1 My father was a world-renowned dollmaker. He used to tell me that the purest form of love was turning someone into an eternity. So, when the time came, he took my mother—the person I loved most in the world—and sculpted her into his greatest masterpiece. He placed her right in the center of his sunlit workshop, telling everyone that she had simply grown tired of marriage and walked out on us. Every afternoon, I would creep into the room to talk to her, but her glazed, lacquered lips never parted to smile at me again. Then came Meredith, carrying Father’s unborn baby in her swollen belly, insisting I was disturbed and ought to be locked away. Father looked at me with the cold detachment of an artisan evaluating a flawed cast, letting Meredith wrench away the porcelain hair clip my mother had given me before she vanished. Neither of them realized that my mother’s glass eyes had been watching them all along. And they never imagined that I would become the most devastating, lethal thing Father ever created. The new doll appeared on a Tuesday, sitting by the bay window in Father’s workshop. She was the exact spitting image of my mother, dressed in the crisp white cotton sundress Mother had worn all through last summer. She sat poised with an open hardcover book resting in her lap. When the afternoon sun cut through the tall glass panes, her skin glowed with the luminous, milky sheen of bone china. “Visiting your mother again, Sadie?” Father’s voice drifted from behind me. He always spoke in that distant, airy cadence, as though his words had to travel across an ocean before reaching my ears. His name was Richard Campbell. The art world called him a visionary—the most gifted ball-jointed dollmaker alive. I nodded, keeping my voice down to a whisper. “She’s been reading that same page all day. Won’t her eyes get tired?” Father walked over, his palm settling on the crown of my head. It was feather-light, devoid of warmth. “Silly girl. Your mother doesn’t get tired anymore.” He paused, his voice taking on a strange, breathless quality, like a child staring through a candy store window. “She’s the finest piece I’ve ever sculpted. A permanent work of art. She will never age, never wear down, and she will never… ever leave us.” I tilted my head up. His gaze was fixed on the doll, his eyes blazing with the ravenous intensity of a starving man looking at a banquet. Slowly, I reached out my small hand, wanting to feel the tips of the doll’s porcelain fingers. “Don’t touch!” The sudden bark in his voice made my shoulders jerk. Before I could pull back, his fingers clamped around my wrist like an iron vise. He squeezed so hard the skin pinched, sending a throb of heat up my arm. “Sadie, remember the rule,” he hissed, his face inches from mine. “A masterwork is never handled. Especially this one. She is my very life.” Tears stung my eyes, but I swallowed them down. I knew better than to cry. Footsteps clicked against the hardwood floor. Meredith appeared in the doorway, cradling her round belly with one manicured hand. She hated the sound of my sniffling, and Father hated anything that upset Meredith. “Richard, darling, why do you keep letting her in here?” Meredith frowned, her gaze sweeping over me as if I were a stray cat tracking mud onto fresh rugs. “The lacquer fumes and resin dust aren’t good for the baby.” Father immediately let go of my wrist. He turned to Meredith, his posture softening into instant devotion. “My fault, sweetheart. I lost track of time. You should be resting.” “The little one was kicking,” she cooed, leaning her full weight against his shoulder. “He missed his daddy.” They stood side by side in the honeyed sunlight, whispering to each other next to the frozen figure in the armchair. The sight made the pit of my stomach twist with an ache I didn’t know how to name. I rubbed my bruised wrist. Mother used to tell me that Father had magician’s hands—hands that could coax breath and soul out of dead wood, clay, and plaster. But right then, those hands felt like nothing more than cold steel. “The girl is getting weirder every day,” Meredith murmured, her voice dripping with honey-coated poison. “Talking to a mannequin like it’s flesh and blood. Richard, people in town are going to talk. It’s terrible for the Campbell name.” “She’s six, Meredith. She’ll grow out of it,” Father replied, his tone dismissive, like a man waving away an annoying fly. “Children remember everything unless you intervene,” she pressed, her fingers stroking his lapel. “If you ask me, she should be sent up north to stay with her grandmother in Vermont. Out of sight, out of mind. Once our son arrives, we can—” “Enough, Meredith,” Father cut in, his tone flat. “Sadie is my daughter.” His defense offered me no comfort. He hadn’t looked at me once while saying it. His eyes remained locked in an obsessive orbit between the pregnant curve of Meredith’s belly and the glassy gaze of the doll. I stepped backward, desperate to slip out of the room before the tears spilled over. 2 My heel caught the edge of Father’s rolling tool cart. The cart wobbled, and with a sharp, echoing clatter, a heavy steel carving gouge slid off the tray and struck the parquet floor. Meredith let out a piercing shriek as if she’d been struck by lightning. She stumbled back, clutching her belly with both hands. “My stomach! Oh god, my stomach!” Father’s face went completely bloodless. He caught her in his arms, his voice cracking in panic. “Meredith! Are you alright? Did it hit you? Look at me!” “I… I think so,” she whimpered, trembling against his chest like a wounded rabbit, though I could see her peeking at me through her lashes with chilling satisfaction. “It just scared me so badly. Richard… did she do that on purpose? Does she hate our baby that much?” Father spun around. The fury in his eyes was blinding. “Sadie! Get over here!” My knees turned to jelly. I couldn’t move an inch. In three strides, Father crossed the floor, grabbed me by the scruff of my collar, and dragged me across the rug until I was standing before them. “Apologize,” he commanded, his jaw tight. I looked at Meredith, who was resting her chin on his shoulder, her lips curling into a tiny, victorious smirk. I clamped my mouth shut and bit my lip until it bled. I hadn’t done it on purpose. It was an accident. “I told you to apologize to Meredith!” Father’s voice boomed against the high ceiling. “How did you turn into such a spiteful, vicious little creature? Is this how your mother raised you?” The mention of Mother broke whatever fragile dam was holding me together. “My mommy never did this!