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    Baby Dolly
    Baby Dolly
    Baby Dolly
    Ebook543 pages7 hours

    Baby Dolly

    By Ruby Jean Jensen

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    About this ebook

    Sybil received the baby dolly as a present, but she didn’t like it. Three days later, her sister Rose Marie died a mysterious death. Later, when Sybil’s daughter Rose had a baby born out of wedlock, Sybil gave orders to protect the family reputation by hiding the birth from the entire town. This was 1910, after all. When baby Angela was 3 months old, Sybil brought her old doll down from the attic as a present. Mysteriously, Angela did not wake up the next day. Sybil knew exactly what she was doing. Unfortunately, she launched a chain of events that would play out over more than three generations. The horror that was the old Baby Dolly would continue for a very long time ...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRuby Jean Jensen
    Release dateMay 14, 2020
    ISBN9781951580100
    Baby Dolly
    Author

    Ruby Jean Jensen

    Ruby Jean Jensen (1927 – 2010) authored more than 30 novels and over 200 short stories. Her passion for writing developed at an early age, and she worked for many years to develop her writing skills. After having many short stories published, in 1974 the novel The House that Samael Built was accepted for publication. She then quickly established herself as a professional author, with representation by a Literary Agent from New York. She subsequently sold 29 more novels to several New York publishing houses. After four Gothic Romance, three Occult and then three Horror novels, MaMa was published by Zebra books in 1983. With Zebra, Ruby Jean completed nineteen more novels in the Horror genre.Ruby was involved with creative writing groups for many years, and she often took the time to encourage young authors and to reply to fan mail.

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      Book preview

      Baby Dolly - Ruby Jean Jensen

      Baby Dolly

      Baby Dolly

      Ruby Jean Jensen

      Gayle J. Foster

      Contents

      Foreword: PRECIOUS BABY

      Prologue

      BOOK ONE

      1: Chapter 1

      1: Chapter 2

      1: Chapter 3

      1: Chapter 4

      1: Chapter 5

      1: Chapter 6

      1: Chapter 7

      1: Chapter 8

      1: Chapter 9

      1: Chapter 10

      1: Chapter 11

      1: Chapter 12

      1: Chapter 13

      1: Chapter 14

      1: Chapter 15

      1: Chapter 16

      1: Chapter 17

      BOOK TWO

      2: Chapter 1

      2: Chapter 2

      2: Chapter 3

      2: Chapter 4

      2: Chapter 5

      2: Chapter 6

      2: Chapter 7

      2: Chapter 8

      2: Chapter 9

      2: Chapter 10

      2: Chapter 11

      2: Chapter 12

      2: Chapter 13

      2: Chapter 14

      2: Chapter 15

      2: Chapter 16

      2: Chapter 17

      2: Chapter 18

      2: Chapter 19

      BOOK THREE

      3: Chapter 1

      3: Chapter 2

      3: Chapter 3

      3: Chapter 4

      3: Chapter 5

      3: Chapter 6

      3: Chapter 7

      3: Chapter 8

      3: Chapter 9

      3: Chapter 10

      3: Chapter 11

      3: Chapter 12

      3: Chapter 13

      3: Chapter 14

      3: Chapter 15

      3: Chapter 16

      3: Chapter 17

      3: Chapter 18

      3: Chapter 19

      Thanks for reading!!

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      Guide for your Reading Group:

      Suggested Discussion Topics

      Other novels by Ruby Jean

      PREVIEW: THE LIVING EVIL

      Book One - 1870: The Gift

      Chapter One - The Living Evil

      Chapter 2 - The Living Evil

      Foreword: PRECIOUS BABY

      My baby, my precious, Rose whispered. She sat on the floor, facing the window and the moonlight. Holding the doll to her breast, she rocked back and forth, humming softly under her breath.

      The real Angela lay in a dark hole in the ground, out at the edge of the forest. But for now Rose could pretend she had her baby again.

      She was very tired. Exhausted. A strange, deep weakness reached into her bones.

      Soon she was drifting between sleeping and waking, between dreams and reality.

      Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She was suffocating.

      It was the doll. The doll was taking her breath.

      She tried with her hands to push the doll away, but it clung to her. She turned her head back and forth.

      She tried to rise, but all strength had been pulled from her.

      Help me. She had to get up and find her mother, tell her what was happening. Tell her about the doll. Before it hurt someone else.

      But she was too weak to get up . . .

