Amala’s unofficial parents were the most generous and loving people she had ever encountered, and she considered herself greatly blessed to have been taken into their home and their lives. Oliver was tall and thin with barely a hint of gray hair left on his balding head, but his lack of hair didn’t detract from his fine features that had—according to Viola—only grown more handsome with age. Viola was also tall—at least compared to most women. But still she was more than a few inches shorter than her husband. Her hair had also gone gray, but it was long and thick and always looked striking no matter how it was styled. Right now a portion of it was pinned up artistically at the back of her head while the rest hung down her back in an array of curls. Viola had the hair of a woman half her age, which made her age show less in her face than did the ages in the faces of most women of her generation. Ironically her hair was styled very much the same as Amala's and Kat's—which was likely due to the fact that the same maid had done all of their hair earlier this evening. Since the style was certainly flattering on all of them, it worked well.

Viola had a well-rounded figure but by no means carried any superfluous weight. Together, Oliver and Viola Hepworth were a handsome couple, and any stranger only had to observe them together for a minute or two in order to conclude that they loved and respected each other. Amala felt sure that the love they felt for each other was so great that it had spilled over and made it possible for them to love her as much as they loved their own daughter. Whatever the reasons, she praised God every day for the way she felt such a place of belonging, love, and acceptance among them. For it was only among the Hepworth family that she felt that way. But if she ever took to feeling sorry for herself, she only had to imagine an orphaned Indian girl with no family, begging in the streets for her survival. While it hadn’t been spoken of often, Amala knew from all she’d been told of her situation that it surely would have been that way. Some of her memories of India were vague and cloudy, but she had very clear memories of holding to her mother’s skirts while they pushed their way through crowds of people on a narrow city street—memories of the beggars with their ragged clothes, their sunken faces, and their outstretched hands.

“I saw you dancing earlier,” Viola said, bringing Amala out of her unsavory thoughts. “Given that it was a very lively waltz, I didn’t get a good look at him, but from what I could see, he looked rather handsome.”