The Doll Brokers Read Online Free PDF

he poured himself a well-deserved nightcap. Sobering up was easier said than done, he realized. Fucking Ann, he thought as the cognac burned through his bloodstream. He sat in a chair in front of the fireplace and hooked an ankle over his knee. Then he pressed the snifter to his forehead as though it could somehow draw out the pain.
    The first time he had seen Ann, he’d been stupefied. His mother had talked nonstop for weeks about the Flower Girl, some urchin selling roses on the corner of 23 rd and Broadway. Felicia had passed the girl daily on her way to the office, buying up her wares for some obscure reason Patrick had never been able to fathom. Then the Flower Girl had disappeared. For the better part of two days, his mother had been frantic—until the detective she’d hired to track her down found her holed up in the sanctuary of a church five or six blocks from the corner.
    Then Felicia had brought her home. At the time, Patrick had conjured an image of her in his mind—fair, ephemeral, sweet. Instead, Felicia had brought a flu-stricken tramp into their house, one with straw-straight hair, hollow eyes, and cheeks dry and livid with fever.
    It had been right after Christmas. Patrick remembered hovering unseen outside the library door, listening to his mother talk about her with Cal Everham, her personal doctor and friend. The man had come by to examine the girl.
    â€œIt’s a nasty strain of flu this year,” Cal had said. They leaned close together, nose to nose, in front of the fireplace. “She should probably be hospitalized. Where did you find her?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter. I suspect she’s a runaway,” Felicia had said. “No parent would allow a child to live this way.”
    Cal placed his hand over hers. “It wouldn’t happen in
your
world, Felicia. But who knows where this girl hails from.”
    â€œShe won’t tell me anything. She seems to hate me even for asking. Cal, I tell you, those begging eyes haunt me.”
    For what? Patrick had wanted to shout sense into her.
For your money!
    â€œShe’s alone in the world, Cal, I’m sure of it.”
    â€œI can find her a bed at Bellevue.”
    â€œNo. She’d only run. I’ll keep her here, at least until she’s better.”
    â€œFelicia, that’s a risk.”
    She gave him a patented Felicia smile. Small, enigmatic. Almost eerily wise. “She can’t even stand up without help, Cal. She’s hardly capable of robbing me blind.”
    â€œYou’re too trusting.”
    â€œI know this child. I’ve been talking to her every morning, every afternoon for weeks now.”
    â€œYou just said she avoids all your questions.”
    Felicia took her hand back. “She’s afraid of me. I could turn her in to the authorities. I’m sure she figures that the less I know about her, the better.”
    â€œBut you keep asking anyway.”
    â€œGod knows why, but she reminds me of myself at her age. We just have to be patient. I have an instinct about this girl. Time willbear me out.” Felicia stood. “I’ll have Francesca feed her for a while, put some meat back on her bones, then we’ll take it from there.”
    Patrick had watched his mother pick up a brass snuffer and place it neatly over the flickering flame of a candle. Felicia spoke again after a long beat of silence. “Cal, I was so poor when my Frederick started whittling those clowns. He had a talent for bringing them to life. And that’s why they sold as well as they did.”
    Cal waited.
    â€œOne merchant, one man in one out-of-the-way burg in Canada, took them on. He saw something in the clowns that made him willing to take the chance.”
    â€œOr he saw something in you,” Cal suggested.
    â€œI
was
good,” she said wistfully. “In everyone’s life, one person must take a chance on them.”
    â€œIn an ideal world, yes.”
    â€œIf