses five miles down the country road, barely in time to avoid a head-on collision with a pickup truck. He braked, swerved and wound up on the verge of a six-foot ditch. The other driver honked in irritation.

After his breathing returned to normal, Logan turned off the engine, climbed out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He picked up a softball-size stone from the shoulder and threw it underhand as hard and as far as he could. It splashed in a cow pond fifty feet away.

Funny that he could still pitch. The last time he pitched to Jeremy, his son was ten. Logan had been home between jobs for a full four months that time.

He wiped his muddy hands down the sides of his jacket and grimaced. He’d always been so certain that sooner or later he and Jeremy would be able to spend time together, to catch up on all those years they’d been apart. How wrong he’d been.

He needed to hit something, so he punched the BMW with both fists hard enough to leave a dent. Pain radiated to his shoulders. His car insurance would probably skyrocket. The hell with it. He was beginning to feel a little better.

He tore open his tie, and yanked at his collar until the button popped.

Suddenly, his adrenaline bottomed out. He walked around to the driver’s side, slid in and turned on the ignition, then the heater. He had been in shock before and knew he was close again. As warm air flooded from the vents, he closed his eyes and fought for control. Much as he longed to put Molly Halliday and her dolls out of his mind he couldn’t. He’d have to drive back, apologize, pay for the doll and find out how she came to create such a bizarre likeness.

He didn’t believe it was a coincidence that the doll named Dulcy was an exact likeness to the image the computer had made of how his granddaughter would have looked.

If she had lived.

MOLLY STOOD under a steaming shower, scrubbed her hair and body, then let the water course over her shoulders until it started to chill. She could feel the tension in her knotted muscles begin to ease. All in all, this had been some afternoon. What had started out as a simple showing for Zoe MacMillan had deteriorated into a Greek tragedy with Zoe’s father, Logan, as the tragic hero. Molly didn’t understand what had happened, but she planned to, for her own peace of mind, if for no other reason. She toweled her hair, and because she still had to feed the animals in the chill evening September air, blew it dry—something she seldom took the time to do.

She pulled on a pair of clean jeans and a teal blue turtleneck sweater, dug her windbreaker out from under a pile of flea-market clothes from which she intended to make dresses for her newest dolls and went out to the barn where Eeyore, the Sicilian donkey, and Maxie, her granddaughter’s pony, waited impatiently for her.

She dumped sweet feed in Eeyore’s and Maxie’s buckets, then tossed them a couple of flakes of hay. She scooped up corn to throw to the five geese that clambered honking out of the pond when they saw her coming and waddled toward her at breakneck speed, their necks stretched out so far, it was a wonder they didn’t tip over.

She flung the corn as far from her as she could. If she dropped it at her feet, they’d crash into her like bumper cars.

Absentmindedly, she put the feed away, hung up the scoop and strolled back to the house to fix herself a sandwich.

In the kitchen she sniffed basil and fresh mint from the pots on the windowsill. The wet-concrete odor of damp bisque was finally gone from the house together with the last of the dust. Her ex-husband, Harry, had hated the mess. In fact, he’d probably divorced her because of the dolls.

Molly poured herself a glass of iced tea and twisted a sprig of mint into it, enjoying the quiet. Sherry often teased her about being a hermit, but Molly did not regret for one moment spending most of her divorce settlement to buy her woods and pasture, to build her log house and barn. She never wanted to go to another fancy corporate function again, if she lived to be a hundred.

How could she ever have guessed when she let Sherry con her into taking that first doll-making class that she would find her life’s work? She was content for the first time in her life, and never lonely. Sherry dropped in four or five times a week. Molly’s clients loved coming out to see her. Her daughter, Anne, brought her granddaughter, Elizabeth, by nearly every day after school to ride her pony. Molly still missed her volunteer work at the Abused Children’s Center, but there wasn’t time, not if she expected to make a living. Funny that she’d started volunteering because Harry said she had to do something charitable to make him look good at his firm.

Molly sipped her tea slowly, so lost in her thoughts that when the doorbell sounded, she jumped a foot. Nobody came up her driveway unannounced. Although a person could walk through the woods to the house and bypass the gate alarm, dense underbrush and snakes tended to discourage walkers.

No, it was more likely that a car had driven up while she’d been in the barn.

The doorbell pealed again. She peeked through the front curtains and saw a black BMW Then she saw MacMillan on the front porch. She felt a stab of alarm. Should she open the door to him?

“Mrs. Halliday,” a deep voice spoke through the door. “I must see you.” It wasn’t so much a request as a command.

Molly sighed. Get the confrontation over with. Maybe she could get an explanation as well.

She opened the door and snapped, “Didn’t you do enough damage on your first raid?” Then, seeing his face, she reached out to him quickly. “You look as though you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” she said. “You need a drink.”

“Excuse me?” he asked. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes..

He was no longer immaculate. Besides the bisque dust, there was mud on his jacket, his tie was loose, his shirt gaped open at the neck. His hair stood on end as though he’d been driving his hands through it, and his skin had a gray caste that his tan couldn’t quite hide.

“Come into the kitchen,” Molly said, and took his arm. “You need a glass of orange juice, my friend, and you need it quickly.” She shoved him onto a stool, poured a glass of orange juice and ordered, “Drink it before you pass out.”

He peered into the jelly glass as though it held arsenic.

“Do it. It won’t bite you.”

He took a sip, then drank greedily.

“More?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Iced tea then? Or Scotch?”

“Nothing, thank you.” He set the empty glass down carefully. The bar stool put him for the first time almost at eye level with Molly in a room still flooded with western light from the setting sun. He took his first real look at her.