Page 8 of Cracked Doll

He nods, looks at the floor, then back at me. "I wanted to say — about last night." His jaw works. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't — I know it doesn't fix anything, saying it after. But I am. Sorry."

I don't answer. I've learned it's better not to, at this stage.

"You're my only child," he goes on, quieter now, the words coming loose and unsteady, like something spilling rather than something spoken. "My last hope. I wouldn't — I wouldn't be alive, some days, if it weren't for you keeping this place running. You know that, don't you? You have to know that."

I nod. I say nothing.

"I'm sorry," he says again, and this time his voice cracks on it. "You're all I have left."

"Okay," I say. It's the only word I can find that won't ask for more than either of us can give tonight.

He nods, satisfied or exhausted, I can't tell which, and steps back into the hall. "I'm going to the bar," he says, already turning, already gone in every way that matters. "Don't wait up."

I don't answer that either. The door clicks shut behind him.

I lie back against my pillow and stare at the ceiling, the poster and the rose still tucked beneath me, and let myself go still and empty for what feels like a long time — ten minutes, maybe more — before I hear something in the hallway.

Footsteps.

"Papa?" I call, sitting up. "Did you forget something?"

No answer.

The footsteps come closer. Slow. Even. Deliberate in a way my father's never are — his are always uneven, catching and stumbling, drink-heavy no matter the hour. These are precise. Measured. The kind of footsteps that know exactly where they're going.

I get up, my heart already climbing into my throat, and cross to the door. I press my ear to the wood and listen. The steps stop directly on the other side.

I hold my breath. My mind offers up two possibilities, both terrible: a thief, drawn by God knows what — there's nothing left in this house worth stealing, nothing but grief and dust — or something worse, something I don't let myself finish thinking.

I wait. One second. Ten. An eternity folded into the space of a held breath.

And then, the footsteps retreat. Slow, unhurried, fading back down the hall until the house is silent again.

I count to twenty before I dare to open the door.

The hallway is empty. Dark, ordinary, exactly as it always is — except that the moment I step out, my bare foot comes down on something soft.

I look down. A black rose, laid across the floorboards like an offering.

A small paper tag hangs from its stem, tied with black thread. I crouch and lift it into the dim light spilling from my room, and read the words written there in a narrow, elegant hand:

Even buried things bloom again, if someone loves them enough to dig.

My stomach turns to ice.

I don't remember deciding to move. I'm simply back inside my room a moment later, door shut, lock thrown, breath coming too fast. I cross to the window on instinct — some animal part of me needing to see the street, needing to know — and there he is.

Standing on the cobbles below, dead still, looking directly up at my window.

The flash goes off before I can step back — a white burst of light against the dark, his camera lifted to catch the exact moment our eyes might have met, if I'd let them. He lowers it slowly. And simply stares.

My hand finds the black veil on the sill without my telling it to, settling it over my eyes with fingers that won't stop shaking, and only then do I look again, properly, through its safe dark mesh.

It's him. The same man from the shop. The same coat, the same unhurried stillness, as though he has nowhere else in the world he'd rather be than standing in the rain outside my window.

Call the police. The thought arrives and dies almost instantly — I don't have a phone. I've never needed one. The only telephone in this entire house sits behind the counter downstairs, and getting to it means leaving this room, walking past that door, out into the dark.

Below, as if he's read the thought straight off my face, the man reaches into his coat and produces a mobile. He lifts it. Dials.