Help for the Haunted(62)

I’d been trying to forget the waitress at the sink, but it was impossible once she twisted the faucet and the running water stopped. A silence fell over the restroom. I looked at her more closely. The woman’s skin appeared clayish, a valley of wrinkles beneath her eyes, slivery cracks around her lips. She tugged a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her hands over the trash can. Her gaze trailed my mother, who walked around the dividing wall to the stalls. A brief rustling followed before she emerged a moment later.

“Problem?” Rose asked.

“I can’t lift my dress and hold Penny at the same time.”

Even though I’d offered, a small surge of panic moved through me at the thought that she was about to put the doll in my arms. Thankfully, my mother went to a sink. After wiping down the edges, she propped Penny up and left her there before returning to the stall. That’s when the waitress tossed her paper towel in the trash and spoke to us in a hushed voice at last. “She’s that lady, isn’t she?”

“What lady?” Rose asked.

“The one from TV. I saw the man out in the lot before. They were on Channel Eight and on that talk show I watch some afternoons. Not Donahue, but the local one. Anyway, I don’t remember anybody ever mentioning they had kids. You’re their kids, aren’t you?”

Rose and I were accustomed to getting stared at around Dundalk, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Neither of us said anything.

“Don’t act all spooked by me!” She let out a rattling laugh. “I’m sure you’ve seen scarier things in your day. What are your names? I want to tell my boyfriend I met you.”

I looked at Rose, but even she seemed stumped. My mother, meanwhile, began coughing, deep and unrecognizable, in the stall.

“Come on! I’m Shawna. There, I told you mine. Now tell me yours.”

“I’m Sabrina,” my sister said, glancing my way and making her eyebrows jump. “And that’s my sister . . . Esmeralda.”

Who would have guessed Rose remembered the names I’d given those horses? I thought of them on the shelf above my desk back at home, a place that felt impossibly far away at the moment.

“Such pretty names for such pretty girls,” the waitress was saying. “I wish I had a camera to get a picture with you and your folks. But who knew I’d be hobnobbing with practically celebrities in this dump? I bet you two could tell some stories, huh?”

Inside the stall, my mother’s coughing grew so loud and guttural, she sounded on the verge of vomiting. “Mom,” I called. “Are you okay?”

“Mom,” that waitress repeated as though turning the word over and inspecting it. “Who knew a person like her could be a mother?”

“What do you mean, ‘a person like her’?” Rose asked.

The waitress didn’t answer. She walked to the sink, where Penny slumped against the wall, red-and-white-striped legs like oversized candy canes dangling from the ledge. “What’s her story?” she asked, leaning in for a closer look.

“Been sleeping with her since I was born,” Rose said, keeping her voice low so my mother wouldn’t hear. “Can’t go anywhere without her. That includes the bathroom.”

Things were quiet on the other side of that wall. I peeked around, scanning the floor beneath the stalls until I saw her simple black flats. “Mom?” I said again.

In a meek voice, she answered, “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Sylvie. Don’t worry. A little car sickness snuck up on me. That’s all. Give me a minute to breathe, and I’ll be good as new.”

“But I heard your mother say nobody better touch her,” that waitress was telling Rose when I turned around. “Why’s that? Is she . . . haunted?”

“Not haunted.” My sister moved closer to Penny, voice low still. “She just doesn’t want us getting her dirty. But your hands are clean. So go ahead. Touch her.”

“Rose,” I said.

My sister looked at me. “Who’s Rose?”

“I mean, Sabrina. I don’t think you should—”

[page]“Just ignore her,” Rose told the waitress, all but whispering now. “Esmeralda’s a worrywart. Your hands are clean. So like I said, go right ahead. Touch her if you want.”

I watched as the waitress bent down and put her face up to Penny’s. “Hey there, dolly,” she said in a voice as quiet as Rose’s. She reached out a nail-bitten hand and stroked all the red hair my sister hadn’t gotten around to plucking. “When my girl was little she had a doll just like you, but smaller.”

Penny stared back, expressionless and indifferent as ever.

“Weird,” the waitress said.

“Weird?” Rose repeated.

“I mean, she’s just an old Raggedy Ann. A dime a dozen. But this one, well, she feels different somehow. I don’t know. Maybe it’s those marks.”

“Marks?” my sister said.

“Fingerprints. Your doll has them all over her neck. Or where her neck should be anyway. I guess it’s just the seam where her head is stitched to her body. Anyway, looks like maybe somebody’s been choking her.”

I stepped closer. The waitress was right: gray smudges lay all around the seam between Penny’s body and head.