      Copyright © 1991 by Ruby Jean Jensen

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of a representative of the Author’s heirs, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

      First printing: December, 1991 in the United States of America

      Published by: Gayle J. Foster, Carrollton, Texas

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917562

      Cover art: SelfPubBookCovers.com/ RJWright

      Created with Vellum Created with Vellum

      GET YOUR FREE BOOK!

      FREE DOWNLOAD of MaMa

      Get your free copy of MaMa when you sign up to the author’s VIP mailing list. You will receive updates on new releases of Ruby Jean Jensen’s books.

      GET STARTED HERE: https://www.rubyjeanjensen.com/rjj-free-book/

      Prologue

      In the stillness of the cold, dark night Sybil could hear sleet pecking against the window. It sounded like small fingers scratching to get in, searching for a weakness in the panes, for cracks around the edges. Small fingers like the fingers of the new Christmas doll that lay facing her like a real newborn baby on the pillow and beneath the covers in her bed.

      A dim light from a lamp turned low on the dresser between her bed and Rose Marie’s in the opposite corner outlined the pinched and ugly features of the doll. A bonnet covered its painted hair. Couldn’t she at least have a tiny, grown-up doll with real hair, like Rose Marie’s new Christmas Eve doll? A lady doll, a dancing doll perhaps, with dainty slippers and real stockings. This doll that was just like an ugly newborn baby was not what she had wanted.

      Couldn’t Papa have bought her a brooch like the one he bought Mother? It was beautiful coral in filigreed gold. Or even the gold necklace such as he had given Rose Marie, with the little heart that opened. A locket, to hold her secrets.

      Why had Papa thought she would want a baby doll? She was twelve years old, only one year younger than Rose Marie, and almost as grown-up. She didn’t want an ugly baby doll. She didn’t like babies very well anyway.

      Her papa had seemed proud of it. He had gotten both dolls in South America, he said, on his last business trip. They were under the tree, wrapped in colorful Christmas paper and tied with real ribbons. The ribbon, at least, she would use in her hair.

      Sybil whispered to it, I hate you. You’re ugly.

      It stared up at her. She had never seen such dark glassy eyes. She began to feel uncomfortable. She stared back at it intensely, her frown deepening. It was like looking into the eyes of another creature, a living thing different from herself, yet very clever and knowing in its own way.

      You can’t have been listening to me, she whispered. And then in shocked realization, It knows every word I said!

      The pungent odor of the candles that had lighted the Christmas tree had found its way up the long stairway and into the bedroom. Or was there something in the clothing or body of the doll that stank?

      Sybil bared her teeth at it and whispered, You’re so ugly. Tomorrow I’ll put you away, and I’ll never touch you again. And I will never forgive Papa for bringing you to me. Tonight she’d had to accept the doll in her bed because her papa had come to tuck her and Rose Marie in, and he had placed this hideous doll in bed with her just as he had tucked Rose Marie’s doll in with her. Rose Marie slept peacefully, like the angel Papa had called her. But he had called Sybil his big girl, not his angel.

      Don’t you know you have to be beautiful to be loved? she hissed to the staring eyes of the doll. Like Rose Marie. Or maybe you don’t know what love is. Our old cook, the one that died, said I don’t know. But I do. It’s having people be nice to you. She shoved it away and turned over.

      Sybil’s eyes closed, and she drifted toward sleep, feeling the hammock-like swing of drowsiness as she slipped away from this disappointing Christmas Eve. What would her stocking hold tomorrow morning? Maybe Santa Claus would be more understanding than her parents had been, and bring her a necklace.

      The sleet sounded like thousands of pecking fingers, like strange creatures running on tiny hooves, like miniature voices chortling in evil glee.

      She began to smother in the strange world of the elves outside her window. They were transporting her to an alien world where she was helpless, where she could no longer breathe.

      She struggled to open her eyes, and the features of the room drew her away from the evil world of the elves. But there was something pressed against her face, smothering her.

      Sybil pushed weakly at it, and felt the soft, stuffed body of the doll. Its face had moved against hers and its mouth sucked leech-like at hers, and she had a horror-filled vision of it filling with blood, like a real leech, but it was not sucking her blood, it was sucking away her breath.

      She grabbed it and threw it, and it fell on the floor at the foot of her bed. She lay still, gasping desperately, feeling the way she had the day she’d fallen out of the big swing onto her back, all the breath knocked out of her.

