And the sentimentalist felt the need to explain herself to this stranger one last time. “It’s just—I saw the sunrise this morning for the first time in a long time. And it made me realize what I’d done to him—to Danny—and I had been feeling like I didn’t have a place in the world, you know? And then I realized that I did have a place in the world, and it was with him, and—”

The woman interrupted herself, because she realized that the man had called her by her name. “Wait a minute,” she said, hurrying back to him. “You called me Hope.” She went up to the man, who looked up at her, his hands in the pockets of his red and green and yellow and white and blue and purple plaid bathrobe, and she almost demanded, “How did you know my name?”

The woman suddenly felt like she knew the small man with whom she had spent the past fifteen minutes talking. And she was frustrated that she couldn’t see him well—the porch light was illuminating him from behind, so he was still mostly in shadow. “Do I know you?” she queried.

The woman felt like the man was standing in a hole, because he was so small. She would have towered over him even if she hadn’t been wearing her high heels.

She started to initiate a slow-motion do-si-do with him. She wanted to get the man’s face in the light.

The man moved with the woman in the strange, slow do-si-do.

And when they had switched positions, and he was lit from the front, he weakly opened his arms and palms and shrugged ever so slightly to present himself to the woman.

The woman gasped and she felt like she was falling in slow motion as she recognized the man.

It was the man she had come to see.

“Danny?!?” she whispered in disbelief.

“Hello, Hope,” said Danny sheepishly.

Hope felt like everything was spinning and like she might fall over, and the only words she could find to say were, “Danny … I didn’t rec—”

“I know.”

“I didn’t rec—”

“I know.”

“I didn’t even recognize you!”

“I know.”

“You’re so…”

“I know.”

“… small.”

“Yeah. I, uh … lost a lotta hope, I guess. That’ll do a number on ya.”

And then Danny and Hope just stood there staring at each other.

And couldn’t figure out what to say.

So they said nothing.

And they tried to make sense of what was happening.

And the northern lights were hovering in the sky above.

Neither of them took notice. Because, as dazzling as they were on the night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen, they weren’t nearly as dazzling as Hope was to Danny or as Danny was to Hope. (Even though Hope couldn’t quite work out how such a robust young man had become so small and fragile.)

Finally, Hope managed to say, “Danny, I am so sorry I never came back—”