CHAPTER 26
Chicago, October 30, 2019
RORY CARRIED THE KESTNER DOLL INTO THE NURSING HOME. SHE found Greta sitting in her chair. It was the first time in weeks, since before her father had died, Rory had seen her out of bed. A strange feeling washed over her when she stared at her aunt. A lifetime of memories flashed in her mind—images of long weekends spent at the farmhouse, passing the days restoring the china dolls with Greta. The satisfaction Rory felt when Greta allowed her to place a finished doll on the shelf in the room upstairs was like nothing else she had ever experienced. An obsessive-compulsive disorder, diagnosed when Rory was six years old, had threatened her childhood. But somehow, in the room upstairs at Aunt Greta’s farmhouse, Rory was able to tend to the needs of her mind.
Working on the dolls purged all the tenuous demands of her brain. Rory’s habits, and the mandate for perfection, not only went by without judgment or worry when she worked with her aunt, but the time Rory spent in that room upstairs demanded all the redundant and meticulous acts that were an unwanted nuisance during the rest of her life. As soon as Rory discovered this outlet, the rest of her days were untouched by the requests of her mind. In adulthood, Rory began her own collection and applied to it the craft Greta had taught her. When Greta’s health began to fail, she made it clear that the upstairs room in the farmhouse belonged to Rory, and that she alone was in charge of watching over the collection. Those dolls now lined the shelves in Rory’s den.
But her childhood felt different now. Nothing seemed the same since Rory had opened that safe-deposit box to find a birth certificate listing Greta as her birth mother, and documents showing Frank and Marla Moore as her adoptive parents. Rory understood so little and wanted so many answers.
“Hey, old lady,” Rory said.
Greta glanced at Rory before looking back at the muted television.
“I tried to save you. There was too much blood.”
Rory took a deep breath, angry with herself for the sudden frustration she felt toward Greta. A moment of pause reminded Rory that Greta could no more control the random thoughts that popped into her mind and were spewed from her mouth than Rory could control a sneeze.
“He’s coming. You told me. But there’s too much blood.”
“Okay,” Rory said. “It’s okay.
“He’ll come for you. But we have to stop the bleeding.”
Rory closed her eyes briefly. She hadn’t asked anything of Greta for many years. In fact, their roles had been reversed over the course of their lives. Greta, once the caretaker who settled Rory’s anxiety, was now the patient, and it was Rory who calmed her great-aunt during bouts of unrest such as this. The fact that Rory wanted answers tonight that only Greta could provide was not an excuse to abandon her when she was in distress. Rory took a cleansing breath and walked to the side of the chair. She knew the best remedy for Greta’s turmoil. It was the same one that had saved Rory as a child.
“We’ve got to finish this Kestner,” Rory said. “The owner is getting impatient. You promised me one more coat would do it.”
Greta blinked at the sight of the doll, as if the Kestner pulled her across the years, away from the tortured memories of the past and back to the present. She gestured for the doll. Rory kept her eyes on the woman she had known as her great-aunt for her entire life. Up until her dead father’s lover had given her a key to a safe-deposit box that told her otherwise. She eventually took Camille Byrd’s Kestner doll out of the box and laid it carefully on Greta’s lap. From the closet, Rory wheeled the art kit she had brought a few nights before, set the pastel paints on the rolling table, and pulled it over to Greta’s side.
“In sunlight,” Rory said, pointing to the doll’s left cheek, “the hues match perfectly. But incandescent brings out the flaws, and fluorescent bleaches it out.”
“One more coat,” Greta said. “And I’ll polish the undamaged side to bring it all together.”
Rory sat on the edge of the bed and watched her work. The sight of Greta restoring a doll transported Rory back to the farmhouse, to the long summer days and quiet nights. She spent every summer of her childhood at Greta’s place. During the school year, if a bout of obsession took hold of her, Rory’s parents would pull her from school early on Friday for a long weekend at the farmhouse. There was no better remedy for her OCD and anxiety than a visit to the country and the restorations that waited there. Now, as Rory sat staring at Greta, the relaxed feelings she usually experienced while restoring a doll were replaced instead with thousands of questions.
“Are you working?” Greta asked, pulling Rory back from her thoughts.
“Yes,” she said.
“Tell me.”
Rory paused. She hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with Greta in weeks. Tonight, though, presented a rare window of lucidity, where her aunt was interactive and coherent.
