Pictures Of Hollis Woods

Hollis and Josie settle into the Branches’ house. Hollis spends time exploring the whole place, and she and Josie dance joyfully in the snow outside, though they have to come back inside when Josie gets disoriented and forgets why they aren’t at home.

The next morning, Hollis hears a buzzing noise outdoors that sounds a bit like a faraway snowmobile. She worries a bit that their footprints are visible in the show. At breakfast, Josie continues to carve Hollis’s wooden statue and mentions that a holly branch has blown onto the back porch. Unbeknownst to Holly until near the end of the novel, this is an offering from Steven; the snowmobile she heard was him leaving after putting it there, and some of the footprints were his. Hollis retrieves the branch along with some sandpaper for Josie’s carving. She thinks about the Christmas she and Josie will have and wonders what it would be like with the Regans.

Hollis decides to go fishing in the river for their dinner. While she’s at the riverbank, she hears something move and suddenly realizes there’s a person hiding behind the trees (this is also Steven). She runs back to the house in fear, worried that person, whom she assumes was another fisherman, will tell the authorities about them.

In this short picture, Hollis describes a drawing she made of herself looking like an “angel” (110) with purple wings in a feverishly happy mood after the Regans decide to adopt her. When she decides to climb the mountain all by herself, she asks, “Does it make sense that I wasn’t thinking?” (110).

A blizzard arrives at the house in Branches. It relieves Hollis to think that there’s no way anyone can get to them in this weather, though she still wonders what the Regans would think of everything. Hollis decides that today she’ll paint a portrait of Josie and Beatrice to give to Josie as a Christmas present. Josie comes downstairs and is excited for Christmas, but also indicates that she misses the ocean and Beatrice. They wish they had other things, like a radio. Josie says Santa Claus will “bring it all to us on his…” (116), and Hollis assumes Josie has forgotten the word for sleigh, but Josie says no, now Santa comes on “one of those snow things” (116). She is referring to Steven, who is coming on his snowmobile and passing gifts on to Josie. Because of her bad memory, this is as close as she gets to telling Hollis about him. Hollis searches around the house and finds an old radio. They listen to Christmas music while Hollis begins Josie’s portrait. She notices Josie looks sad.