The Doll That Wept

“The lock was thrown,” I said, edging closer to Mark. “And the chain was fastened on the apartment side. The officers had to cut through it before they could enter.”

I kept my eyes on him. “Sarah’s window was on the fourth floor, and the paint had sealed it shut. There was no way someone could remove her and secure that chain from the hall.”

Mark stared at me, the explanation arriving slowly. “So Dave... he didn’t take her?”

“No one took her.” Fear surged up from somewhere deep inside me, sudden and fierce.

If she hadn’t been abducted, then she was either still concealed somewhere in that apartment, despite the police searching every room, or she had never gone away.

The chain had been set from inside. Sarah must have been the one to make her disappearance look real.

My gaze fell on the porcelain doll atop the dresser. Its glass stare pointed toward the window, fixed and empty.

Mark’s phone rested beside it, screen lit with the Bluetooth app he’d customized. A tiny green symbol kept flashing.

“The doll’s battery is finished,” I murmured, pointing at the display. “And if Dave has his own speaker outside, what device is your phone talking to?”

Mark glanced down. “I told you. The iPad. I tucked it beneath the living-room floorboards.”

I grabbed the phone before he could stop me. My shaking thumb found the gear-shaped settings control in the corner.

A menu opened, filling the screen with the devices available to the connection.

It wasn’t the living-room iPad.

It wasn’t Dave’s speaker, either.

The white lettering showed what the phone was actually linked to in the dark house.

Sarah’s Apple Watch.

I couldn’t make the words fit together. I read them again, staring at the bright screen as if the answer might change.

Sarah’s Apple Watch.

When I finally looked at Mark, all the color had drained from him. His broad body seemed to fold inward beside the dresser.

He’d always entered a room as if it belonged to him. Now he shook, his eyes leaping from the phone to the locked bedroom door.

“Sarah?” His voice nearly broke on her name. “That can’t be. She’s gone.”

“You decided she was gone,” I told him. The panic in me was giving way to a cold, startling certainty.

“You never thought she had the strength to stay and fight.”

Footfalls in the hall came to an abrupt halt just outside my room. The boards gave a strained creak beneath the person’s weight.

A moment later, metal scraped softly against metal.

Someone was pushing a key into the brass deadbolt.

Mark lurched away from the dresser. His boots caught in the rug, and he stumbled backward until the wall stopped him.

I stayed put, planting myself between the entrance and the closet where Lily was hidden. Whoever stood outside had a key to the bedroom—and perhaps the whole house.

The lock gave a sharp click. From inside, the brass turn-piece jerked around without anyone touching it.

The knob shifted.

The door eased inward, its hinges complaining as hallway light spread across the dark carpet. A stretched shadow reached into the room.

A person in a roomy, dark hooded sweatshirt filled the doorway. One fist held Mark’s heavy key ring; the other carried a short black speaker.

The stranger raised a trembling hand and pushed the hood back.

Sarah stood there.

Her brown hair was greasy and gathered into a careless knot. Fatigue had left deep shadows beneath her eyes, and she seemed thinner than I remembered.

Gray sweatpants hung from her, the same ones she’d worn the last time I saw her on Sunday. An Apple Watch glimmered on her left wrist.

She crossed into the bedroom and fixed her attention on Mark.

“Hi, Mark,” she said. It wasn’t a tinny recording. Her voice was quiet, unmistakably hers, and weighted with years of anger she’d kept buried.

Mark’s mouth opened, then closed without a sound. His gaze jumped from the speaker in Sarah’s hand to the watch on her wrist.

Confusion twisted on his face, then hardened into the familiar sneer of someone used to bullying others who suddenly believed himself safe.

“You?” he snapped, anger bursting through his fear. He shoved away from the wall and advanced a step. “You set this up? You tampered with the doll? You used my voice?”

There she was in my bedroom at last, exhausted and real, Mark’s keys clenched in one hand and the Bluetooth speaker in the other.