“I’m going to check on Mom, Belle,” her father says after a minute. “Why don’t you fix yourself a little dessert, and then we’ll do the tree.” He pauses, then turns and leaves the room. Isabelle stands another minute where she’s been standing by the dishwasher, then she shuts the door of the machine and wanders down the hall toward the living room. Maggie is lying in front of the Christmas tree; even she looks small beside it. Isabelle turns off all the lamps in the room and plugs the Christmas tree lights in. She lies down on the floor with Maggie, her head on Maggie’s stomach, which rises and falls with every breath. She starts to count the breaths: one, two, three, and when finally she’s counted a hundred breaths, she nuzzles Maggie’s soft stomach with her face and stands. Her father has laid out all the Christmas decorations on a nearby card table. There are many of them: shiny bulbs, silk balls, candy canes, glass sailboats, stockings, a teddy bear dressed as an angel, and a snowflake Isabelle made years before out of popsicle sticks. It looks nothing like a snowflake, Isabelle thinks now, looking at it in the dim light.

And then there are the ornaments she made for her parents, a red wooden R painted with wreaths and presents and elves, and a wooden W, painted in red-and-white stripes like a candy cane. She looks at these, and then she looks down the darkened hall toward her parents’ room. Their door is half open, casting a small triangle of light into the hallway. She looks back down at her parents’ ornaments, lifts them from the table, and carries them down the hall to their room.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEVEN

Monday

I