The Only Child. Carolyn McSparren

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      She flung the corn as far from her as she could. If she dropped it at her feet, they’d crash into her like bumper cars.

      Absentmindedly, she put the feed away, hung up the scoop and strolled back to the house to fix herself a sandwich.

      In the kitchen she sniffed basil and fresh mint from the pots on the windowsill. The wet-concrete odor of damp bisque was finally gone from the house together with the last of the dust. Her ex-husband, Harry, had hated the mess. In fact, he’d probably divorced her because of the dolls.

      Molly poured herself a glass of iced tea and twisted a sprig of mint into it, enjoying the quiet. Sherry often teased her about being a hermit, but Molly did not regret for one moment spending most of her divorce settlement to buy her woods and pasture, to build her log house and barn. She never wanted to go to another fancy corporate function again, if she lived to be a hundred.

      How could she ever have guessed when she let Sherry con her into taking that first doll-making class that she would find her life’s work? She was content for the first time in her life, and never lonely. Sherry dropped in four or five times a week. Molly’s clients loved coming out to see her. Her daughter, Anne, brought her granddaughter, Elizabeth, by nearly every day after school to ride her pony. Molly still missed her volunteer work at the Abused Children’s Center, but there wasn’t time, not if she expected to make a living. Funny that she’d started volunteering because Harry said she had to do something charitable to make him look good at his firm.

      Molly sipped her tea slowly, so lost in her thoughts that when the doorbell sounded, she jumped a foot. Nobody came up her driveway unannounced. Although a person could walk through the woods to the house and bypass the gate alarm, dense underbrush and snakes tended to discourage walkers.

      No, it was more likely that a car had driven up while she’d been in the barn.

      The doorbell pealed again. She peeked through the front curtains and saw a black BMW Then she saw MacMillan on the front porch. She felt a stab of alarm. Should she open the door to him?

      “Mrs. Halliday,” a deep voice spoke through the door. “I must see you.” It wasn’t so much a request as a command.

      Molly sighed. Get the confrontation over with. Maybe she could get an explanation as well.

      She opened the door and snapped, “Didn’t you do enough damage on your first raid?” Then, seeing his face, she reached out to him quickly. “You look as though you’ve been rode hard and put away wet,” she said. “You need a drink.”

      “Excuse me?” he asked. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his eyes..

      He was no longer immaculate. Besides the bisque dust, there was mud on his jacket, his tie was loose, his shirt gaped open at the neck. His hair stood on end as though he’d been driving his hands through it, and his skin had a gray caste that his tan couldn’t quite hide.

      “Come into the kitchen,” Molly said, and took his arm. “You need a glass of orange juice, my friend, and you need it quickly.” She shoved him onto a stool, poured a glass of orange juice and ordered, “Drink it before you pass out.”

      He peered into the jelly glass as though it held arsenic.

      “Do it. It won’t bite you.”

      He took a sip, then drank greedily.

      “More?”

      “Thank you, no.”

      “Iced tea then? Or Scotch?”

      “Nothing, thank you.” He set the empty glass down carefully. The bar stool put him for the first time almost at eye level with Molly in a room still flooded with western light from the setting sun. He took his first real look at her.

      How could he have missed seeing her clearly before? The shock of recognition of her sheer femaleness startled him. He stood and strode back to the relative sanctuary of the front hall.

      Molly followed him.

      At the door he turned and took his checkbook from his inside jacket pocket. “I’ve come to pay for the doll.”

      “I planned to bill you.”

      “How much?”

      “Fifteen hundred dollars will do. Use my desk.” She pointed at an aged plantation desk inside the living room.

      He sat down, wrote the check and handed it to her.

      She stuck it into her jeans without looking at it. “Sherry told me what happened. You must understand something, Mr. MacMillan. I am a craftswoman, pure and simple. I’m certainly not clairvoyant. In fact, I do not have a bit of ESP in my entire body.”

      This time he did look up, and straight into those amazing blue eyes. They were full of intelligence and compassion. He kept his voice even. “The doll-”

      “Please, let me finish. Sherry told me your granddaughter died two years ago. I’m sorry, that is simply not possible.”

      This was the last thing Logan expected to hear. He was stunned and then anger began to take over. What right had this madwoman with the teal blue eyes to tell him his granddaughter had not died? He felt his heart begin to speed up. “I assure you, Mrs. Halliday, I have seen her death certificate.”

      “I don’t care if you had all nine justices of the Supreme Court testifying to you,” she said. “I don’t make things—children—up. And I certainly don’t pull the names of dead grandchildren out of the air. I name all my dolls. It’s standard in the industry. It’s easier to keep them straight that way and the customers like it.”

      “So?”

      “So, that doll, the one you smashed this afternoon…I didn’t pull her name out of a hat, either.” Molly sat on a wing chair across from him.

      It was as though a ghost had stepped into the room. He looked at the woman before him, noticing that she met his gaze head-on.

      He stood up. “Mrs. Halliday, this is obviously some sort of confidence game. I won’t tolerate it.”

      “Oh, for Pete’s sake, sit down before you fall down. Hear me out. Do it. There. That’s better.”

      “Very well, I will hear you out, but I assure you—”

      “Look, when I designed the Dulcy doll—”

      “Stop calling her that!” he shouted.

      The anguish in his voice took Molly’s breath. “Mr. MacMillan, Logan,” she said gently. “That’s her name. It has always been her name, ever since I saw her and decided to model her.”

      She watched his hands curl into fists and hoped he didn’t plan to hit her, but she stood her ground. “I said I saw her and I meant it. Obviously I also heard her name. I told you, I don’t make up children in my mind and then model them. Within the last year, I saw that little girl and heard someone call her Dulcy. Who could forget a name like that?”

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