LITMIR.BIZ

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doc saw us there and waved, and when he pulled into the driveway he got out and came over toward us. Allie kept the gun down out of sight, and we tried to look like nothing was troubling us.

      Then when he was about to lean in the window, when he was saying, “What can I do for you folks?” Allie stuck the gun in his face.

      “You can give me back my baby, you bastard,” she said.

      He got this astonished look on his face and took a step back. “Your baby’s dead, Mrs. Sellers,” he said. He turned to me. “You tell her, Bill.”

      “We know the baby’s dead, Doc,” I said, “but we want the body.”

      “Well, it’s at Tuchman’s Funeral Home…”

      “No, t’ain’t,” Allie said, pulling back the hammer on the revolver. “You kept her. And if you don’t start telling us why, I might just think you killed her.”

      Doc Everett threw up his hands—guess that’s something everyone’s picked up from TV or something. “I didn’t kill her!” he said.

      “Then why’d you take the body?”

      “For my sister!”

      Allie lowered the gun a little. “What?” she said. She sounded mighty puzzled, which was about how I felt.

      Doc Everett took that as a good sign, that she’d lowered the gun, though to me all it meant was she was pointing at his gut instead of between his eyes and I wan’t sure I wouldn’t rather have it over quick than get gut-shot, but he lowered his hands a bit, too. “For my sister,” he said.

      “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “What the hell would your sister want with our baby? She’s got her own, don’t she? And alive?”

      Allie threw me a surprised glance at that, and the doc shook his head. “No,” he said. “She don’t. Doesn’t.”

      “Bill, Miss Everett ain’t married,” Allie said, “and I never heard tell she had a baby.”

      I was beginning to wonder if I was going crazy. This was all so weird. “She said she did,” I insisted.

      Doc Everett nodded. “She thinks she does,” he said. “Laura…Laura’s not right.”

      “First I’ve heard of it,” Allie said.

      “Well, it’s true,” Doc said. “Not for five years. Not since the baby died.”

      “So there was a baby?” I asked.

      He nodded.

      “There was?” Allie was pretty startled by that. She’d been keeping up on the gossip around Dawsonville since she was thirteen, but I guess she’d never heard this one.

      “Stillborn,” Doc said. “Never had a chance. Probably just as well. But Laura couldn’t take it.”

      I glanced at Allie, but if she thought Doc was saying anything about her, she didn’t pay any mind to it.

      “We’d managed to keep it all quiet—she never went out much, and she carried small, and I performed the delivery right here at home, so no one ever knew,” Doc explained. “When he was born dead, I figured it was a blessing, and I buried him in the back yard and thought that was an end to it.”

      “It wasn’t?”

      He shook his head. “Laura dug him up,” he said.

      Allie’s mouth came open at that, and the gun drooped a bit further.

      “She brought the body back in the house and treated it like a live baby, and I didn’t know how to make her stop,” Doc went on. “I tried to talk sense to her, but she wouldn’t listen, and if I tried to take it away she’d throw a screaming fit until I gave it back.”

      “Couldn’t…didn’t anyone else know?” I asked. “Couldn’t you take her to a psychiatrist or something?”

      “Didn’t dare,” he said. “If it came out that there’d been a baby and I’d kept it quiet, and who the father was…”

      “Who was the father?”

      He looked startled, as if he thought we’d figured that out already. “I was,” he said.

      Maybe I had figured it out, because I wan’t really surprised, but Allie was.

      “Your sister?” she said.

      “Two lonely people alone in the house together,” Doc said. “Yes, my sister.”

      “What’s this got to do with our baby?” I demanded.

      “Well, hell, son, dead bodies don’t keep,” he said. “When the baby got too far gone, Laura said it was sick and told me to make it better—I was a doctor, couldn’t I fix it up? Nagged at me day and night, and ’bout then Mrs. Kelliher’s little Josie died—crib death, what they’re calling SIDS now. So I got an idea and I talked to Henry Tuchman and switched ours for Josie Kelliher. Been doing it ever since.” He shrugged. “After all, one dead baby’s a lot like another.”

      “So…but then why isn’t there another one in our girl’s coffin?”

      The doc grimaced. “Last one was too far gone,” he said. “It’s buried out back. Told Laura it was sleeping, managed to keep her away for three days—don’t know what I’d have done if you poor folks hadn’t come along.”

      “You killed my baby,” Allie said, and the gun came up again. “You killed her so you could give her to your sister.”

      “No, Mrs. Sellers,” he said, “I swear I didn’t. I’d never do that. I took an oath, and I meant it.”

      The gun wavered some.

      “Come on,” I said, getting out of the truck. “We’re getting our daughter back. I feel sorry for your sister, Doc, but that’s our baby’s body, and we’re taking it.”

      “Right,” Allie said, opening her own door.

      Together, we marched up the porch steps, right past Doc Everett, and on into the house—front door wasn’t locked, not in Dawsonville.

      The doc ran after us, shouting, “No, wait! Wait! I didn’t tell you…you can’t…let me explain!”

      I reckoned we’d heard enough; we didn’t stop, marched right into the house. I pointed to the big sliding door. “In there,” I said.

      Allie tried to open it, but it wouldn’t move.

      “It’s locked,” she said.

      I turned to Doc Everett. “Open it,” I said.

      “No,” he said. “Listen, you can’t just barge in here. I’ll give you back your baby, I’ll give Laura a doll or something, but don’t…”

      “Open it, or we’ll shoot the fucking lock off!” I shouted.

      He hesitated, and Allie took the revolver two-handed and pointed it, but then the door opened by itself, and there was Miss Everett, asking, “What’s all the noise? You’re disturbing the baby!”

      She had a bundle in her arms, wrapped up in a white-and-pink baby blanket. It wasn’t moving, didn’t make a sound.

      Allie started to grab for it, then realized she still had the gun in her hand, and got confused.

      “Miss Everett,” I said, “could we see him? Just for a moment?” I held out my arms.

      She looked at me strangely, then smiled, and gave me the bundle.

      It was cold and dead, like a bundle of laundry, but I took a look under a flap of blanket.

      It was our baby, all right.

      “There,” Doc said, “you’ve got what you want. Take it out for

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