Slappy- Repaired

Mr. Barker reached down and turned the dummy’s head from side to side. “Well, someone sent Slappy to me for repair,” he said. “His eyes were broken, and his head was coming loose, and his jacket was shredded in back.”
“So he’s a used dummy?” Molly asked.
“Oh, I think he’s had a lot of owners,” her dad replied. “Slappy is older than he looks.”
“If someone sent him to you to be fixed, why did you keep him?” Ian asked.
“That’s the strange thing,” Mr. Barker replied. “The owner didn’t send a return address.”
“Weird,” Ian muttered, shifting the dummy to his other leg.
“This is a valuable dummy,” his dad said. “I thought the owner just forgot to tell me where to send it back. So I repaired Slappy, fixed him up as best I could. And I put him in the closet and waited. I waited a year, hoping to hear from the owner. But … no.”
“They didn’t write to you?” Ian asked.
His dad shook his head.
Vinny laughed. “Maybe they didn’t want him back.”

- Slappy Birthday to You, chapter 5