Their home was a two-bedroom place on Alder Lane with a narrow porch, blue shutters that needed painting, and a kitchen radiator that clicked all night when the temperature fell. They had bought it while Mara was pregnant, back when Ethan imagined the house would slowly fill with bicycles, muddy sneakers, and children arguing over bathroom time. The second bedroom held Hope's paper planets and a bed shaped like a little boat, while the main bedroom still had Mara's yellow reading lamp on the nightstand. Ethan had tried to move the lamp once, then set it back before he reached the doorway.
"We only have forty minutes," he told Hope, putting the milk in the refrigerator. She pointed to the clock above the sink. "Forty is lots," she said, "because it's more than six." Ethan laughed in spite of himself. He unbuttoned her coat, hung the Santa hat on a chair, and walked toward the hallway closet in search of a shirt that didn't smell like motor oil.
There was a dark gray suit in a garment bag at the very back. Ethan had worn it to a cousin's wedding, to the service celebrating Mara's life, and exactly once afterward when the shop's bank invited borrowers to a small-business reception. The trousers were a little tighter than he remembered, and the jacket had a small pull in the lining, but the fabric was clean. He put the suit on the bed and looked at it for a long time before reaching for the phone.
Nora Bell answered while the second ring was still sounding. "If this is about your shirt button, Ethan Walker, I told you to bring it over before Christmas," she said. Nora lived next door and had been sewing everything from prom dresses to funeral clothes since before Ethan learned to drive. She was seventy, quick-witted, and had an entire living room devoted to fabric, sewing machines, and photographs of people who appeared happier in clothes she had made.
"It's worse than a button," Ethan admitted. He explained about the woman with the dead battery, the hotel invitation, and Hope's excitement, leaving out the part where he thought he might be too poor to accept a stranger's generosity. Nora listened without interrupting. Then she told him to come over in five minutes and bring the child, the suit, and any shoes he owned that did not have steel toes.
"You don't have to do this," Ethan said. "I know," Nora replied. "That's what makes it enjoyable."
Hope appeared at Nora's front door wearing a burgundy velvet dress that had belonged to Mara when she was little. It had been tucked into a cedar chest after Mara's mother died, and Ethan had found it two weeks earlier while searching for winter blankets. The collar needed mending, the hem was uneven, and the sleeves were an inch too long, but Hope loved the dress because Ethan told her it had once been her mother's. Nora looked at the fabric, recognized its age, and for a moment lowered her eyes to hide the feeling that crossed her face.