The Sleeping Doll

landscape designer, almost fifteen years older but handsome and pretty well off. Rebecca had always wanted to get married but, as she talked about their future, Sam deduced there were stumbling blocks and guessed that his divorce wasn’t final (if the papers had even been filed). Rebecca mentioned other recent boyfriends too.
    Which made Sam a bit envious. After prison she’d changed her identity and moved to San Francisco, where she hoped she could get lost in the anonymity of a big city. She’d avoided socializing for fear she’d let slip some fact about her real identity, or that somebody might recognize her, despite the surgery.
    Finally the loneliness caught up and she started to go out. Her third date, Ron Starkey, was a Stanford electrical engineer grad. He was sweet and shyand a bit insecure—a classic nerd. He wasn’t particularly interested in her past; in fact, he seemed oblivious to just about everything except avionics navigation equipment, movies, restaurants and, now, their son.
    Not the sort of personality most women would go for, but Samantha decided it was right for her.
    Six months later they were married, and Peter was born a year after that. Sam was content. Ron was a good father, a solid man. She only wished she’d met him a few years later, after she’d lived and experienced a bit more of life. She felt that meeting Daniel Pell had resulted in a huge hole in her life, one that could never be filled.
    Both Linda and Rebecca tried to get Sam to talk about herself. She demurred. She didn’t want anyone, least of all these women, to have any possible clues as to her life as Sarah Starkey. If word got out, Ron would leave her. She knew it. He’d broken up with her for a few months when she’d tearfully “confessed” about the fake embezzlement; he’d walk right out the door—and take their child with him, she knew—if he learned she’d been involved with Daniel Pell and been lying to him about it for years.
    Linda offered the plate of cookies again.
    “No, no,” Samantha said. “I’m full. I haven’t eaten that much for dinner in a month.”
    Linda sat nearby, ate half a cookie. “Oh, Sam, before you got here we were telling Kathryn about that Easter dinner. Our last one together. Remember that?”
    “Remember it? It was fantastic.”
    It had been a wonderful day, Sam recalled. They’d sat outside around a driftwood table she and Jimmy Newberg had made. Piles of food, great music from Jimmy’s complicated stereo, sprouting wires everywhere. They’d dyed Easter eggs, filling the house with the smell of hot vinegar. Sam tinted all of hers blue. Like Daniel’s eyes.
    The Family wouldn’t survive long after that; six weeks later the Croyton family and Jimmy would be dead, the rest of them in jail.
    But that had been a good day.
    “That turkey,” Sam said, shaking her head at the memory. “You smoked it, right?”
    Linda nodded. “About eight hours. In that smoker Daniel made for me.”
    “The what?” Rebecca asked.
    “That smoker out back. The one he made.”
    “I remember. But he didn’t make it.”
    Linda laughed. “Yes, he did. I told him I’d always wanted one. My parents had one and my father’d smoke hams and chickens and ducks. I wanted to help but they wouldn’t let me. So Daniel made me one.”
    Rebecca was confused. “No, no . . . he got it from what’s-her-name up the street.”
    “Up the street?” Linda frowned. “You’re wrong. He borrowed some tools and made it out of an old oil drum. He surprised me with it.”
    “Wait, it was . . . Rachel. Yeah, that was her name. Remember her? Not a good look—gray roots with bright red hair.” Rebecca looked perplexed. “You have to remember her.”
    “I remember Rachel.” Linda’s response was stiff. “What’s she got to do with anything?”
    Rachel was a stoner who’d caused serious disharmony within the Family because Pell had spent a lot of time at her house doing, well, what Daniel Pell loved to do most. Sam hadn’t cared—anything to avoid Pell’s unpleasantries in the bedroom was fine with her. But Linda had been jealous. Their last Christmas together Rachel had stopped by the Family’s house on some pretense when Daniel was away. Linda had thrown the woman out of the house. Pell had heard about it and promised he wouldn’t see her anymore.
    “He got the smoker from her,” said Rebecca, who’d arrived after the Yuletide blow-out and knew nothing about the jealousy.
    “No,