“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—”
“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.
“Plus, she’s got that dainty gold bracelet twisted tight around her wrist. Looks like somebody—one of you, I guess—has been hating on her and loving her at the same time.”
My sister said nothing, and neither did I.
“Well, unless I want to end up with fingerprints on my neck, I better get back to my tables,” Shawna told us. “Nice to meet you girls. Hope your mom feels better.”
And then we were alone in the restroom. Once more, I asked my mother if she was okay. This time, her voice sounded stronger when she told me to stop worrying, that she just felt queasy from so much driving in a single day. As she spoke, I looked to my sister, but Rose stared down at her hands.
“Is that woman gone?” my mother asked from inside the stall.
“Yes,” I called back.
“She didn’t touch Penny, did she?”
Rose was still studying her hands, so I gave my mother the answer she wanted and told her the waitress had only looked. With that, my sister walked to the sink farthest from Penny. I watched her crank the hot water and pump the soap dispenser before scrubbing away. When I asked what she was doing, she said her hands were greasy from the popcorn and chocolate at the movies this afternoon. But I knew better.
I walked to the trash can and pulled out the red yarn, which I’d slipped in my pocket before leaving the car, since I didn’t want my parents to see. Beneath the humming fluorescent lights, those strands appeared brighter, more alive than they had while driving in the dark. I moved my hand over the trash can and let go of the doll’s hair so it landed on top of the waitress’s damp paper towel. As I crossed to a sink and washed up too, I couldn’t help but stare over at Penny.
“You could do surgery with those mitts,” my sister said when I kept pumping the dispenser and worked up a good lather. “Let’s go.”
“What about Mom?”
“Alive in there?” Rose called out.
“No need to wait,” my mother said after a moment. “Go on back to the car. I’ll be there shortly. Keep Penny where she is, though.”
I worried about leaving her, but there seemed no other option but to listen. Rose and I left the bathroom then weaved among tables, spotting that waitress who looked up while pouring coffee and winked at us. We passed the register, where my sister scooped a handful of pinwheel mints out of a donation box. Outside, our father was waiting in the car, all buckled in and ready to go.
“What happened to your mother?” he asked.
“She’s inside,” I said.
“Is she okay?”
“So she says,” Rose told him.
It took a while for my mother to emerge from the doors with Penny in her arms. As I watched her get closer, I couldn’t help thinking again that she seemed not herself. When she got in, my father asked if everything was okay. Her answer was the same: motion sickness brought on by so much travel in a single day. He started the engine, and as the wheels began to turn, I told Rose, “I’m surprised you remembered those names.”
“What names?”
“The ones I gave my horses.”
“Well, I pay more attention to things than you might think, Sylvie. Sabrina’s the white one with blue eyes and a genuine horsehair tail. Esmeralda is black with rippling muscles and glowing green eyes. Am I right?”
I nodded, more surprised than before. “How do you remember that?”