The paper finally tears beneath her eraser. She pauses and looks at her drawing, and the rip in her father’s palm. Now she’ll never be able to draw the lines of his palm as they really are, not on this drawing, anyway, but better no lines at all than any trace of the lines she drew after her father had sent her early to bed. She had been angry, but she hadn’t meant to curse him. She wouldn’t have known how. Still, by filling in the lines of his palms she had taken a knowing gamble, and it wasn’t long after that she’d heard the shouting in the other room and seen her father—her father—falling down. She had never seen her father fall before. What if she had caused worse things to happen? What if the lines she had drawn cursed him to something really terrible? Sickness or death? The idea fills her with anxiety and shame. She should have known better, she thinks. She is a mystic and should be careful with her powers. This incident proves to her that she has powers—powers she’s not sure she wants.

She sets her eraser down. It has been quiet in the house since she was sent to her room for the second time, but now she hears a knock on her bedroom door. She turns her drawing upside down on the table and goes to answer her door; her father is standing on the other side. She looks down.

“I saw the light under your door,” he says. Isabelle crosses the room to climb into bed.

“It’s late,” her father says from the doorway.

Isabelle nods. She imagines her father falling into the Christmas tree, knocking away ornaments and snapping branches, and then she pictures her father pulling the same tree through the woods, an ax over his shoulder; the contrast makes her want to melt into herself. She keeps her eyes down and picks at her toes.

“Not tired?”

She shakes her head. Her father crosses the room and sits on the edge of her bed.

“Hey,” he says. He tilts her chin up. “It was a crazy night,” he says.

She nods.

“I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

She looks at him.

“We all sat down and had a talk,” he continues, “and your uncle understands he can’t behave the way he did.”

She looks down. If only her father knew that it was her fault her uncle had behaved that way, her fault her uncle had pushed him into the tree—but she is glad he doesn’t. She would never want her father to think that she had wanted to hurt him. Because she hadn’t, not really.

“He didn’t hurt me, you know.” She looks up again; it is as if her father has read her mind. “And he didn’t hurt Mom, either. Or Maggie.” She feels her eyes beginning to tear up. “We’re all okay,” he says. “You’re okay, right?”