I meant it, too. The image of that beautiful doll melting and folding in on itself, the yellow hair sparking, the pink paint of the lips bubbling and cracking, was far less painful than picturing the doll, whole and complete and perfect, in Nelle’s arms.
Do all children think like this? I’ve never spent much time with children other than the ones either born into or brought into this family, so I couldn’t say. Maybe it’s all perfectly normal, and not some quirk of either my DNA or the very essence that seems to emanate from the walls of Ashby House. But at the time—and hell, who am I kidding, even now—it seemed that there must be something uniquely wrong with me.
In any case, Mama didn’t ask me to trade, and Nelle was eventually consoled with an extra piece of cake or some other sop, and the doll was mine. I had named her “Grace,” but when I said the name, something had passed over Mama’s face, an ugly look like someone had suddenly hit her.
“I don’t like that name,” she’d said sharply. “What about Kitty?”
I thought Kitty was a stupid name, but Mama so rarely paid any attention to me that I’d readily agreed even as I’d known that in my head, I would still call her Grace.
And it was Grace’s fault I was in Daddy’s office that hot summer afternoon.
One of her eyes had gotten stuck, half-opened, half-closed. There was something about that half-mast gaze that reminded me of Mama when she had her headaches. That’s what we called them then, although of course now I know that Mama drank too much, which meant that she was perpetually either intoxicated or dealing with the aftermath.
Do you know, to this day, I cannot stand the smell of gin? It was her favorite, and any time I get a whiff of that herby, medicinal scent, I think of Mama, swaying in her bedroom door, her face puffy, eyes red.
The last time Grace’s eye had gotten stuck like that, Daddy had fixed it with a paper clip, and the only place I could think to find one was his office, so I’d crept in there, the air stifling, smelling like cigar smoke, furniture polish, and the faint hint of my father’s cologne.
We weren’t forbidden from entering, exactly. It’s just that Daddy was out of town for business （well, “business.” Later we’d learn he was driving to Charleston to stay with his mistress and our future stepmother, Loretta）， and I’d never been in there without him.
I can still remember how hard my heart was beating as I crept across that thick green carpet, the same carpet that is under my feet now as I write this. How the brass knob of the drawer felt hot in my hand, my fingers sweaty.
I didn’t mean to snoop, but when I opened the drawer, the very first thing I saw was my name. It was emblazoned across the top of a newspaper, the letters inches high, bold and black:
BABY RUBY HOME AT LAST!
I remember wrinkling my nose at the “baby” part, already sophisticated enough at ten to reject anything that smacked of babyishness, but then I started to read.
And kept reading.
I’d known about the kidnapping. This is not that moment where a child learns some dark family secret by accident. Our town was too small, our family too well known for that kind of thing to stay hidden. But I only knew about it in the vaguest sense. A bad man had lost his child and saw me, taking me home to his wife so she wouldn’t be so sad anymore, but that wasn’t right, you could not take someone else’s child, and Daddy had spent so much of our money to find me, to bring me home where I belonged.
But here, in this newspaper, I learned the name of the man who had taken me.
Jimmy Darnell.
His wife was Helen. They had called me Dora. They had another baby, too, born just after I was returned to my family. Her name was Claire, a pretty name that I immediately resolved to give to the next doll I got.
And then I’d seen another name.
Grace.
There in black and white, a sentence: The child’s former nanny, Grace Bennett, left North Carolina after questioning, and her current whereabouts are unknown.
Paper clip and doll forgotten, I’d sat in Daddy’s big leather chair and pulled out all the papers in that drawer.
It took me awhile to find it, but eventually there had been a picture splashed across the front page of The Atlanta Constitution. I recognized Mama and Daddy, their expressions serious, Mama’s hat tilted so that the brim covered most of her face. And behind her, another woman, younger, her hair dark, her face a rictus of anguish, tears streaming, one gloved hand clapped over her mouth.
The parents of Baby Ruby leave the Tavistock, North Carolina, police station accompanied by the child’s nanny—and the last person to see Baby Ruby—Grace Bennett.