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Jamie misses a step. He catches the banister with one hand and nearly loses the legs.
“Watch your feet,” I tell him.
He faces forward again.
Simon’s head drops back against my shoulder. His boot catches the wall at the landing and drags a black gouge through the paint. Jamie freezes.
“You’ll scrub that out tomorrow,” I say.
“Yes, Heather.”
We pass Jamie’s room. His door stands open, blue light spilling across his floor. Simon’s red door is next. Oliver’s waits at the end of the hall.
I don’t stop at the red door. I walk the three of us past it to Oliver’s.
“Heather?” Jamie says.
“Hold him.”
I shift Simon’s weight onto my hip, take his slack hand in mine, and rap his knuckles twice against Oliver’s door.
The silence on the other side changes shape.
“Say goodnight to Oliver, Jamie.”
Jamie stares at me. Then he turns to the door. “Goodnight, Oliver.”
Oliver is too clever to give me a sound, and that tells me exactly where his ear is.
We carry Simon back to his own door. I planned this hallway long before any of them slept in it, with the largest doll in the middle so the other two have to go through him to reach each other.
I open the red door.
It took me weeks to settle on the shade. Under the mushroom light it’s exactly right, and Simon looks more at home against it than he ever looked beneath the kitchen’s white glare. The bed frame is bolted down, and so is the dresser. The mirror is polished steel, and the drawers have no knobs worth breaking off. A pull-up bar spans the far doorframe.
Jamie’s gaze lands on the bar. “He gets a gym.”
“He gets what keeps his shoulders the way I like them. You get a vanity.” I tip my head toward the bed. “Put him down.”
We lower him. He lands crooked, one shoulder jammed high and his legs hanging off the edge. Jamie reaches for his ankles.
I drag Simon up the mattress by his armpits until he’s where I want him, then point. Jamie straightens one leg while I arrange the other. We finish with Simon centered on the dark bedding, hands at his sides.
He looks filthy in his work clothes. His shirt stinks of fryer oil and scorched butter, the knee of his trousers is stiff with something, and a crust of old sauce clings to the welt of one boot. The burn on his wrist has risen into a livid ridge since the restaurant. The kitchen has had him long enough.
Jamie wipes his palms down the front of his trousers and waits.
I point at Simon. “Undress him.”
CHAPTER 26
Heather
Jamie stares at Simon. “You want me to do it?”
“I don’t repeat myself to dolls who heard me the first time.”
Jamie knows my orders by now. Some are meant to correct him, and some mean I’ve decided to trust him with something. This is the second kind, and he should’ve recognized it before he opened his mouth.
