I've always loved dolls. I had one all my life - we were a family of nine.

One just left crying. I said, ?Don?t cry, you?re going to make me cry.

Divorce isn't one-sided, and I am by no means perfect. Becoming accountable for my role in the relationship was very empowering.

It only took one text message to change my life. That's when I discovered my loving husband had been unfaithful. His infidelities ended our marriage.

Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.

Some months later, the Van Tassel children invited classmates home to play with their new doll. This was in the dead of winter. When the guests arrived, they did indeed find the Van Tassel children sliding down hill with a new doll. But that new doll was a human baby, the youngest Van Tassel, dead and frozen stiff. The baby had died the previous week, and had been stored in the woodshed for burial when the frost was out of the ground; the other children had asked if diey might have Susan for a doll, and Mrs. Van Tassel had not demurred.