"Come here, little star," she said, reaching for the sewing box. She tucked the sleeves, pinned the hem, and replaced two loose buttons with pearls from a jar that had probably outlived several governors. Hope held still with heroic seriousness while Nora worked, then announced that she planned to dance with her father even if he didn't know any dances. "He can learn," Nora said. "People have been learning things at inconvenient times since the world began."
Ethan borrowed a dark tie from Tom, whose house was only three doors farther down, and polished his old dress shoes with a cloth beside the kitchen sink. When he came back to Nora's living room, Hope was standing on a little stool in front of a mirror, her red Santa hat returned to her head. The contrast of the carefully mended velvet dress and the lopsided knitted hat was so thoroughly Hope that Ethan felt tears threaten before he could stop them. She turned at the sound of his shoes.
"Daddy," she whispered. "Do I look like Mom?" Ethan knelt so their faces were level, aware that Nora had turned toward the kitchen to give him a moment. He touched the collar of the dress and smiled with more difficulty than he wanted Hope to notice. "In some ways," he said. "But mostly you look like yourself, and that's my favorite thing."
Hope considered that answer and reached into the pocket of the dress. She withdrew the blue paper star she'd made at the shop, now a little bent from the ride home. "I was going to hang this in the window," she said, "but maybe we can take it to the ballroom and show Mommy the lights from there." Ethan took her small hand. "I think that's a good idea."
Nora walked them to the front door carrying a shoebox wrapped in old Christmas paper. Inside was a pair of patent-leather shoes with silver buckles, worn but lovingly maintained. They had belonged to Nora's granddaughter, who had outgrown them after one birthday party. Hope gasped as though Nora had revealed a chest of royal jewels.
"You don't have to give us those," Ethan protested. "Ethan," Nora said, looking him directly in the eye, "your father kept my husband's truck running for five winters after we stopped being able to pay him. You fixed my furnace the week of the big freeze, and your daughter has been helping me gather fallen apples every September since she learned to walk. If you make this about a pair of shoes, I'll become very disappointed in you."
Ethan nodded, chastened and grateful. Nora fastened Hope's coat, straightened the Santa hat, and kissed the girl's forehead. Then she reached up to adjust Ethan's tie, her hands moving with the brisk confidence of someone who had spent her life preparing people for moments they feared. "You remember something when you get there," she told him. "A room full of expensive clothes is still just a room full of people."
The red pickup started on the second try, which Ethan took as a sign that the evening might have a sense of humor. Snowflakes drifted through the headlights as he backed down the driveway, waving to Nora beneath the yellow porch light. Hope sat carefully on the bench seat in her borrowed shoes, holding the paper star in both hands. After three miles, she asked whether the hotel would have a parking place for a truck like theirs.