In short, the majority of requested benefits were refused, and equipment that would make half the positions obsolete was to be implemented at a daunting rate. Hundreds of miners moved away, seeking new jobs, clean slates. For those who stayed, including Arie’s father and my own, wages and safety conditions improved only slightly.

Black Tuesday did anything but help. That fall, the stock-market crash shook cities like New York with the power of an earthquake. In Eden Springs, we endured the aftershocks—delayed, recurrent, and just as damaging.

Drops in copper sales shut down a slew of competitors. To prevent the same fate, C&H managers trimmed in phases, barring their personal billfolds no doubt. Papa and Mr. Jansen survived the workforce cuts, yet security belonged to no one.

Not that Arie and I discussed such things. For Papa often warned me, particularly when silencing my worries over the hazards of his job: Be careful, schatje. Fear is giving power to the Devil.

Besides, there was plenty else to speak about, Houdini’s stunts most of all.

Through that summer and autumn, from multiple readings of the book, I mastered numerous sleights of hand. While my skills grew, the rate and intensity of my nightmares fell. Even around Christmas Eve.

With Arie’s help, of course.

On that much-dreaded holiday, Papa spared me from the candlelight vigils at the graveyard, though not from attending evening mass. During the homily, Father Lawrence blessed the town’s anniversary as a step toward rebirth and prayed about losses I yearned to forget.

Needed relief came later that night. With Papa snoring away in the bedroom, Arie sneaked over with a diversionary surprise: a ball of string for a trick. I grabbed my heavily dog-eared book and sat facing him on my mattress, which by then was a year-round fixture near the stove. Much like us.

“Okay, now,” I whispered on our fifth attempt. “Put the string over my left hand again. No, wait—my other hand.” The strings, crisscrossed and knotted around Arie’s wrists and mine, made it impossible to separate us without severing a line unless—and herein lay the trick—we maneuvered through specially formed loops. “We’ve got to be getting close.”

Arie sighed, as if he knew better. Which he didn’t.

I referred back to the splayed pages on my lap, illuminated by a lamp’s flame, kerosene being more plentiful post-strike.

“It’s all too tangled,” he groaned. “I’m telling you, zero chance you’re saving this one either.”

That was the thing about Arie: while not cruel in his delivery, he never lied to spare my feelings. It was a trait I generally appreciated, though not always at the time.

After another look at the diagrams, which showed little resemblance to our mess, I huffed. I’d been determined not to need the knife again so had slid it over on the floor with the other discarded strings. A pile of my failures.