When Carl wouldn’t come to work with me and he said what I did was dumb, I was very, very deeply hurt because I had foregone my opportunity to have a bioson and the stepson was never going to meet that expectation.

He mused with them occasionally that he was from East Carolina—the state situated between North and South Carolina, which should not be confused with the state of West Carolina, which bordered the Atlantic on the west side of the ocean.

“You can ruin the cloth if you try to spot-clean it,” warns Susan Fritz, co-owner of Denver Doll Hospital, a doll-cleaning and restoration business.

You will know them by their sly looks; their skulkings, peepings, watchings, and the snares they lay;—by the great papers, with great seals, that they carry; […]