Hope giggled. "Daddy has the jumper cables. I just watched. Graham nodded gravely. "Very sensible division of labor.
He looked at Ethan. "I'm Graham Hartwell. Evelyn told me about you. Thank you for helping my daughter."
Ethan accepted the older man's handshake, which was firm without being a performance. "She would've found somebody else," Ethan said. Graham shook his head. "Maybe.
But you were there, and you stopped. My wife always said that was the part that mattered. He turned toward the ballroom and offered Hope his arm with the theatrical courtesy of a storybook prince.
"Now," he said, "shall we go see whether those chandeliers are still behaving themselves?" Hope looked back at her father, who nodded. She placed her mittened hand carefully on Graham's sleeve, and the three of them walked past the reception desk together, leaving Felicity staring at the gold invitation as though it had changed meaning while she was holding it.
The ballroom doors opened, and Hope stopped so abruptly that Graham nearly tripped over her. Light poured across the carpet: chandeliers, candles, garlands, mirrors, and the golden reflections of hundreds of tiny bulbs. Every table wore a ring of evergreen branches, and a tree taller than their living room stood beside the stage, dressed with silver stars and glass birds. Ethan heard Hope draw one deep breath, the kind she took before jumping into cold lake water in summer.
"Daddy," she said quietly, "this is what Mom meant." Ethan looked down at her. "What do you mean, honey?" Hope spread her arms to include the entire room. "When she said the stars were inside the story."
He could not answer immediately. Graham understood enough to give them the silence without asking a question, and the orchestra began to play a familiar waltz across the room. The old man led them toward a table near the center of the ballroom, where a card marked ONE stood beside a tall candle arrangement. Evelyn rose from her seat the moment she saw them.
She had changed into a midnight-blue evening dress with a soft velvet wrap, her hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. For a second she looked less like the woman who had been angry beside a dead battery and more like the woman in a portrait hanging over the staircase. Then she saw Hope and broke into a smile so unguarded that Ethan recognized her at once. She knelt beside the little girl.
"You came," Evelyn said. Hope nodded vigorously. "Nora fixed my dress, and Daddy found a tie, and the man at the door drove our truck away but he said he'd bring it back." Evelyn laughed. "I'm glad you trusted him," she said. "May I show you your seat?"
The place cards were arranged between engraved water glasses and folded linen napkins. Ethan's name sat beside Evelyn's, and Hope's beside Graham's, with enough room for both to reach the centerpiece without stretching. Hope ran a finger beneath the letters spelling her name. "Nobody ever made me a card at dinner," she whispered.