"I knew he sent something," Ada said. "I didn't know what happened to it. Sit down, Junie. Please."
June sat on the edge of the couch. She didn't take the envelope. Ada set it on her knee anyway.
"Read it," Ada said. "Out loud. I want to hear it in this house one more time."
The letter was one page of lined paper, folded in thirds, in the same handwriting as the package. June unfolded it slowly.
Dear Ada,
They are keeping us on through Christmas to finish the building, so I won't be home till the 31st. I am sorry. Tell the boys I will make it up to them with a sled ride on New Year's.
I mailed June her doll from Charleston today. The one in the blue dress from the catalog. The clerk wrapped it good and I paid for it to go special so it will be there in time.
Don't let her see it till Christmas morning. Don't tell her I worked extra for it. Just tell her it came from Daddy.
I miss you all something terrible. This job is almost done.
Love, Ray
June stopped reading. She sat with the letter in her lap and looked at the brown package on the coffee table.
"It never came," Ada said. "I went down to the post office every day that week. Dewey Ferrell was postmaster then, and he looked everywhere. Christmas Eve, I went one more time, and he just shook his head."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I meant to. I was going to tell you Christmas night, after the boys were asleep. And then I looked at you sitting by that tree in your new sweater, not crying, not asking. And I thought, she'll be so disappointed it got lost. Let Ray tell her when he gets home. Let him fix it."
Ada folded her hands on the afghan.
"Then he came home, and it was New Year's, and we went sledding, and I thought, after the holiday. I'll let him tell her after the holiday."
She didn't finish. She didn't have to.
"After the sixth," Ada said finally, "I couldn't. You'd lost your daddy. I couldn't hand you a lost doll on top of it. A lost doll from a lost daddy. It seemed like the cruelest thing in the world." Her voice shook for the first time. "So I just kept telling you he didn't forget. Every Christmas. I hoped one year you'd believe me without the proof."
June didn't say anything.
"I was wrong," Ada said. "I've known I was wrong for fifty years. I just didn't know how to fix it without the doll."
The front room was quiet. The furnace clicked on. Outside, Tanner's truck had gone, and the hollow was gray and still under the December sky.
June set the letter down beside her mother. Then she reached for the package.
The string had been tied by a store clerk who knew her business, and it took June a long time to work the knot loose. The brown paper came off in two pieces. Underneath was a white box with the name of a department store printed on the lid in gold script, faded to the color of weak tea.
She lifted the lid.
The doll lay in tissue paper that crackled when June touched it. She had brown hair in two braids and a blue gingham dress with a white collar, and her eyes were shut. When June lifted her out of the box, the eyes opened.
They were blue, with long dark lashes, and they rolled open with a tiny click, exactly the way June had imagined they would when she was eleven.
Pinned to the doll's collar was a small white card. On it, in pencil, in her father's hand:
For June, the bravest girl in Copper Hollow. Love, Daddy.
June held the doll against her chest and bent over it. Ada reached across from her chair and laid her hand on her daughter's back, and the two of them stayed that way for a long while.
On Christmas Eve, the Colliers' little house was full.
June's two brothers came up from Beckley with their wives. June's kids came, and their kids, until there were coats piled on every bed and somebody's baby asleep in the laundry basket.
Tanner Mullins came too. June had called the library and gotten his number and invited him, and he'd stood in the door with his hat in his hands looking like he was sorry he'd said yes. Ada fed him two plates of ham and told him he'd done more good in one afternoon than most preachers do in a year, and he went pink to the ears.
Late in the evening, June sat down on the floor by the tree with her youngest granddaughter, Kinsley, who was eight.
"This was mine," June told her. "My daddy sent it to me a long time ago. It got lost for a while."
"How long?"
"Fifty-two years."
Kinsley considered that seriously. "That's a long time to be lost."
"It is," June said.
Ada watched them from her chair by the window, with her Bible on her lap and Ray's letter tucked back inside it where it had always been.
June laid the doll down on the tree skirt. Then, just once, she tipped it back and up again, and watched the blue eyes close and open.