“That Kestner. It belongs to a dead girl.”
The brush in Greta’s hand stopped. She looked at Rory.
“She was killed last year. Her father asked me to look into it.”
“What happened to her?”
Rory blinked several times, aware again of how badly she had neglected the case. A small part of her was concerned that Ron Davidson would be disappointed in her. A bigger part worried about Walter Byrd, who had put his faith in Rory to find justice for his daughter. But mostly, Rory’s heart ached for Camille Byrd, whose spirit waited for Rory to come for it, find it, and help it to a place of proper rest. Take it from its frozen grave in Grant Park and lay it carefully where it belonged so the girl could find peace.
Rory remembered another dream she’d had about the dead girl. Of walking through Grant Park and trying unsuccessfully to wake her as Rory shook Camille’s cold shoulder as she lay lifeless on the grassy knoll. Rory refocused her eyes, returning from the wandering abyss of her thoughts. Greta was staring at her.
“I don’t know yet.”
Greta stared at her for a minute, then went back to work. An hour later, Greta finished polishing and coloring the cheek and forehead. She dusted the face one last time until the Kestner doll, once damaged and in disrepair, looked flawless.
“Greta,” Rory said. “It’s absolutely perfect.” She remembered the deep fissure that had run through the left eye socket when she first examined the doll at the library. When Rory laid the doll horizontally, the left eye closed in perfect unison with the right. The cheeks matched one another, and the fracture that had started at the hairline and run down to the chin was gone.
“As close as we’ll get. The girl’s father will be happy with what you’ve done.”
“What you’ve done as well.”
Greta looked back to the doll. Rory watched her, concerned that she had suddenly fallen into a lost moment and that her mind would be gone for the rest of the visit. The abrupt changes in demeanor happened so often now that Rory was no longer shocked by them—Greta, present and alert one moment, gone the next.
But instead of staring off into a void of dementia, Greta spoke as she examined the doll.
“It reminds me of when you were young,” Greta said.
Rory nodded. “Me too.”
Greta smiled. “Sometimes those summers seem like yesterday.”
“Greta,” Rory said, standing from the edge of the bed and moving closer. “Why did my parents bring me to your place so often? Why did I spend every summer of my childhood at the farmhouse?”
A long stretch of silence followed before Greta pulled her gaze from the Kestner doll and looked at Rory. “You were a nervous child, but found peace at my house.”
Rory couldn’t argue this fact. All the anxiety that surrounded her days, the angst that rose like early-morning fog off a lake, faded away when she was at Greta’s farmhouse. But Rory now understood there was another reason for her time there.
“Was the time I spent with you an arrangement, Greta? Something you worked out with Frank and Marla?”
Greta blinked, but didn’t answer. She brought her gaze back to the doll in her lap.
“I found the papers, Greta. Dad had a safe-deposit box where he kept them. My birth certificate. The adoption papers.”
Rory stared at Aunt Greta for a full minute without talking, allowing the confession of her discovery to settle between them. She wanted to press for answers. Wanted to hear the truth from the only person left living who could provide it. But Rory saw Greta’s eyes retreating to that faraway place, perhaps intentionally. More likely, though, just the result of the small stretch of coherence having spent its worth before the dementia pulled Greta’s mind back to oblivion.
As she watched Greta, Rory sensed a longing from the woman she had known her whole life. A woman who had saved Rory’s childhood from what might have been years of torment and ridicule. A woman she had always thought of as her great-aunt, but whose identity now had been jumbled in Rory’s perception, like a fully set dining table once perfect and ordered being tipped on its side. The pieces suddenly too muddled to sort. Rory saw it in her eyes, a sense of sorrow that the restoration of the Kestner doll was over. It had been a channel to the past. To the summers and weekends when a young girl developed a lifelong friendship and unbreakable bond with a middle-aged woman she knew as her aunt.
“I wish I could have saved you as easily as Rory and I save the dolls,” Greta said, her eyes now vacant and set on the television.
“I am Rory.” She crouched next to the chair. “Greta? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, we’ll hide you. He’ll come, like you said. I tried to save you, but there was too much blood.”
Rory closed her eyes briefly. Greta was gone. The visit was over. She stood up, lifted the doll from Greta’s lap, and carefully laid it in the box.