All day, she has not been able to get the knot with which she woke out of her hair. She hasn’t tried that hard, she thinks; she’d worked at it for only a few minutes before breakfast, and then she’d spent the better part of the day drawing in her sketchbook, a charcoal drawing of her mother at the kitchen counter.

She props herself up on the sink in her parents’ bathroom, leaning in toward the mirror so that she can better see the knot in her hair. She has charcoal on her face, she notices, but when she goes to rub it off she only spreads more on; her fingers are still black. She hops down from the sink so that she can wash her hands, and then she leans back in toward the mirror, frowning as she pulls at her hair. The knot is a stubborn one, and it is difficult to have to work from a reflection; when she means to move her right hand, she moves her left, and when she means to move her left hand, instead she moves her right. She grits her teeth in frustration and unleans herself from the sink. Out the window beside her, she can see the back of Mr. Sullivan’s old house. The kitchen door opens as she’s watching, and a man steps outside, followed by a smaller person, she can’t tell whether a boy or a girl for all the layers the person is wearing. Her initial feeling is one of curiosity, but this is immediately replaced by dread. One time, in the past, she might have delighted in the prospect of a playmate just across the way, but now, under the circumstances, her mother will want her too badly to be friends with this other child. She can feel her mother’s hand on her neck even now, guiding her through the door, brightly making introductions while Isabelle herself withers in shame that she will not speak and yet withdraws further into her silence anyway, removing herself as best she can.

The small person lies down in the snow and makes a tidy angel, just as Isabelle would do. The man helps the angel up, and they disappear together around the side of the house.