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She turns to Lacey. Her face changes, goes gentle. "Lacey, I hope he's kind to you. If he isn't, you can ask him to be. It works better than you'd think. And the yellow would look wonderful on you."

Nobody at table six breathes. Carmen has a hand over her mouth, eyes shining. Ruth is nodding with the grim satisfaction of a woman at the end of a war.

Lacey stares at Hollis, then slowly at Grant. A look I recognize. The look of a person doing a very slow sum. Grant opens and closes his mouth twice and then steers her away across the threshing floor.

Hollis sits down. Her hand is trembling when she picks up the water glass. I put mine over it and hold it still.

"I didn't rescue you," I say.

"I noticed."

"I wanted to."

"I know." She laughs, shakily, a thin exhale. "That's the best part."

The fiddles strike up while the pie is going round. Dancing starts on the threshing floor. I don't dance, and I tell her so. She stands anyway and holds out her hand.

"You can sway," she says. "I'll do the rest. I always lead. Nobody ever asks."

"I'll ask."

"Then I'm leading."

She puts my right hand at her waist. The red fabric is warm over the soft curve of her. My palm spans the small of her back. She takes my left, the scarred one, in her right, and lays it against her shoulder blade.

Then she steps in. She's a comfortable weight. She fits against me from my sternum to my belt, the length of her pressed along my front. I feel the fiddles in my teeth and her breath at my collarbone and the slow sway of her hips under my hand.

"Left ear," she says, "is over here. So I'll talk to the right."

"You don't have to."

"I know."

She moves me. One, two, three. One, two, three. I step on her foot in the first bar and she laughs against my shirt. I laugh too, a short startled sound I haven't made in a year. Her head tips back to look at me.

She hums. Low and under the music, a few notes of something old, directly into the side of my neck. My body wants to go slack.

I count. One, two, three. For the first time in fourteen months, it isn't a tool. It's only a rhythm, hers, and I'm following it. Her hip moving under my hand and her hand warm on my shoulder and the bright noisy room gone soft at the edges.

"You're good at this," she says.

"I'm being led."

"You're being wonderful at being led."

"Hollis," I say, into her hair.

"Mm?"

I don't have the rest. I just say it again, quietly. She tightens her hand on mine, and we turn.

At nine, the Walk begins. The town gathers at the bandstand in coats and scarves. Each couple lights its lantern from a single candle Bunny holds, passing the flame one to the next.

Ours is the apricot one, number forty-one. Hollis cups her hands around the wick. The light jumps up behind the paper and turns her face gold.

We go down a path of lanterns through the dark orchard behind the Common. A slow, glowing line of couples winding between the trees. Leaves crunch underfoot. The air smells of cold apples and candle wax. Somewhere ahead, a child is asking if there's more cider. Somewhere behind, a man is telling a woman she was right.

Hollis carries the lantern's handle and I hold the other side of it. The paper throws shifting colors on our hands where they touch.