The Departed

touch all over it. Anna had been very much into the girly-type stuff, he supposed, but where their mother had tried to make her into a fragile hothouse flower, Anna, at her heart, had been a daisy. Bright, colorful, and cheerful.
    Dez wandered through the room, pausing every now and then to brush her fingers along the dresser, the bed. In the center of the big poster bed, there was a doll. The sight of it was like a punch, right to the heart. There was a line of pristine, perfect dolls along the shelf above the bed. None of them had ever been played with for more than a few minutes.
    But the doll on the bed…she’d been played with. Played with. Loved.
    Swallowing the knot in his throat, Taylor took a step into the room. Then another. There was a fist around his heart now, one that wouldn’t let go. When he reached out to touch the worn, old little doll, his fingers trembled. Lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed, he picked it up.
    “I bought her this,” he said softly. “The Christmas before she died. She’d wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid but Mother wouldn’t buy her one. We didn’t get toys like that, you know.”
    A shadow fell across him and he looked up, met Dez’s eyes. She knelt down, resting a hand on his thigh. “What in the world could have been wrong with a doll?”
    “It’s not the doll.” He crooked a smile at her. “It’s a common doll. We got expensive shit. Collectible things—one of a kind or designer…things that would hold value or look pretty. Screw having fun with it.”
    Emotion all but choked him as he remembered the look on Anna’s face when she unwrapped the present. “So I bought it for her. Me and Dad went out shopping and I asked if it would be okay. He just laughed and said, Just don’t tell your mother you asked me . She played with it all day long. It went with her everywhere for months after, and she slept with it every night.”
    Dez touched the butter yellow hair on the doll’s head. “It looks like she took very good care of her.” She stood up and bent over, pressed her lips to his. “You’re a good brother. I would have loved to have somebody give me a doll. I never had one. Did she ever name her?”
    He looked back down at the worn toy. “Yeah. Her name was Laura. Anna loved Little House .” He smoothed down the tiny dress and then he stood up. As the blood began to crawl up his neck, he pushed the doll into Dez’s hands. “Here. You take her.”
    Automatically, Dez clutched the doll, even as she gaped at him. “Me? You want me to take a doll?”
    “I can’t leave it here.” He looked around the room. Shaking his head, he said quietly, “You won’t find anything of Anna’s here. Except that doll. Everything else in here was my mother’s.”
    “But…”
    Looking back at her, he said, “Take it. Please. I…look, I can’t leave it here. I just can’t. Not anymore.”
    Dez looked down at the doll, a soft sigh falling from her lips. Then she stroked a finger over the doll’s chubby cheeks, her smiling face. “She’s got freckles. And blue eyes. And blonde hair.” Abruptly, she started to laugh. “I’m thirty-four years old and I’ve finally got a doll of my own.”
    Tucking her into the crook of her arm, she looked around the room and sighed. “You’re right about one thing. We won’t find Anna here. It’s…empty.”
    * * *
     
    TAYLOR was packing up when he heard the knock.
    Not his clothes, not yet, at least. They’d be stuck in French Lick for a little while, he knew. But it was time he did something with his family’s things. If there were clothes to be donated, he’d do it. He’d pay somebody to come in and go through most of his parents’ stuff, but he wanted to keep a few things that had belonged to his father.
    And nobody would touch Anna’s stuff. Not yet, at least.
    In the middle of going through old, yellowed drawings, he heard the knock and looked up.
    Dez was in the depths of the house, still trying to find something, he guessed. He didn’t see her as he jogged down the steps, although the doll he’d given her was sitting in the foyer. Dez’s sunglasses were in the doll’s lap.
    The last person he thought he’d see was Joshua Moore.
    He tensed, ready to shut the door fast if he had to, wishing he wasn’t hampered by the broken arm. Cautiously, he said, “Yes?”
    Joshua looked down and then looked back up. “Can…can I come in?”
    “Why?”
    The other man grimaced. “I’ve a few things to