The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,11
as it should. Not a spindle missing, nor a lath either split or broken. Telling himself his discomfort was nothing more than his own bad mood after the meeting at the bank, Bill strode up the brick pathway, mounted the steps that led to the high front porch, and went inside.
The sense that something was wrong grew stronger.
“Elizabeth?” he called out. “Megan? Anybody home?” For a moment he heard nothing at all, then the door leading to the butler’s pantry at the far end of the dining room opened and he saw Mrs. Goodrich’s stooped form shuffling toward him.
“They’re both upstairs,” the old woman said. “You might want to go up and talk to the missus. I think she might be a little upset. And I’m fixing some lunch for the whole family.” The old woman, who had been with Elizabeth since she was a child in Port Arbello, gazed at him worriedly. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”
“I’ll be here, Mrs. Goodrich,” he assured her. As the housekeeper made her slow way back to the kitchen, Bill started up the stairs. Before he was even halfway to the second-floor landing, Megan appeared, gazing down at him with dark, uncertain eyes.
“Why can’t I have my dolly?” she demanded. “Why won’t Mommy give her to me?”
“Dolly?” Bill repeated. “What dolly are you talking about?”
“The one someone sent me,” Megan said. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Mommy won’t let me have her.”
At that moment Elizabeth, still dressed in the nightgown and robe she’d been wearing when Bill left the house three hours earlier, appeared behind their daughter, smiling wanly. “Honey, it’s not that I won’t let you have the doll. It’s just that we don’t know who it’s for.”
“Would one of you mind enlightening me about what’s going on?” Bill asked as he came to the top of the stairs. He knelt down to give Megan a kiss, then stood and slid his arm around his wife. The smile his kiss had put on Megan’s face disappeared.
“It’s for me!” she declared. “When you see it, you’ll know.”
“Come on,” Elizabeth said. “It’s in our room. I’ll show it to you.”
With Megan reaching up to put her hand in his, Bill followed his wife into the big master bedroom. On the old chaise longue, once his mother’s favorite place to sit and read, was the box the mailman had delivered this morning. Reaching into it, Elizabeth lifted out the doll, automatically cradling it in her arms as if it were a baby. “It’s really very beautiful,” she said as Bill moved closer to her. “I think its face must be hand-painted, and the clothes look like they were handmade too.”
Bill looked down into the doll’s face, which had been painted so perfectly that for the briefest of moments he almost had the feeling the doll was looking back up at him. “Who on earth sent it?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “That’s the problem. Not only wasn’t there any return address, but there wasn’t any card with it either.”
“It’s mine!” Megan piped, reaching up for the doll. “Why would anybody send a doll to a grown-up?”
Elizabeth, seeming to hold the doll a little closer to her breast, turned away from the little girl. “But we don’t know that it was sent to you, darling. It might be a present for the new baby.”
Megan scowled deeply and her chin began to tremble. “But the baby’s going to be a boy,” she said. “You said so. And boys don’t play with dollies!”
“We hope the baby is going to be a boy,” Elizabeth explained. “But we don’t know. And if you have a little sister, don’t you think she’ll love the doll as much as you do?”
Megan’s features took on a look of intransigence that almost made Bill laugh. “No,” she declared. “Babies don’t even play with dolls. All they do is eat and cry and wet their diapers.” She turned to her father, and her eyes opened wide. “Please, Daddy, can’t I have her?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Bill said. “Why don’t we put the doll away for a while and see if we can find out who sent it? Then, if it turns out it was meant for you, it’ll be yours. And if it turns out it was meant for the baby, we’ll wait until the baby is born, and if it’s a little boy, then the doll can be your first present from your little brother. How does that sound?”
Megan looked uncertain. “Where are we going to put her?”