Bonne nuit, Isabelle thinks in the back. Her father has put the seat down so that she and Maggie can stretch themselves out their full lengths. Bonne nuit, she remembers, was stitched across one of her earliest nightgowns. She gazes past her toes toward her parents’ heads, dark shapes against the speckled windshield. Their voices have woken her, but she hasn’t stirred; she doesn’t want to distract them from what they do when they think that she’s asleep. She lets her eyes roll upward through the back windshield; the wiper clunks from side to side, smudging an arch of dirt that glows a hazy orange under each infrequent roadside light. Beside her, Maggie stretches and lets out a series of tired grunts; Isabelle rolls onto her side and takes Maggie’s head in her hands. The dog opens an eye, shuts it. The fur of her ears spills from between each of Isabelle’s fingers.

Isabelle shuts her eyes and makes quiet whispering sounds, shaping soundless air around her tongue. She brings Maggie’s forehead to her own and holds it there, just as Dr. Marks had done with Adrien. Magic touch, he’d said, and he’d winked at her, and in that moment she knew that he was a mystic, and that he knew she was one, too. She had watched him carefully, learned just what she’d need to do to make Maggie well, just as Dr. Marks had made Adrien well.

She shivers with relief at the magical, lucky timing of it all—her uncle’s visit to the city, and then their visit to her grandmother’s—and how in only a weekend she had learned about both a terrible problem—Maggie’s illness—and a miraculous solution—her own mystical powers. Normally, she might question those powers, but she has evidence: her silence like Julian of Norwich’s silence, the lines in her father’s hands, the shadow outside the window, Dr. Marks’s knowing wink. She holds her eyes shut tight, concentrating, concentrating, feeling the point of Maggie’s skull against her head, her nose against the white strip that runs up Maggie’s big black face, giving Maggie strength, making her well.

“Wilson, you are driving like my mother.”

Wilson glances at the speedometer; he is driving well under the speed limit. “Not your mother,” he says. “Maybe someone’s. Not yours.”

“You know what I mean.”

The closer to the city they have gotten, the more Wilson has slowed their speed. Now he puts his foot more firmly on the gas. “Sorry,” he says. He clutches the wheel and takes a breath, willing himself out with it. But he shuts his mouth, breathes out loudly through his nose.

Ruth looks over at him. Her feet are on the dashboard, toes to the glass. “What?” she says.