Irene opened her mouth to say, Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to speak? But the room was silent, everyone was looking at her, there wasn’t time to argue. Sam rose and helped her out of her chair. She made a quick, nervous gesture to smooth back her hair, to straighten the lei on her chest. As she approached the podium, the vibration of applause met her ears, if not the sound itself. She smiled and laid her clasped hands on the edge of the lectern. Everyone was smiling. A flashbulb went off in the corner of the room. She thought, What in the devil have I got to say to these people?

In the old days, when Irene’s mother was still alive, when Hank Foster’s drinking was just a feature of him and not the ruination of him, Irene’s parents used to have friends over for dinner. Hank Foster was very good at dinner parties. (Irene’s grandparents would say that dinner parties were about the only thing their son-in-law excelled at.) Irene sat at the top of the stairs in her white flannel nightgown and listened to the goings-on in the parlor and at the dinner table, and it was clear that Dad was the star of the show. He wasn’t the only one who spoke—the best actors know how to play off the supporting roles—but he was the one you wanted to hear, he was the one who made you listen and laugh and think and sometimes cry, who sent you away at the end of the evening with that warm, well-fed, optimistic buzz that said, Now that was a darned good party.

Still, Irene was an analytical child, then as now, and as she got older she started to wonder how he did it. What was the secret to his style, how did he keep everyone pitched forward and engaged? Irene compared her father to her teachers at school, who just rattled on about facts and figures, names and dates, and nobody gave a damn. So why did you give a damn when Hank Foster spoke? Because he didn’t explain his ideas in lectures. He explained them in stories. He made everything human. He made you experience his ideas. She asked him about it over breakfast the next morning, and he laughed and agreed. Tell ’em a good story, I always say.

Now it was Irene’s turn. She stood in front of two hundred and twenty members of Honolulu’s best bigwigs and their tanned, expectant wives, everyone straining to hear what this remarkable woman, this aviatrix, this Irene Foster had to say.

Tell ’em a story, Hank Foster said in her ear.