The Dolls by Kiki Sullivan Read Free Book Online

“It’s just past the theater, on the left side.”
    “Thanks,” I say, but she puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
    “I know you’re going to look up your mom’s death as well,” she says. “Just don’t read too much into it. Things in this town are never quite what they appear.”
    She heads back inside without explaining more. I’m still puzzling over her words as I make my way up Main Street toward the library.
    “Can I help you, dear?” asks the old woman behind the front desk as I walk in.
    “Do you keep archives from the local paper here?”
    She peers at me over her glasses. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you from the Périphérie?”
    I’m not sure what that has to do with newspaper archives, but I reply politely, “No, ma’am. I live on the other side of the cemetery and just moved back to town. I’m Eveny Cheval.”
    Her eyes widen. “Sandrine Cheval’s daughter,” she breathes. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
    “You knew my mom?”
    “Honey, everyone knew your mom.” She seems to gather her composure as she gestures for me to follow her. “How nice to see you back in town.”
    She leads me down a hallway to a small room, explaining as we go that it’s a bit old-fashioned but that they still keep the archives on microfiche. “I find that the tried and true way is often the best way,” she says confidently. “Now, what can I help you find?”
    “Actually, I was wondering whether I could see this week’s paper. And”—I pause, a little embarrassed—“if you have the paper from the week my mom died, I’d like to read that too.”
    “You don’t want to go reading something like that, honey.”
    “But I do,” I say, not sure why I’m explaining myself to a stranger. “So if you could bring me the articles, that would be great.”
    She purses her lips and leaves, returning less than a minute later with three slides.
    “Here’s this week’s paper, which I just put on microfiche yesterday, and the . . . older ones. You just move them under the glass there,” she says, gesturing to a microscope-like device on a desk, “and they’ll show up on the screen.” I thank her and she walks out, muttering to herself as she shuts the door behind her. I use the knob on the side of the machine to focus the lens and begin reading the article from the front page of the most recent Carrefour Weekly Chronicle , titled “Local Girl Stabs Self . ”
    According to the paper, Glory was a well-liked, straight-A student who lived in Carrefour her whole life. Her mom is quoted as saying, “There was absolutely no indication that something like this could happen.” Peregrine and Chloe are both quoted too, with Peregrine describing Glory as, “a true, trustworthy friend,” and Chloe saying—apparently through sobs, according to the reporter—that she’ll always blame herself for not protecting her friend.
    Protecting her? Seems like a bizarre way to talk about a suicide.
    Glory’s body, the paper says, was found in a wooded area along Cyprès Avenue on the north side of town by a possum hunter from the Périphérie who was trolling the woods before dawn. The police were called right away, but it was too late. The medical examiner estimated the time of death between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. the night before.
    Just a few hours after I’d met her.
    “It’s definitely a suicide, although the manner of death was highly unusual,” the chief of police, Randall Sangerman, has told the paper. “No prints on the body or on the knife, except for her own. Our department sends its deepest sympathies to her parents.”
    I search the rest of the newspaper, but there’s nothing else about Glory, nothing that puts me any closer to understanding why she’d take her own life.
    Confused, I pull out the slide and insert the first one from fourteen years ago, the one from the day after my mother’s death. I take a steadying breath, adjust the viewfinder, and begin to read.
    Sandrine Cheval,