“That our eleven-year-old daughter who hasn’t spoken for nine months has been missing for an hour in the dark out in the freezing cold!”

“Ruth.”

“What!”

“Do you think that Isabelle ran away?”

Ruth falters. “No.”

“And do you think she’s gotten lost?”

“No, but—”

“She’s out here because she wants to be. Just like you were saying earlier. If she wants to be found, she’ll be found.”

“Well, I’m glad you can be so nonchalant about it,” Ruth says, spinning around. “As usual, I’ll do the worrying for the both of us.” She resumes her trek toward the toolshed. Wilson switches on his flashlight and heads toward the barn.

From where she sits on the roof, Isabelle sees her parents’ flashlights, having come together for a moment, go their separate ways through the dark, and she feels a stitch of guilt to see them looking for her out in the cold. There was a time not very long ago when she might have reveled in watching their fruitless search, but from up here, tonight, her parents look very small and very human. She doesn’t have the energy to be angry. And for all she’s put them through, she doesn’t have the right. She leans back into the pillow of snow behind her and looks up. The wind whisks her breath away, and now and then the moon gleams through holes in the clouds. She turns her head to watch snow blow through the patch of light shining through the dormer window through which she crawled, fine as sand or ash. She’s left the window open just enough that she can slip her fingers underneath to raise it to come back in, but even through a crack that small the snow is blowing into her room. Or her father’s old room, she corrects herself. It is strange to imagine her father as a boy, sleeping in the same bed she’ll sleep in tonight beneath the faded fire engines stamped along the wall.

She puts her hand into that patch of light and brushes up a spray of snow. The tiny flakes glint. Just then, a shadow appears in the light. Isabelle freezes, hardly dares to breathe. The shadow gets larger, and Isabelle waits for the window to open and her grandmother’s head to emerge, or else for the window to be closed, shutting her out. She shuts her eyes and wills the shadow away, away, away. She will not be found. She will not be found. She will not be found. She counts to one hundred, and then slowly, she opens her eyes. The snow quietly blows through the window’s cross-hatched light. The shadow is gone.

Of course it is, she thinks; she is a mystic. Her uncle has told her so. Look what had happened with her father’s palms, and look now how she has been able to will away this shadow.