Ethan pulled out her chair and lifted her into it, careful of the borrowed shoes. Evelyn watched him set the Santa hat on the chair back and fold Hope's napkin across her lap as naturally as if they were in their little kitchen on Alder Lane. She understood then that the man who had rescued her car had not performed a remarkable act of charity. He had simply brought the habits of his ordinary life to a parking lot where they happened to be needed.
Across the table, Nolan Pierce was watching too. He held a glass of sparkling water and wore the expression of someone performing arithmetic that refused to balance. His eyes moved from Hope's small hand touching the place card to the work-roughened fingers of her father resting on the tablecloth. For the first time that evening, Nolan seemed less concerned about the evening's budget than about who had been allowed to sit close enough to hear it discussed.
The first course had not yet been served when Hope spotted a man in a white service jacket adjusting the crooked star on the Christmas tree. She tugged Ethan's sleeve and asked whether people who worked at the hotel were allowed to dance. Ethan hesitated, trying to decide how to answer without turning the evening into a lesson about inequality. Evelyn followed Hope's gaze, saw the older employee on the step ladder, and remembered that he had been hanging the same decorations before she was born.
"His name is Mr. Bellamy," she told Hope. "He knows more about this hotel than nearly anyone." Hope considered this information. "Then he should get a very good chair," she declared. Graham let out a surprised laugh, and for the first time in months it sounded enough like his old laugh that Evelyn turned to look at him.
The evening, it seemed, had already begun to rearrange more than the seating chart.
The man beside the Christmas tree climbed down his step ladder and examined the crooked silver star as though he were diagnosing a patient. Arthur Bellamy was sixty-eight, wore his white hair short, and had worked at the Grand Alder since the days when Graham Hartwell carried bags upstairs himself. He had been a dishwasher, a porter, a maintenance supervisor, and finally the unofficial guardian of all the building's holiday decorations. His wife had died in February, and this was the first Christmas he had spent in the hotel without her waiting at home with soup on the stove.
Evelyn had sent him a sympathy card in the spring, along with flowers and an offer of leave he declined. She had told herself she would invite him to lunch after the busy season, then again after the renovations, then once more when the gala planning settled down. None of those lunches had happened. Now, watching Arthur adjust a star while hundreds of guests gathered to celebrate generosity, she felt the unpleasant recognition of a promise postponed until it had almost disappeared.
Hope climbed down from her chair and approached him with Ethan close behind. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "did you put all the lights up? Arthur looked down at her red Santa hat and gave a slow, surprised smile. "Not by myself, young lady.