      When she was able to breathe again she slowly sat up, staring toward the doll on the floor. The low, flickering light from the lamp cast shadows on its face. There was a frightening look in the dark, swollen slits of eyes, and its mouth was open a bit now, as if pursed for nursing, for gathering nourishment. When she had gone to sleep the lips were in a small, round, closed pout.

      It had tried to take her breath . . . her life.

      Slowly she crawled out from beneath the down-filled warmth of the comforter and into the chilled air of the room. The sleet at the window rattled the pane.

      She stared down at the face of the doll, then she picked it up by its long white gown and carried it to the bed across the room.

      Rose Marie slept on her side, her back to the tiny, beautiful lady doll on her other pillow. It was dressed in scarlet and black lace, and its small, stiff arms pointed upward toward the ceiling.

      Sybil carefully placed the baby doll on the pillow beside Rose Marie’s head, turning its face toward hers.

      Rose Marie’s rich and glossy black hair made a bed for the doll.

      Sybil slipped back into her own bed, snuggling beneath the warm comforter. She covered her head and her ears, shutting out the night and the memory of the disappointing Christmas Eve.

      She awoke to silence. A dim dawn had filtered into the room, and a bit of warmth from somewhere below.

      Papa was up and had stoked the furnace. The beginnings of Christmas dinner would be started. She could imagine her mother in the kitchen with the cook and maid, doing part of the cooking herself as she liked to do at special times.

      But Rose Marie was quiet.

      Sybil sat up and looked toward her older sister’s bed. There was the rounded form beneath the comforter, lying still, so still.

      Sybil slipped out of bed and stood with her flannel gown touching the tops of her feet as they grew cold on the woven rug between the beds.

      Rose Marie lay in the same position as she had at midnight, and beside her on the pillow lay the baby doll, with its long white gown and its lace trimmed bonnet. Its face looked more rounded, its cheeks rosier. Its puffy eyes had closed and it was sleeping.

      Sybil stepped closer to stare at Rose Marie.

      The pinched and narrow look that had been the doll’s seemed now to have been given to Rose Marie instead. She looked a lot older than thirteen. She looked thirty, or even forty, or more.

      Sybil carefully removed the doll from the bed and went out into the hall. She stood still, listening. But the kitchen was too far away. She could only feel a bit of the warmth from it, and hear none of the bustle.

      She carried the doll to the end of the hall, where she paused to open the door of the enclosed stairway to the third floor. She climbed the steep stairs and went down the cold, dim, third floor hallway.

      The doll felt heavier than it had last night. Its long, white gown reached far past its feet and swayed whisperingly against Sybil’s legs as she walked; the round, stuffed body hidden beneath the gown. The doll’s cheeks had a rounded, full look, and the eyes remained closed, even when Sybil tilted it upright.

      Sybil stopped in front of the old cabinet that held odds and ends of things she had collected since she was small. She placed the doll back in a corner on a lower shelf where it wouldn’t easily be seen, and closed the glass door.

      Then she went downstairs to tell her mama and papa that Rose Marie was dead.

      BOOK ONE

      Book One - Fatherless Child

      Outside the open window the summer insects and frogs filled the night with sound. Fragrances of honeysuckle, of wild grape from the woods, from flowers in the garden below drifted upward into the window. Touches of perfume in the air. Rose sat in a rocking chair near the window, looking down at the infant in her arms. Against Rose’s breast and stomach her daughter curved outside her body in yielding warmth as three months ago she had curved within. Rose listened to the night sounds, to the suckling of her child, feeling suddenly as if she were one with the complexities and mysteries of nature. A sudden sense of rapture, like the wafting fragrances of flowers, lifted her in a brief happiness beyond anything she had ever known. The grief of the past year seemed suddenly worth her moment now, filled with the completeness motherhood had given her and her sense of oneness even with the katydids, the jarflies, the frogs.

      1: Chapter 1

      Rose smiled, and the baby unexpectedly returned the smile around the nipple in her mouth. Rose laughed, and the baby kicked, her eyes bright and wide, as if bedtime was hours away.

      Haven’t you learned there are rules in this house? Rose whispered. Lights out at ten o’clock, no exceptions. Except, perhaps, the night you were born. Go to sleep. Be very quiet. Don’t disturb Grandma and Grandpa.