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, sobbing through the fury in my chest. “Give her back! I don’t want that fake thing! I want my real mommy! Bring her back!” The slap cracked across the quiet room. My head snapped sideways, a high-pitched ringing filling my ears. Half my face burned like hot grease, and the sharp, metallic tang of blood flooded my tongue. The workshop went dead silent. Father stood over me, his hand still suspended in the air, his chest heaving under his linen shirt. His eyes were wide, brimming with a terrifying mixture of rage and revulsion. “You insolent little brat,” he spat, his voice dropping into a harsh, ragged rasp. “Your mother left! She packed her bags and abandoned this family because she didn’t want either of us anymore! Do you understand plain English? She is gone!” He was lying. Mother would never have left me. The night before she disappeared, she had tucked me into bed, holding me close while reading my favorite book about the velvet rabbit. She had kissed my forehead and whispered that I was her whole heart, that she would stay with me forever and ever. And then, the next morning, her closet was half-empty, her phone was disconnected, and Father had locked himself in the workshop for three weeks straight until this new doll appeared. Father hauled me down the hallway by my arm, marched down the basement stairs, and shoved me into the windowless utility storage closet. The heavy brass bolt slid into place from the outside. “Stay in there until you learn how to behave,” his muffled voice came through the thick oak. “When you’re ready to show some remorse, maybe I’ll let you out.” Darkness swallowed me whole. I curled into a ball on the concrete floor, pulling my knees tight against my chest. The air was frigid, thick with the smell of mold, turpentine, and industrial adhesive. Faint vibrations traveled down from the ceiling above. I could hear Meredith’s soft, playful laughter and Father’s murmurings. They were upstairs in the warm, brightly lit living room, eating dinner and drinking tea, while my doll-mother sat abandoned in the dark workshop. And I was down here, freezing. I buried my wet face in my knees, shivering violently. “Mommy,” I whispered into the blackness. “Sadie’s scared. Why aren’t you coming to get me?” Only the hum of the furnace answered. I lost track of time. My stomach twisted with hunger, and a dry ache settled deep in my throat. Hours later, the lock clicked softly. A sliver of amber light cut across the floor, blinding me. It was Martha, the elderly housekeeper who had worked for my mother’s family for decades. She carried a steaming bowl of oat porridge, her eyes brimming with tears the moment she saw me shivering on the floor. “Oh, sweetheart…” she breathed, kneeling to lift me into her arms. “Here, eat something quickly.” I gripped the metal spoon with trembling fingers, gulping down the warm porridge. The heat spread through my chest, thawing the chill in my bones. “Martha,” I whispered, porridge clinging to the corner of my lip, “where is Mommy really?” Martha’s gaze flickered toward the open door, avoiding my eyes. She let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Your mother… she went on a long journey, Sadie. Far away.” Father’s script. Word for word. “You’re lying,” I said, putting the spoon down. “She didn’t go anywhere. She’s upstairs in the workshop. Daddy turned her into a doll.” Martha’s face lost every drop of color. She grabbed my shoulders, her voice dropping to an urgent, frantic whisper. “Sadie, you must never, ever say that out loud again! Do you hear me? If your father hears you, or if that woman upstairs catches wind of it, God only knows what he’ll do to you. Just be a good girl. Keep your head down, and he won’t hurt you.” I stared at her, a profound emptiness settling inside me. Nobody in this house believed me. Nobody was going to stand up for me. After I finished the food, Martha didn’t lock the door; she simply left it cracked and hurried back upstairs to clean. I slipped through the shadows of the hallway like a ghost. As I passed Father’s study, I noticed the door was ajar. His voice drifted through the gap, brimming with pride as he spoke into the telephone receiver. “Yes, the Paris Art Biennial next month… She will be the centerpiece of my retrospective. The title? I’m leaning toward The Eternal Lover… Haha, thank you, my friend. You understand completely. It is the absolute pinnacle of my career—the zenith of form, devotion, and preservation…” His laughter sounded triumphant. A cold certainty took root in my chest. He was going to pack Mother into a wooden crate and ship her across the ocean to Paris. He was going to put her on a pedestal under bright gallery spotlights, letting hundreds of strangers stare at her like an oddity in a glass case. No. I couldn’t let that happen. I clenched my fists in the dark. I was going to hide her. I would hide her somewhere only I could find, where Father’s hands could never touch her again.
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