They Never Picked Up My Calls, So I Made Dolls That Answer novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Press the Heart

I turned the doll over in my hands.

The back seam ran crooked from the neck to the hip.

Somebody had ripped it out and redone it at least twice.

I could see the old needle holes.

"Who made this?"

"Me," Fletcher said.

"You can't sew."

"I can hem. Badly. The rest I learned in August." He scratched his beard. "Your oldest sewer taught me after hours. She called me 'honey' four hundred times. None of them were nice."

"August."

"It took a while. I sewed it to my jeans twice."

Across the shop, Gracie snorted into her coffee.

I looked up.

They were all still there.

Gus at the end of the long table with his reading glasses on.

Drew with his spreadsheet folded in his lap.

Gracie on the bench by the poinsettia.

The night-shift mother in the doorway with her coat half on.

None of them were pretending not to watch.

"You all knew," I said.

"Drew flashed the chip," Gus said. "I supervised."

"He yelled," Drew said.

"I supervised loudly."

I looked down at the lopsided red heart.

My thumb found the button. It was under the third stitch, exactly where it was supposed to be.

He'd measured.

Of course he'd measured.

I pressed it.

There was a tiny hiss.

Then his voice, low and a little nervous, the way he'd sounded on the phone the first time I ever called him.

"Hey. It's me. You're probably mad I went in your machine."

I laughed and covered my mouth.

"I've got sixty seconds, so I'll be fast. You built a doll so kids wouldn't be alone when nobody could get there. I want to be the guy who gets there. Every time you call. Every night. For the rest of it."

The shop was so quiet I could hear the window unit up in the loft.

"I'm building you a house with a deep porch. Dad says it better be deep. I'll let you design the sewing room, because if I do it you'll just redo it."

A pause on the recording. I heard him breathe.

"Elsie Calvert. Will you marry me? Look in the pocket. And if you say no, hold the heart ten seconds anyway. Somebody wanted to say something."

The recording clicked off.

There was a pocket on the doll's overalls.

I hadn't noticed it.

It was sewn shut with three loose stitches.

I pulled them out with my fingernail.

Inside was a ring.

A thin gold band with a small gray stone in it, the color of my eyes.

"It was my mom's," Fletcher said. "Dad kept it in his sock drawer for ten years."

"It was in the sock drawer for safety," Gus said. "Nobody steals socks."

I couldn't see anything. Everything had gone blurry.

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