      The three month old girl released her mother’s nipple with a comical insouciance. Her lovely little face was as beautiful as a dream. Rose held her tighter, cuddling her close to her breast as she rocked gently in the old chair her mother had allowed her to bring into her bedroom. A milk drop, as creamy white as a pearl, clung to the baby’s lower lip before it slid down and disappeared into the soft flannel of her gown. Rose slipped her breast out of sight beneath her shirtwaist.

      Grandpa. Grandma. Rose’s feelings of happiness fled, as swiftly and silently as black-winged birds through the night.

      Angela, she whispered, and the baby’s gaze became serious and more intense as if she already recognized her own name. She seemed to sense the change in her mother’s mood. Angela. The most beautiful name for the most beautiful baby. Wait till your daddy sees you. Soon now, anytime now, Daddy is coming to get us. He’ll be so surprised! Angela, my precious Angela.

      Choosing the name had kept Rose’s mind off her terrible predicament during all the months she had been confined to her room. Isolated, allowed to go out only where no one would see her, she had gone over names for boys, names for girls. She had concentrated on the growing baby in her body because it helped her feel not quite so alone, so totally rejected by not only her fiancé but most of her own family. But as though she had known in her heart her baby would be a girl, the boys’ names were dismissed in favor of the girls’. And of those, only one was suitable for her baby. Angel. Angela. I love you, love you, love you. She touched her cheek to the baby’s.

      Rose might have sinned, once, in love, but her infant was without sin. No matter what her mother thought, Angela was perfect, without sin.

      Her own name, Rose, came from her mother Sybil’s dead sister, Rose Marie. There was a photograph of Rose Marie, and it showed a beautiful girl with black hair and contrasting pale skin and blue eyes. Rose knew little about thinking why she had died so young. Sybil wouldn’t talk about her. Yet there must have been affection, or surely she wouldn’t have chosen the dead sister’s name for her own firstborn child. Rose had rather hoped her baby would look like Rose Marie, but

      Angela’s hair was as golden as fragile buttercups blooming along the woodland path, and her eyes as smoky dark as the coal in the basement bin. Like Harold’s.

      Your daddy’s eyes, she whispered. My hair, and—

      The bedroom door opened with a faint squeak, too late for a warning that someone was coming in. Rose hurriedly smoothed her shirtwaist down, feeling that awful sense of shame that the entrance of her mother provoked.

      Sybil stood for a moment in the doorway, her tall frame looking pinched at the waist, her corset holding her as stiff as the door her hand rested upon.

      Rose got up, Angela pressed protectively against her bosom. Only the family had been allowed to see the baby, or know she existed. Rose’s younger sister, Julie Sue, was the only real friend Rose had, now. Though Julie Sue was only fifteen, she seemed older, more understanding. Gertrude too had been allowed to see Angela, the day after she was born, which surprised Rose. Mama would want to protect Gertrude, who at age ten was too young to understand where babies came from, and that an unmarried sister could have one.

      Papa of course had seen Angela, but he had only looked at her, he did not touch her or speak to her. He had not come to see her again.

      But the hired help, even Beulah, who had helped in the kitchen for years, was not to know about Angela. Rose understood without being told. Their family name had to be considered. Their standing in the community must not be reduced by the scandal of a birth out of wedlock.

      Rose saw that Sybil was holding something in her hand. It appeared to be a white gown or scarf, and trailed almost to the floor. But she held it half-hidden behind the folds of her skirt.

      Lay her away, Sybil said. Put her into her cradle. I have something for her.

      Yes, Mama.

      Rose laid the baby into the softness of the cradle. At least her mother had consented to having the cradle brought down from the attic for the baby. Even that had surprised and pleased Rose. She had also provided, sending it up with Julie Sue, a bolt of flannel, so clothing could be stitched. In the months of her confinement Rose had made diapers, gowns, bands, even a soft receiving blanket. Many times Julie Sue had helped her. And in the stillness of a winter afternoon they had sat together, their fingers freezing in the unheated bedroom, sewing.

      Rose tucked the flannel blanket beneath Baby Angela’s arms, and stood back for her mother. The baby had not been born until May, until warmth entered the room from the sun, and butterflies fluttered at times on the sill. Once, a cardinal had lighted there, and Rose had taken it as a good sign.

      Sybil came forward. In the hall, watching in silence, Gertrude stood. The flickering flame of the lamp in the hall created shadows in Gertrude’s face, and as Rose glanced at her it seemed for just a moment that Gertrude was not a child, but a very old corpse, mummified, whose face was sunken into shadows, whose eyes were holes of darkness. The light rose again, and Gertrude’s cheeks rounded and became young once more. But her eyes remained hidden by shadows. Did Mama know she was there?

