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But Job knew that time was running out. Each day he felt a little worse, a little weaker, a little closer to death. He tried not to let it show; he tried to keep positive and optimistic. He didn’t want Ruth to know that the end was near.
The last thing in the world Job wanted to do was cause distress to his beloved. His love for her was all-consuming. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He couldn’t wait to spend eternity with her.
And it all rested on the woman in front of him.
Clara Candella. She had grown into a beautiful, smart, strong woman. He remembered her as a little girl, the time she’d spent with them—she had been one of his favorites. And now she was going to do for him what he’d intended to do for her. It might take some time, but she would understand eventually.
“You're awake, aren’t you?” he asked.
Slowly, her blonde head lifted. Her green eyes were dulled by pain but still managed to shoot arrows of anger and defiance at him. After finding her by the front door, Ruth had knocked her down, and they'd administered another sedative. Once she was safely unconscious, they had tied her to one of his wheelchairs while Ruth got the room ready for her. Clara would be staying with them for quite some time, and he wanted her to be as comfortable as possible.
“I'm sorry. I know this is hard for you, and you don’t understand yet.” Job wanted to offer whatever comfort he could. He hated to see anyone suffering, even if it was necessary and for a good cause. He hadn’t been the one to mark the children or administer the morphine to put them to sleep so their souls could move on. Now, even though he knew they were only doing what had to be done, he didn’t like knowing that it caused Clara pain.
“Idon’tunderstand,” Clara said. “Why do you think you have to turn the children into dolls?”
“To give them a better life.”
“But you're killing them,” Clara protested.
“No, dear, they are reborn into the dolls, where nothing bad can ever touch them again,” he explained.
“Did something bad happen to you when you were a kid?” she asked quietly.
Job didn’t like to think about that. He didn’t like to think about his childhood at all.
“Job? What happened to you when you were a kid?”
Maybe he should tell her the story, even though it would cause him pain. Perhaps if she understood that, then she would be closer to understanding the rest. “I had a twin sister,” he began. “Her name was Joy. She was such a beautiful little girl. She had hair like sunshine and eyes as endlessly blue as a summer sky. She was every bit as sweet as she was pretty. She brought joy to everyone who crossed her path.”
“And you?”
“I was sick. I had leukemia. I was in and out of the hospital. I was nauseous a lot from chemotherapy. I didn’t eat much; I was too thin, gaunt, ugly.”
“I'm sure that’s not true,” Clara protested.
“It was true. My parents said it all the time. I was a burden. My treatments cost a lot of money, and it wasted a lot of their time taking me to and from hospitals and doctor appointments. It took away from the time they could have spent with my sister. They didn’t love us the same; Joy was the light, I was the dark. She was good and sweet and beautiful—everything that I wasn't.”
“What happened to her?”
“She fell.” Pain stabbed his chest as he talked about it. “We were playing in our tree house. She fell. She and her doll. She broke her neck when she landed. Died instantly. But her doll, it survived intact. It was just lying there beside her in a pool of Joy’s blood. Then as I looked down at them, it smiled at me. Joy’s soul, it went into the doll, because she was such a good little girl, and she deserved to live on forever. I still have the doll. My parents didn’t realize I took it. But I had to. She was my sister, my twin; her soul should stay with me.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven. We were seven. You see,” he implored, “that’s why we do this. We’re helping those children live forever, just like Joy. Through blood she was born again, this time immortal. Do you understand? There are other beautiful children like Joy; we are helping them take the same path so that they don’t suffer pain.” Job so badly wanted Clara to understand. And not just so she could save him and Ruth, but so she could save herself, too.
“What about Ruth? Did she go through something terrible as a child, as well?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” He gestured behind her where Ruth was standing, having entered the room halfway through his recollections of his sister’s death.
Twisting as best as she could in her seat, she prompted, “Ruth?”
“I was an only child. My parents owned a huge toy shop—they specialized in dolls. They had hundreds, maybe even thousands. They would restore antique dolls, too, and they had a small toy museum. The dolls, I was never allowed to touch them, but they were so beautiful.” His wife’s face went dreamy and then hard. Job didn’t like it when she looked liked that. So cold, so harsh, so unloving. That was not the real Ruth, not the Ruth he knew.
“You loved the dolls,” Clara said it as a statement, not a question. The love for dolls was written all over Ruth’s face and in her voice.
“They were so pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, nothing like me.” The darkness in Ruth’s face grew till it was as dark as a thunderstorm. “At school, all the children teased me, called me ugly, because of this,” Ruth’s fingers traced the bright red birthmark on her face. “My parents thought I was ugly, too. They never said it out loud, but I could tell. They were always taking me to doctors to try and find ways to get the birthmark to fade. They didn’t want an ugly daughter; they wanted a beautiful one, beautiful like the dolls.Iwanted to be beautiful like the dolls,” she finished wistfully. No matter how many times he told his wife she was just as gorgeous as any doll, she struggled to believe it.
“Do you understand yet?” he implored. “We aren’t killing children; we’re saving them, giving them something better. I'm dying, and Ruth and I, we want to be together for eternity. We need you to help us. We want to show you how it works so you can save us. Please, Clara; please say you'll help us.”
