After our divorce, Alexander vanished like we had never existed. He married Camila Whitmore, the heiress of one of the richest families in Manhattan, and their wedding was splashed across every society magazine like some fairytale.
He traded his wife and child for money, designer suits, private flights, and European vacations. And now, out of nowhere, a delivery guy had brought a package to my tiny apartment in Queens.
Inside was an old rag doll.
Dirty.
Torn.
Smelling faintly of dust and something sour.
It felt like an insult wrapped in cardboard.
I grabbed the doll by one leg, ready to throw it straight into the trash, but my five-year-old daughter Sophie launched herself at me like she was protecting something alive.
“No, Mommy, don’t throw her away!” she cried, clutching the ugly little doll against her chest. “It’s from Daddy. My daddy sent it to me.”
My heart broke in a way anger could not protect me from.
To Sophie, the word “Daddy” was not a man. It was a ghost, a wish, a question she was too young to stop asking.
So I swallowed my rage and let her keep the doll.
I thought she would forget about it in two days.
But that same night, a strange sound woke me up.
Scratch… scratch… scratch…
It sounded like something was scraping inside my daughter’s room.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding, then walked barefoot down the hallway and gently pushed open her door.
What I saw made my blood turn cold.
Sophie wasn’t asleep.
She was sitting on the floor in the dim light from the streetlamp outside, the rag doll spread across her lap. With her tiny fingers, she was pulling something out through a ripped seam in its stomach.
She was so focused it terrified me.
As if someone had told her exactly what to do.
On the floor beside her was a crumpled piece of paper and a small bundle wrapped in layer after layer of clear plastic.
“Sophie?” I whispered.
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