      Sybil bent over the cradle, and now Rose saw what she had brought. Her heart’s blood rushed warmly to her face. Had her prayers been answered? Was her mother softening toward Angela, accepting her? She was giving Angela the old doll, the one that had been kept in the cabinet on the third floor, the one none of Sybil’s own children had ever been allowed to touch. It was an infant doll in a long, white christening gown.

      It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a pretty doll. That its newborn face was pinched and thin, with only a touch of color in the painted cheeks. The grandmother was giving the grand-baby her own doll, one she had received in her own childhood.

      Mama, Rose said, moving nearer. That’s your doll.

      Yes, Sybil said. With no apparent warmth she laid the doll carefully at the side of Angela, arranging it so that the two faces, the real and the unreal, were close.

      The doll’s head was as large as Angela’s head, but the face narrower, the features far less perfect. When Rose was small, and had looked through the glass doors at the doll tucked into the back corner of the cabinet, it had not seemed as ugly as now. Now that it was beside an infant warm and real.

      Once, Rose remembered, Gertrude had wanted the doll. She had stood with her small hands on the glass doors of the cabinet and cried because she couldn’t play with the doll, and Mama had sent Rose to take her back downstairs and entertain her with other dolls. After that a wood fastener too high for a child to reach had been put on the door to the third floor. Rose had not seen the doll since that day, five or six years ago.

      Baby Angela stared in silence up at the face of her grandmother, as if she recognized a stranger. How often, in her life, had Angela seen the face of her grandmother? It made Rose’s heart ache. But maybe Julie Sue was right. Be patient, she had said, so many times. Mama will come around. Surely, Mama will come around. She’ll grow to love Angela. Or, if not to love, at least to tolerate. Surely. Baby Angela can’t live forever in this small room. Neither can you. And Julie was right. Rose and Angela could not live their lifetimes in the confinement of the bedroom, allowed to go out only in the cover of night, and then only into the backyard and the meadows and forest behind the house. Perhaps this was the breakthrough. Instead of Sybil saying in words or smiles that she accepted Angela, she was giving to her the doll she hadn’t even given to Gertrude, her own baby, her favorite child.

      Thank you, Mama. That’s very kind of you.

      It’s time you’re going to bed, isn’t it, Rose? Or you can go to your bath now, and I’ll stay here.

      Rose stared at her mother. She saw the thin, long face that was so much like Gertrude’s, the only one of the three sisters who had taken after their mother. She saw the severity, the lips that hadn’t smiled in a long time, and had smiled seldom before that, as if to be happy were wrong. She saw no outward sign of accepting, yet the action could not be denied. Sybil had brought something to Baby Angela that she had never given even to her own daughters.

      Are you giving your doll to Angela, Mama?

      Sybil sat down in the rocking chair. Why don’t you go on and take your bath? I can’t sit here for long.

      Rose hurriedly took her robe and her nightgown and went down the hall. One of the second floor bedrooms had been converted to a bath three years ago. Water, warmed in the basement at the furnace, came up a pipe and into the cast-iron tub, and it was like a miracle. A commode stood in one corner, so convenient, with a box overhead and a pull chain. The chain flushed the commode. It was so much nicer than having to go to the old outhouse, and certainly much nicer than having the old chamber pots that slipped out of sight beneath the beds. After three years Rose still delighted in slipping into the big tub and the warm water.

      Tonight it was especially relaxing. For the first time, her mother was sitting with her child. For the first time, Sybil had brought Angela something. It was a beginning.

      Rose leaned back in the tub, her eyes closed. It was a year ago, on a lovely warm night such as this, with the jarflies and the katydids making their comforting noises in the grass, and the frogs piping in the swamp, that she had walked home from the young people’s meeting at the church with Harold.

      He had drawn her off the road when the buggy passed, carrying Julie Sue and their father, who had come after her. It was he who had consented to the walk.

      Your father’s not such a bad guy, Harold said, with that air of modernism that fascinated Rose. In the moonlight he looked taller and older than he had in the bluish gaslights at the church. He pulled her hand into his and Rose felt the tightening, the pressure, the sense of command.

      Harold had been allowed to walk her home before, but tonight there was a difference, as if sometime during the past week he had matured, made some kind of decision.

      I’m going away, Rose, he said, turning her to face him, and Rose’s happiness plummeted.

