He had taken the power that the adults in that house had been hoarding for three years — the power to decide whether Holly’s mistreatment would be tolerated or answered — and he had placed it, deliberately, into the hands of the one person who had never once been allowed to hold any: Holly herself.

He was not asking a seven-year-old to fight his battle.

The battle was his; he had already fought it, already drawn the line, already done the grown-up thing that stood behind the box.

What he was giving her was something subtler and, I think, more precious.

He was giving a child who had been made to feel powerless the actual experience of power — the dignity of choosing, of being the one who decides, of learning in her own small body that she was not a leaf the adults blew around a room but a person with a hand on the door.

Whatever was in that box, the gift was not the box.