After I bathed and dressed, Dora brushed my hair. For a moment, I felt like a doll she was playing with, her face in my vanity mirror soaked in some fantasy like someday caring for her own daughter. I put my hand over hers to stop what were becoming unnecessary strokes.

“Enough,” I said. “You’ve done a lovely job of preparing me. I fear I might become too dependent on you, Dora.”

“No fear, ma’am,” she said. “I doubt you could become too dependent on anyone.”

She almost bit her own lip after saying that, trembling at what my reaction might be. I looked at her in the mirror and then burst into laughter.

“So quickly,” I said.

“What, ma’am?” she asked fearfully.

“You’ve gotten to know me so quickly,” I said, and she smiled with relief.

Our second dinner went even better than the first. My mother was really a different person, laughing at every joke my father and Garland made, complimenting Garland on how well he managed such a big estate, and then giving me an unexpected compliment by saying, “Corrine knows how to protect beautiful things. I didn’t have to teach her anything when it comes to that.”

“Perhaps she’s inherited so much more from you, Mrs. Dixon, than she realizes now. But in time, she will, I’m sure,” Garland said.

With all the wine he had drunk and my mother’s good spirits, my father looked happier than I had seen him in years. He even looked younger to me. Was it the afternoon delight?

Garland’s violinist, a tall strawberry-blond-haired man, was placed far enough from our table and played so softly that he soon became part of the setting. Every once in a while, my father would toast him. Toward the end of the dinner, Garland called him over and whispered something to him. He returned to his place and continued to play. After we had our golden rod cake, which wasn’t as good as Hazel’s, we all went to the ballroom. I noticed the violinist following us. Garland had that impish twinkle in his eyes.

The room seemed even brighter and more dazzling than previously. Mrs. Steiner and Dora followed us, too, and when Garland signaled to them, they took our glasses of dessert wine. He nodded at the violinist, who began to play a Viennese waltz by Johann Strauss. I was very nervous about it, but I surprised myself, remembering his instruction. My parents were clapping.

“Join us,” Garland called, and they did.

We were all dancing. Were these two really the parents I had known all my life?

When the evening ended, everyone was talking at once, my father reminding my mother that I was remaining at Foxworth Hall.

“It makes so much sense. There’s so much for her to do in so short a time,” he said.