      Life without Harold? How terribly, horribly dreary. Young people’s meeting at the church would no longer be the exciting thing it was now. She had been in love with Harold since she first saw him in school; older, two grades ahead of her, a handsome dark-eyed, dark-haired boy who looked at her in a special way. There was no one else for Rose.

      Why? she pleaded. Where? Where are you going?

      I thought I’d try New Orleans, or Saint Louis. I thought maybe I could work on a riverboat. Be part of that business. I can’t stay here. I don’t want to work in my papa’s store in this dinky little town.

      But—

      His scorn for the town, a town which her grandfather had founded and part of which her mother had inherited and her own father now controlled, was to feel scorn for her, too, to put her down as dull and unexciting, as stuffy as his own father’s hardware store.

      Look, he said, giving her hand a hard squeeze. I’ll come back for you as soon as I can find a position. I have plenty of clerical experience. I shouldn’t have any trouble . . . I’ll come back for you. Will you marry me, Rose?

      ‘What?"

      We’re old enough to do what we want. You’ll be eighteen next year, and I’ll be twenty. If we want to marry, that’s our business. It will be our secret until I come back.

      But—

      But what, he whispered, and his lips came down to hers.

      They had kissed before, under the dark eaves of her house, behind the holly bushes, along the road on the walk home, even beneath the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. But of course not when anyone was looking.

      They had kissed before, but never like this.

      They were going to be married. They would move to New Orleans, where life was abandoned and gay. They would spend their lives on a riverboat, traveling the Mississippi. He wanted to marry her and take her with him!

      Yes, yes, yes, she whispered, and it seemed the world around them changed, and a year had sped by and their marriage had come to pass. His dream was hers. His excitement was hers.

      When he pulled her down to the soft bed of leaves, she felt wild and gay and abandoned. She was free from the bonds of being Rose Marie Madison, daughter of Sybil Wilfred Madison, whose ancestors founded the town and built the mansion on the outer land. She could feel the sway of the big boat on the Mississippi, and hear the lash of the water against the deck. That night Angela was conceived.

      The water in the tub had cooled, and Rose struggled up from the memory of a night that happened a year ago. Over the months after Harold left she wept into her pillow and pleaded with him to write to her, to come and get her, to let her know what had happened. As if he could hear her, she had pleaded.

      Once, before the rounding of her belly began to show and before she was confined to her room, she had gone to Harold’s father’s store. And she had asked, as casually as she could, Sir, I was wondering if you’d heard from your son, Harold.

      Harold’s father adjusted his spectacles and looked over them at her. There was no resemblance between this pale-eyed, pale-skinned man and Harold, with the snapping black eyes and the dark hair. He had taken after his mother’s side of the family, Harold had told her once.

      Harold, the man said, and snorted. Worthless, just like his uncles. On his mother’s side.

      Stunned, Rose turned away. At that moment she knew. Harold would not be back. He had taken advantage of her. He was gone, and she was alone, to bear their baby in shame.

      Still, never a day passed without thoughts of him. Never an hour, actually, although she had long since stopped seeing his face when she looked at the face of Angela. Angela was nobody’s but hers.

      Already, with the short absence from her little daughter, she yearned to get back to her. Her arms ached to take her up and hold her, rock her to sleep as always.

      She dried her body rapidly and hung the towel back on the rack. With her robe pulled warmly over her gown, she went down the hall. At both the front and the end of the hall globes covered small, flickering gas flames. Next year, her father had said, they would convert the heat to gas, and the house would be warmer. Next year, Rose thought, when Angela was walking.

      Sybil was still sitting in the rocking chair, her head back, resting.

      The room was quiet. Sounds from the frogs, the night birds and insects came through the open window, and the kerosene lamp on the dresser filled the small room with a dim, shadow-etched golden glow.

      Rose started toward the cradle, but Sybil lifted her hand, and Rose stopped.

      She’s asleep, Sybil said. Leave her alone. Go on to bed.

      Rose stood still a moment longer, puzzled, feeling like a small child again, not a woman with a child of her own. Then she turned toward her bed in the corner, stepped up on the stool at the side of the bed, and sat on the mattress. She waited.

      Sybil rose. I’ll turn the light down for you.

      Thank you, Mama.

      Good night.

      Good night. Rose watched her mother go to the door.

      The door squeaked as Sybil opened it.

      Mama, Rose said quickly, thank you for the doll.

      Sybil said nothing. She hesitated slightly, her back toward Rose, and then she was gone, closing the door behind her.

