Of course it was. This whole thing was ridiculous. It was ridiculous for him to be secretly searching through his son’s room in the first place. But he felt no embarrassment, and no matter how much he tried to intellectually discount his feelings, they were still there.

He looked down at the doll and was suddenly afraid. What would happen when Tony finished his “project,” when the doll was complete?

He didn’t know and he didn’t want to find out.

He knew what he had to do.

Daniel shoved the doll back in the bag and carried it outside. He dropped it on the grass next to the back porch and walked into the garage, wheeling out the barbecue. Opening the lid, he picked the sack up off the ground and unceremoniously dumped the doll into the ashes.

He walked back into the garage, emerged with lighter fluid and a book of matches. He knew this was going to extremes, but he could not be sure if he simply tore the doll up and threw it away that it wouldn’t return, that it wouldn’t drag its pieces out of the alley and over the fence and through the backyard to his bedroom. He couldn’t afford to chance that.

He’d seen the Telly Savalas Twilight Zone. He knew how these things worked.

His feelings did not make any kind of rational sense—the fact that he was referencing a TV show as validation for his actions should have told him that—but as he doused the doll with lighter fluid and put a match to it, he felt an absurd sense of exhilaration. He saw the face go up in flames, the toilet-paper tubes blacken and crumble, the Big Gulp cup melt off its wax and burn, and for the first time since he’d seen Tony with the doll, he was able to breathe easily.

He would tell Tony that he had gotten rid of the doll when his son came home, and he would forbid him to make another one. He should have done that last night. It might seem irrational to Margot, but he was still the boy’s father, and if he wanted to enforce an irrational rule or prohibition, well, he wouldn’t be the first father to have done so.

The components of the doll had all burned themselves out, but he turned on the hose and soaked everything with water, just to make sure, before going back into the garage and getting a shovel. He scooped up the ashes from the barbecue, dumped them in the plastic sack, and tossed everything in one of the trash cans in the alley. He mashed down the sack with his foot, transferred garbage from one of the other cans to throw on top of it, then replaced the lid. Once again, he found himself looking up the alley for any sign of the small strange shadow he’d seen before.