"We'll find the right place," he promised. Hope nodded, apparently satisfied, and ran to retrieve her mittens. Through the front window Ethan watched snow begin to fall on the empty parking spaces outside the shop, gathering along the dented hood of his red pickup. He slipped the landlord's letter into the same pocket as the payment reminder, turned off the lights, and locked the door.
Their first stop was the grocery store at the Whitcomb Plaza, where the shelves were already half empty and a cardboard Santa had lost one of his eyes. Hope steered a small child-sized shopping cart through the produce section with such concentration that Ethan almost forgot how tired he was. They bought milk, cocoa, two potatoes, a bag of oranges, and the smallest ham left in the refrigerated display. When Hope spotted a box of cinnamon cookies shaped like snowflakes, she looked at him hopefully and then at the price.
"We can make our own," she announced before he had to answer. Ethan hated that she had learned to protect him from disappointment. He picked up the box and put it in their cart anyway, ignoring the voice in his head adding up the difference. "Sometimes," he told her, "we can let somebody else do the baking."
At the register, the cashier recognized Hope from the Lantern House. "You going to see Santa at the hotel tonight?" she asked. Hope looked up. "Which hotel?" The cashier explained that the Grand Alder hosted a Christmas Eve gala and that Santa sometimes visited before the dinner, although the tickets cost more than any sane person would pay for a meal.
"It's not really for kids," Ethan said gently as they loaded the bags. "That's okay," Hope replied, but her shoulders settled in a way that made him wish he had kept his mouth shut. She waited until they were in the truck before asking if the hotel had a ballroom. Ethan told her it did, and she pressed her mitten against the window, watching shoppers hurry through the gathering snow.
For most of his adult life, Ethan had found solutions by taking things apart. An engine could be difficult, stubborn, expensive, and infuriating, but the problem still lived somewhere in the machine. If a starter failed, he could replace it; if the timing was wrong, he could adjust it; if a piece of metal broke, he could weld or rebuild it with enough patience. There was no comparable manual for a six-year-old who missed her mother, and there was certainly no simple repair for the way poverty narrowed a child's expectations.
He was thinking about that when he saw the woman beside the dark station wagon. She stood beneath the glow of a shop sign, phone pressed to her ear, shoulders rigid with frustration. A small cloud of vapor rose from the car's tailpipe and vanished, which told Ethan she had been trying to start it. The driver-side door was open, the headlights were dim, and the woman was watching the dashboard as if anger could restore a battery's charge.