      Angela moved, reaching into the dark air of the cradle. Above was light. Somewhere in the room, out of sight of her searching eyes, her mother breathed. Angela’s body stiffened as she tried to turn, to lift herself and go to her mother. The thing in the cradle bore down upon her. The strange, little human-like face pressed against hers. She struggled to turn onto her back, away from it. She tried to cry out, voice her need for her mother, but her cry was sucked away from her and silenced.

      She knew her helplessness and fought against it. Her eyes searched for the light, but it was far away and very dim, and growing more distant and more dim with each attempt to reach it.

      She wanted her mother, the warmth of her breast, the close security and comfort of her arms.

      But the other infant in the cradle was drawing away all her breath.

      1: Chapter 2

      Julie Sue woke listening. Although the wall between her room and Rose’s was thick, she had often heard the cry of baby Angela. She blinked into the darkness. The house was silent. If Angela had cried out, Rose must have taken her up to quiet her. In the beginning, when the baby was first born, Rose had slept with Angela in her arms. But then Mama had said the baby should have her own bed, and the cradle was brought down. Still, if Angela cried in the night, Rose took her into her bed, or sat and rocked her. She had told Julie so, but said not to tell Mama. There were so many things Mama didn’t approve of. Especially anything to do with Rose’s baby.

      Julie remembered the night of the birth, and how it had continued on into the day, and Mama had ordered Rose not to cry out, not to let the hired help, Beulah or Moses, hear her. So they would never know a baby had been born here that day. But the day had passed too, and Julie had held onto Rose’s hand and wept with her, and then had gone to plead with Papa to bring a doctor. She was terrified that Rose was dying, the birth was taking so long.

      But Papa seemed then like a shadow of Mama, doing Mama’s bidding, always. He removed himself from Rose’s plight and sank into his work, as always. And Julie remembered that Papa had once been a mere clerk in the bank Grandfather owned, and which Mama now owned. It was Grandfather who had paid for Papa’s law education, Beulah had told her, and it was Grandfather’s law firm in which Papa went to work. When Grandfather died in 1895, the very year she was born, Mama became the employer. And it was as though Papa was still in Mama’s employ even in matters of family.

      Julie had bitten her tongue to keep back her angry revelations and had swirled away. Night came again while Rose suffered, struggling to deliver a baby that seemed reluctant to enter the world. Moses finished planting the spring garden and went home, and Beulah finished cleaning up from a supper no one ate and also went home. Then like a miracle the baby was born.

      Yet when Julie held the bloody little thing in her hands she had gotten a strange feeling, a bad feeling that she could not have described in words. She had felt such sadness.

      The sadness passed the moment the baby opened her mouth and mewed like a baby kitten, or lamb, and to Julie’s surprise Rose laughed. Mama had been there, at the last, with water and towels and washcloths. She had worn a white apron over her dress, and had gotten it all bloody. Julie was shocked at the amount of blood a birth releases. In a way it was like a death, a terrible death.

      But the doctor had never been brought.

      Julie tried not to think about those painful twenty-four hours, and the winter before, in which Rose had been hidden away. She tried not to think how their parents had changed in her eyes and heart. She had always been a little distant from both of them. They had never babied Rose or her the way they did Gertrude, but at least she had felt safe with them. Until Rose’s problem, until the winter, as she thought of it.

      Her feelings about the whole house had changed. Even her feelings about her room. The house was no longer a safe haven, big and dark and quiet. It had become . . . a prison? No, not quite that. But something that had frightening things in the dark places.

      Julie turned over and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to sleep, but she felt as if she had been awakened from a nightmare, and the very air around her was charged with it. She was suddenly Gertrude’s age again, or younger, when she had imagined there were terrible, faceless, formless horrors lurking in the dark beneath her bed. She was not fifteen, in this moment of darkness and fear, matured from spending a winter of anguish with her older sister, and from standing by her as she had a baby their parents said was made of sin. She was a vulnerable, quivering, helpless being with that terrible sense of sadness she had experienced when Angela was first born.

      And she was afraid.

      She listened for Rose moving about in her room beyond the wall. She listened for the creak of the rocking chair, for the cry that had awakened her. But there was only silence in the room next door.

      She pressed her hands against her ears and prayed for the night to end.

