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Elizabeth gasped as the perfume bottle slipped from her fingers. It bled its clear, fragrant blood across the top of her dressing table and died.

The stench of gardenias was overpowering. Her mother would smell it. Her mother would find out.

And it was all her Precious One’s fault.

“Bad baby!” Elizabeth hissed, and pinched the little chin between her thumb and forefinger; squeezed and saw the tiny right ear fall like a spent blossom.

How could she be a good mother to such a child?

“Now look what you’ve done. Can’t you behave for just one moment?”

Elizabeth brushed the mummified skin off onto the floor and quickly mopped up the spilled perfume with the already soiled scarf. The air was thick with the cloying scent and she almost gagged before she got the soaked linen into the laundry hamper.

It was only after she could catch her breath and breathe again that Elizabeth looked down at her baby. Another small flake of skin, perhaps the beginnings of an eyebrow, had fallen off.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Elizabeth took the tiny head in both hands and shook it. Something rattled inside the skull, but she knew she wasn’t hurting her Precious One. She was only teaching it right from wrong, the way a good mother was supposed to.

“What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t teach you?” she asked when she finally stopped, looking deep into the sunken, empty sockets. “Not a very good one, and I want to be a good mother. I have to be. Now, are you sorry you made such a mess? Yes, I’m sure you are.”

Elizabeth leaned down to kiss the wrinkled forehead.

“Yes. All is forgiven. All right, time for bed. And no back talk … young lady.”

Yes, she remembered. Pink was for girls. Her Precious One was a girl. How wonderful. She’d always wanted a daughter.

Her Precious One didn’t utter so much as a whimper when Elizabeth, good mother that she was, carried her to the antique toy cabinet at the far end of the room to pick out a body.

There was really only one choice among the china dolls Elizabeth had collected since her own childhood—the cupid-faced infant in the long, imported lace christening gown.

It was supposed to be very expensive and very old, her mother had told her … but her mother had never been a good mother, not like Elizabeth was going to be, so it didn’t matter what she’d said.

Elizabeth smashed the doll’s head against the side of the cabinet and smiled at the pattern the china pieces made on the rug.

“Look,” she said, holding her Precious One up to see, “like snow-flakes. All right, don’t move and it won’t hurt. Mother promises.”

Her Precious One’s withered neck slipped effortlessly onto the wooden dowel the doll’s head had been molded around.

“Oh, my,” Elizabeth said, tucking the lace collar in around the hardened flesh. Her Precious One’s head wobbled a bit, but not much. “Oh, don’t you look beautiful? Yes, you do … you look beautiful.”

Elizabeth tickled and kissed and cooed and waltzed them both around the room that had been hers since birth. That would now be both of theirs.

Her mother’s shout ended the dance. Like always.

“Elizabeth! It’s almost midnight! Go to bed this instant … you have work in the morning.”

Elizabeth stopped too quickly. Her Precious One’s head tipped forward, chin against the embroidered yoke of the gown.

“Yes, Mother. Sorry, Mother,” she shouted to her mother, then hissed to her child, “Sit up straight! A lady never slumps. I said sit up!”

Elizabeth shook her Precious One and watched the baby’s head loll backwards. She was being obstinate. She was being a bad baby.

Her Precious One wasn’t so precious after all. Maybe there had been a reason for the lonely grave in the woods. Maybe Elizabeth had been chosen to find it because she was the only one who could handle such a spoiled child.

Her Precious One had to be taught. A good mother had to teach her baby.

“I’m only doing this because I love you,” Elizabeth said as she lay her Precious One over one arm and lifted her free hand into position.

“I’m going to be a good mother to you, but