THE DOLL

Some heirlooms don’t wait to be passed down.

It had always sat on the high shelf in her room, among the delicate things she wasn’t allowed to touch.

Beautifully made, with an almost lifelike expression.
Not quite a smile.
Not quite a frown.
More like a laugh someone was trying to hide.

Its clothes were carefully stitched, fashionable for its time.
The hair was real.
It reminded the girl of her grandmother’s tight bob, not a strand out of place.

Her mother had found it at a thrift store.
The girl wanted desperately to play with it.

One afternoon she locked her bedroom door, dragged a wooden chair across the room, and climbed up.
Still not tall enough.
She nudged the chair closer and rose onto her tiptoes, fingers straining for the shelf.

Just barely, she brushed the doll’s foot.
Her hand shifted.
The doll slipped free.

It floated off the ledge like a paper airplane.

Then a crash.
And a scream.
Much louder than something so small should ever make.

She scrambled down.
The doll was intact.

Panicked, she grabbed a shirt from the dresser, wrapped the doll tightly, and hid it deep in her sock drawer.

She sat on the edge of her bed, breath thin, unsure what to do next.

Then her mother screamed again.

The sound tore through the house.
The girl ran downstairs.

Her mother lay collapsed on the kitchen floor, clutching both ankles, sobbing in a voice the girl had never heard before.

“Call a doctor,” she managed.

Ice didn’t help.
Nothing did.

The doctor arrived, strapped her to a stretcher, and took her away.

At the hospital, no one could explain it.
Both ankles broken.
No fall.
No accident.
No trauma.

Just broken.

The girl waited for her mother to come home.

But just before her release, something shifted.
Her lungs failed.
Suddenly.
Quietly.

Days later, the doorbell rang.
Still wrapped in her grief, the girl opened the door.

A woman stood there, as if lifted from an old photograph and placed in the present.
Her hair in a perfect bob.
Her expression not quite a smile, as if hiding a laugh.

She didn’t wait to be invited.
She stepped inside.

She looked at the girl with a familiarity that made her stomach drop.

“So,” she said softly,
“you found the doll?”