      It was daily getting harder for Beulah to walk the two miles from her cabin to the Wilfred mansion. She was seventy-one years old now, and was proud to say she hadn’t missed a day of work since her son was born fifty years ago. But still, it was getting harder to walk all that way. She had to get up earlier every year, feed her cat and dog before they woke up enough to get hungry. Milk the cow while the cow slept. Go out and feed her chickens while they were still on the roost in the henhouse.

      Her company at that early hour, before the sun was even a pink streak in the eastern sky, was the old rooster, who’d been sitting up and crowing now and then while still on the roost and then tucking his head back under his wing for another nap.

      Beulah went around in the early morning dark, carrying her lantern, its yellow light swinging back and forth on the ground in front of her. She’d find herself accompanied finally by her old dog, Buster, and the cat, Jenny, to the barn where she hung her lantern on a nail and then settled down on a stool at the side of Ginger, her cow, for the milk they all depended upon.

      Then, the cow milked, the chickens, dog, and cat fed, Beulah fed herself. By that time dawn would be breaking, especially this time of year when the days were longer. She’d put on a fresh apron, adjust her wide brimmed hat on her head, fix the door just wide enough so the cat could get in and out, and make her way along the trail through the forest to the main road and along to the Wilfred mansion for her day’s work as the cook, maid, housekeeper, or whatever else needed to be done.

      Once, she’d had a horse, Sally. Dead now. Named after her dear old mother. Sometimes she hitched Sally to the buggy and rode to her job, turning Sally loose in the pasture behind the big barn where the Mister kept his horses. Sally was a young and lively colt when Rose Marie died, twenty-eight years ago. Beulah remembered well, that day after Christmas, the way the young girl looked in death, all color leached from her face. The young colt, born just a few weeks earlier, had seemed to Beulah to take on some of the gentle characteristics of the young girl, and in her mind they had become kin, in some way.

      There had been snow on the ground the day Rose Marie died. Beulah recollected walking this same narrow trail, her hands cold, her feet colder, and thinking how strange that it would snow this far south. It was like the snow had come, silent and white, to mark the passing of the girl.

      But why was she thinking of Rose Marie this morning? This morning the woodland flowers were blooming along the side of the road. Wild johnnie-jump-ups, which Sybil called violets, and lady slippers scented the air with a sweetness that made Beulah think Mother Nature wasn’t all cruelty.

      But then Sally too had died, just as almost everyone in Beulah’s life had died. Even Freddie, her son, when he was still in the prime of life. Before he and his wife had any children, so that Beulah would be assured of having someone to call to when she got old.

      Her husband had died, her son had died, and her horse. And now her family was the family she worked for, and her pet critters at home.

      Lives had changed; families had changed; only the road on her way to work stayed the same.

      The people she worked for had changed. The old mansion seemed to be changing too, slowly growing larger and darker, colder in the winter, always cool even in the hot summertime. The trees in the yard grew larger. Thank God there was something that lived longer, on the average, than people, so you could always depend on it.

      But why was her mind dwelling on death this morning? The sun was rising bright and hot in the east, streaking through the trees, turning the leaves golden. And the birds had roused and were singing. The day had begun, life was born anew.

      Even at the old mansion, there was new life. No one had told her so, but she didn’t have to be told. No one had said there’s a new baby in the house. But she wasn’t deaf and blind.

      A few times she had heard its cry. And it had been months now since she’d caught a glimpse of Rose. And there were suspicious looking items in the wash. She had a hunch the baby’s didies and gowns were hung to dry in the attic, because they weren’t hung out on the line with the rest of the family laundry. Faye, the girl who did the wash, came out only twice a week, did her job, washed, starched, ironed, and then left. And during those hours she was there she wasn’t sent anymore into the second story to bring down clothes. She went back to town with her pay. Julie Sue seemed to have taken on the duties of an upstairs maid, bringing the laundry down and taking it back up again.

      If there was a rumor around town about the baby, Beulah hadn’t heard it. She didn’t go to the same church as the Madison family, so she didn’t know what excuse was given for Rose’s absence. She had been asked about Rose a few times and she’d said, Rose is away now.

      She wasn’t one for spreading rumors herself. Especially not about the girls she had known and loved all their lives.

      When she started working at the Wilfred mansion it was Sybil’s father who was a young man in the house. He had married and started his family, two daughters. But then came the deaths. After Rose Marie died at age thirteen, it wasn’t long before her mother, grieving for Rose Marie, also died. And then, when Sybil was twenty-five years old, her father had gone to his reward, as silently and unexpectedly as his wife and

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