The pale young man with blank eyes stood in the doorway and watched the little girl. His unlined face and exhausted, frozen air bespoke one robbed of youth by a bitter tragedy. The little girl ignored him, looking instead about the little-girl-sized room to which he had brought her. Though she appeared to admire the balloons floating through the wallpaper, and stroked the mane of the old-fashioned rocking horse, she finally turned back to the man and stamped her tiny foot. "You promised there'd be elephants," she said.

The man stirred and stepped inside the door, pulling it shut. He continued to watch her, though she seemed an ordinary little girl, with hair much softer and finer and paler than the bright yellow mane of yarn on the rocking horse. Her knees were scabbed, her cheeks as soft and round and downy as the belly of a baby chick. As he watched her a kind of hunger came into his face, awakening his eyes as from a nightmare. The little girl grew solemn. She backed away. "Where's Mommy?" she asked.

"Your mommy isn't coming. Your mommy couldn't take care of you anymore, so she gave you to me. This is your room now, and these are your toys. Would you like to meet them? They want to say hello to you."

"No," said the little girl, reasonable but definite. "I want Mommy, and I want my doll, and I want to see an elephant and ride a pony, just like you promised."

"Grace," said the man. He knelt in front of her and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. She flinched away, her blue eyes enormous. "I'm sorry, honey, but your mommy isn't coming. You're staying with me now, and you don't need your doll any more. You have all these nice dolls to choose from. Won't you like that, Grace?"

The little girl's smooth cheeks paled, and her breath hitched in her chest. "My name isn't Grace. My name is Tammy. I don't like you. Take me home."

Two hours later, the little girl was asleep in the little girl's bed, and the man sighed, leaning against the doorjamb as though he could no longer bear his own weight. She had fought, of course. And he had won. He turned to a photograph, face-down on the little girl's white-and-gilt Princess Anne vanity. His hand trembled and slid over the frame as he turned it over. A woman and another girl, very like the girl now sleeping in the bed, looked up at him. They smiled for him now and for him alone, alone in a way that gave birth to the nightmares in his eyes. He drew his fingertips across the glass in the frame, but it slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the vanity.

He looked from the photograph to the little girl on the bed, contrasting tear-stained face with the smile full of milky-white baby teeth. "So much work to do," he murmured. "So much work." He left the photograph face up on the vanity and turned off the light. He carefully left the door ajar.

"Oh, but you're looking well, Ryan." The woman stepped forward to kiss her brother's cheek. "I feel like you've been in Switzerland forever, but it must have been worth it."

"And then some. We'll have a merry Christmas this year." As he reached out to help her with her wrap, two boys exploded past his legs and into the foyer of the apartment, shedding coats and boots along the way.

"Jeffrey, Eric, you greet your uncle Ryan politely and behave while you are guests in his home."

"Oh, don't worry, Barb," the man said, smiling. "They're just being boys. Although it's things like this that make me glad I have a little girl."

"Speaking of," said the woman, glancing about, "where is she? How is she?"

"Relax, Barb." The man laughed. "I found a marvelous nurse in Switzerland. Adele. She's with Grace now, dressing her. Grace is very excited about meeting her aunt and cousins."

"That answers the first question," said the woman.

After staring at her blankly for a moment, the man relaxed. "Oh," he said quietly. "Well, she's fine, considering."

"And just what are we taking into consideration?"

"That the accident almost killed her, as well as Rachel."

The woman shivered delicately. "For you to say it so bluntly--"

Whoops came from the of the living room, and the woman glanced toward the connecting passageway with her lower lip caught between her teeth. "Don't worry," her brother repeated. "I'm sure they just found their presents under the tree."

"That's not what I'm worried about," she murmured. "If anything happened to my boys--"

"You'd deal with it. As best you could. Really, she was remarkably lucky. She's not walking yet, but she will. Those doctors in Switzerland did wonders, and I learned so much from them to bring back to my own practice." He brushed aside a pine garland as he stuck his head into the passageway. "Boys, put the stockings back on the mantlepiece. Adele, are you two about ready?"

"Oui, M'sieur."

One blonde, grave child was wheeled slowly into view by one blonde, grave woman. "Oh, Ryan," cried his sister, dropping to her knees before the child's wheelchair, "she looks even more like -- "

"Go ahead and say it, Barb. Even more like Rachel than you remembered. I may have had a hand in that. The photo I gave to the surgeons had both Grace and her mother in it, and they must have been influenced by Rachel's appearance as well."

"No harm," said the woman, and took the child's hand. "Hello, dear. I'm your aunt. Aunt Barbara."

"Hello, Aunt Barbara," said the little girl, and the woman patted her knee, recoiling only slightly from the twisted feel of the legs under their lap blanket.

"Boys," she called as she stood. She took the little girl's hand and held it tight. "Boys, come and meet your cousin."

The boys romped in, two collections of freckles with legs. "Eric, Jeffrey, this is Grace. She's Uncle Ryan's little girl."

"Hi," said one boy. "What kind of a chair is that?"

"Eric," moaned their mother.

"A wheelchair," said the little girl. "I ride in it all day."

"Can't you walk?" asked the other little boy.

"Not anymore."

"That must be kind of neat, to ride around all day. How fast does it go? Can you pop a wheelie?"

"Adele," said the man. The nurse joined him and his sister. "Perhaps, for Grace's sake, you can find all three of them some type of board game to play. Chinese checkers, or some such."

"Hey, Grace, you want to see me smile? I fell off the monkey bars and lost both front teeth."

"I will try my best to keep them amused, M'sieur."

"All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front--"

The little girl began to scream.

The nurse rushed to her, while the boys back away nervously.

"Boys," snapped their mother. "What in the world did you do?"

"Nothing, Mom," said one, over the sobs of the girl. "We were just singing to her." They backed away until they judged it safe to turn and run.

"Don't let him take my teeth, too," cried the girl, as her nurse tried to comfort her.

"What an odd thing to say. Ryan?"

Her brother had gone very white and did not appear to have heard.

"You know," whispered the woman, watching nurse and child together. "Adele looks rather like Rachel, too. Not that anyone could ever--but, did you notice?"

That caught his attention. He swung his gaze to the nurse, and an odd hunger burned in his eyes.

"No," he said slowly. "No, I hadn't noticed before, but now that you mention it, you're right. You're absolutely right."