“No, you're dying, you're going to leave me.”
“Not yet, my love, not yet.”
“But soon.” She didn’t want to be comforted right now. She wanted to feel the full force of her emotions so that she was sufficiently motivated to find a solution. She hadn’t told him yet; she didn’t want to get his hopes up in case it didn’t work out.
“Sweet one, I have beaten the odds twice before,” he reminded her.
That was true of course. When he was a child, he had beaten acute lymphocytic leukemia. Then thirty-four years ago, he was again diagnosed with cancer, this time in one of the bones of his left leg. It was then when they thought that he wouldn’t survive when the doctors had given him only months to live, that they decided to think about how they would create something that would live on after his death. Because of the lifesaving treatment he’d undergone as a child, he was sterile. Living on through children was, therefore, out of the question.
So, the idea of creating immortal dolls had been born.
After each set of dolls was created, his doctors gave him a little longer to live.
And then a miracle.
His cancer was gone. After a ten-year battle with the disease, it was gone. Those eighteen sweet, beautiful little dolls that they'd made together had saved him. There had been no need to go after Tommy and Clara when the children escaped. No need to take any more children. They had achieved their goal. They would live on forever through their dolls, and with the cancer gone, they could now enjoy their lives together.
But then that horrible beast had returned. Her beloved was now riddled with the disease. And given that they were now in their seventies, neither had much hope that he would beat it again. But then Tommy had turned up on their doorstep, and it seemed like a sign. A reminder of how they could remain together forever…
As dolls.
Once they were transformed into dolls, then nothing would ever be able to separate them. And Tommy was just the person to make the transformation. But first, he had needed to learn the craft. And each pair of dolls that were created bought her husband some time.
However, that time was almost up.
Soon he would die.
“I hate to see you sad, my love,” he crooned in her ear. “Especially when we have our next two precious little ones waiting for us. I still have time. Time to enjoy with you. Let us go up, see if the time of planting is upon us.”
He was so smart—if it weren't for him, she would never have known how to turn a child into a doll. But he had discovered the secret. Through the magic of making love while the doll children were there, they could capture their spirit, the seed would be planted, and when the time was right, the dolls would be born with blood. Since she was past the age now where the time of blood came, they had had to improvise these last two times, but soon they would have a remedy for that.
He was right. They had a little longer left together, surely enough time for her to teach another pair how to create dolls so that she and her husband could become immortal together.
* * * * *
5:19 P.M.
“I'm just pulling into the cemetery now,” Jonathon assured Naomi, who had called him to see if he knew where Clara was when she didn’t come home after Thomas Karl’s funeral.
“Maybe I should head down there.” Naomi’s anxious voice came through the phone.
“No, I can handle it. I’ll bring her back there, but maybe you could give us a little privacy,” he suggested. He wanted some alone time with Clara, but at the cemetery in the rain wasn't his idea of the ideal location.
“Are you sure? I mean, not that you want privacy, but that you don’t need me?”
“I'm sure.”
“You’ll call me if you need anything?”
“Yes. Naomi, stop worrying.”
“Text me when you find her,” Naomi ordered, then hung up.
Smiling despite himself as he dropped his phone onto the center console of his car, he liked Clara’s tornado of a sister. Following the directions he’d been given, he drove through the cemetery’s winding roads until he reached the area where Thomas had been buried earlier this afternoon.
It didn’t take him long to spot Clara. She was standing beside a fresh plot, seemingly oblivious to the rain pouring down on her. It was peaceful here—or would have been if it wasn’t raining; there were lots of large trees and garden beds that in the spring, he suspected, would be a blazing display of color. Parking under a tree, he typed a quick text to Naomi, threw on his jacket and grabbed an umbrella, before hurrying to Clara.
She didn’t acknowledge him as he approached. Her gaze was fixed, almost unblinkingly, on the headstone.