prologue
ragdoll;
The little girl stopped lightly caressing the hair of her rag doll.
The girl had always liked Lizy's hair, her rag doll. Her father had given it to her when she was just a baby, but she did not know that, she simply thought that Lizy had been around since forever.
At just 4 years old, Maddie Fray had shown herself to be somewhat intelligent. Maybe she wasn't a gifted child who would solve equations almost as easily as she could breathe. Actually, Maddie was very observant, a child who loved to scan her environment to understand and replicate it.
When the man in white had come looking for her a few days ago, Maddie had freaked out. Who was this stranger and what was he doing in her house? But her father had received him and Maddie had understood that he was not a stranger, that there was no danger.
What a mistake.
But Maddie was a girl who fully trusted her parents. Seeing her father talk so comfortably with that man just made her lower her guard, and keep playing with her rag doll.
"Madison," her father spoke up.
The little girl had heard him approach and that was why she had stopped caressing Lizy. She didn't answer, just raised her head, taking her eyes to her father from her.
"Yes daddy?" She replied sweetly.
Maddie had learned that her father de ella was easily annoyed with her mother when she didn't treat him with what the little girl had termed "respect." It was one of the first things she learned in the school that her mother de ella had begged her father (and taken several beatings) to send her little girl to.
So, Maddie had understood from the dynamic going on in her home that she must treat her father with respect or he would beat her up.
"Did you have fun with...?" But Maddie doesn't hear the name her father says, she doesn't remembers it as well as she thought, but she knows what her father means.
"I don't remember, daddy," the girl answers simply, while she looks back at Lizy. The doll with black braids of wool and large empty eyes painted with green irises.
Her father picks his daughter up and sits her on one of his knees as he carefully runs his hand over the black braids that hung down the sides of her sweet face. Maddie brings her green eyes up to her father's and smiles with childlike sweetness.
And she, in a way, always knew it, in the depths of her, even when she was only 4 years old. In a way, she was her Oliver Fray's rag doll.