The mike became a dove that flew out over the audience in a wide arc.

Eloise caught Mike Two, did a spin, flung out her hand …

Another dove flashed into view and followed the first in a wide circle over the heads of the audience.

Another catch, another fling, another dove. Three doves fluttered along the same trajectory like white-feathered boomerangs. Another spin, another fling …

The fourth dove set out to fly the big circle just as the first was finishing.

Ooooh! Ahhhh! Laughter. Astonishment. Applause.

Dove One flew in close to Eloise, but she waved it on. It circled the room again, the others followed, and then they came home, one, two on Eloise’s right hand, one, two on her left. She brought her hands together in front of her, bowed with the birds to receive the applause, then straightened, threw her hands upward …

The doves became a flurry of snowflakes sparkling in the lights, settling ever so slowly to the stage floor.

Backstage, Dane gently put Carson the dove back in his cage. “Good work, little buddy!”

Then he watched her work the crowd with wonder in her eyes, her childlike expression reaching the back row and saying, Wow! Did you see that? How did I do that?

So alive. So free.

On the left side of the auditorium, sitting on the very top row of the bleachers toward the back, a man in his thirties, wearing a crisp, new Cabela’s camouflage jacket and a billed cap, was honestly enjoying the show while he watched the screen of his laptop computer. In a small window in the corner of the screen was a video stream of Eloise’s performance, captured through the tiny camera mounted atop the screen and time-coded. On the main screen, locked into the same time code, columns of numbers rolled faster than the eye could follow, wave patterns rose and fell, blue shapes like time-lapse clouds formed and dissolved against the vertical and horizontal axes of a graph, and all in concert with every stunt and illusion produced by the girl onstage.

The data were streaming in faster than he could study and analyze in real time, but it was easy to see the trends and appraise the situation. The readings from the coffeehouse were confirmatory and alarming.

These readings were worse.

The lights in the living room dimmed except for the multicolored lights on the Christmas tree and the glow from the fireplace. “And can you turn off that lamp?”

Dane reached over and switched off the table lamp, then settled back on the couch.

“Ta-daaa!”

Eloise made her grand entrance into the living room, face glowing and eyes sparkling in the light of six candles atop a fancy chocolate cake. She didn’t just walk into the room, she made a procession of it, bearing the tea tray out in front of her as if conveying the crown jewels into the presence of the king. “Merry Christmas to you, and happy birthday to you …” When she came to his name in the song she sang it for several counts, grinning at the privilege, then set the tray with the cake, two plates, and two forks on the coffee table. She sat on the love seat opposite, elbows on her knees, chin propped on her knuckles, eyes giddy. “Make a wish!”

All he could do was gaze at her while the candles burned. Make a wish?

His birthday was on the sixteenth, but Christmas on Saturday was the ideal opportunity to celebrate both, and Eloise leaped at it. She prepared a dinner, Chicken Kiev, and baked the cake in his kitchen, accepting help from him only with questions that began with “Where do you keep the … ?” and “Do you have any more of … ?” She set the table in the dining room with his best silverware and dishes and brought some candles for the centerpiece in case he didn’t have any, which he didn’t. Dinner was at six o’clock, and at her request, he wore a jacket and tie. She made all the meal preparations wearing her jeans, blouse, and running shoes, but then, with a magical flair, she vanished into the guest bedroom and reappeared for dinner in a dress. It was black, cute, and tasteful, conforming to her waist and draping from her hips to a teasing hem above her knees. The diamond earrings twinkled just below her haircut, and the diamond necklace adorned her neck. She sat with her ankles crossed, and around her right ankle was another surprise: a silver anklet.

The candles kept burning, and her eyes softened from giddy to serene. She eased back, folded her hands in her lap, and said nothing more about the wish. She just returned his gaze, then playfully shrugged a shoulder, her smile closing the distance between them, her hair a sunrise in the glow of the fireplace.

What he thought, he couldn’t share: he was sitting across from a perky, take-on-the-world, blue-eyed kid, but in the eyes of this girl were the depth, the spirit of a woman—the woman he would make his own and share his life with for the next forty years—forty years ago.

Oh, he could make a lotof wishes.

“What?” she finally asked.

All he could tell her was as much truth as his best wisdom would allow. “Ellie, I am compelled to say that you look absolutely lovely tonight, and you have made my Christmas a manifold and uncontainable blessing. Thank you so very much.”

And without a wish, he blew out the candles.

Eloise stared at the candle wicks as they smoked and smoldered down to a cold, black nothing. There was a dead space. No words.

Oh, and she wasn’t smiling. She put her smile back on and gave a little clap. “Yay!” Then she stepped to the wall and eased the lights up about half.

Was he happy? Was he having a good time? She hurried back to her seat and met his eyes, looking for … well, just the look he had a moment ago. It was sort of there, but now … well, the candles weren’t lighting up his face anymore, the lights were half on, the wishing was over.

The cake was a little crooked, but it came out great otherwise; all he had to do was taste it. The Chicken Kiev could have been a little more crumbed and maybe a little lighter on the pepper, but he loved it, he really talked about it, he ate a bunch of it.

She just had to know, “Are you having a good time?”

“Very much. You’ve no idea.”

She cut a slice of cake for him—he wanted only a little one—and one for herself, just a little smaller. “So, how does it feel being sixty? Is it … I mean, I can’t imagine being that old …” Her hand went over her mouth, and she laughed at the gaffe.

But so did he. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance, Lord willing. I kind of like it. I get a big kick out of asking people where they were when they first heard Kennedy was shot. Used to be you could ask anybody and they’d know.”

She took a bite of cake instead of telling him: seventh-grade music appreciation class with Mr. McFaden. “I guess you’ve lived through a lot of history.”

“So will you. Someday you’ll be the only one who remembers where you were when you heard about 9/11.”

“I … I suppose you remember the Beatles.”

Big, oh-yes nod. “Grew my hair out long, bought all their records, got a lot of flak in church about it. I can remember standing in line outside the Paramount Theater in Seattle waiting to see A Hard Day’s Night.”

She went with Joanie at the Wilma in Coeur d’Alene. She screamed because Joanie did.

“I lived through Vietnam and Watergate. I remember Mandy and me sitting in a motel room in Elko, Nevada, watching the Watergate hearings on a black-and-white TV.” He laughed. “Oh, wow, that old Sam Ervin! You should have seen him. What a character!”

Missed that one, too.

“I remember Neil Armstrong first setting foot on the moon: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’”

With Walter Cronkite on CBS. Daddy and she had made popcorn. Right?

She was such a liar … She had been there, but she was pretending she hadn’t because, come on, how would it sound to say, guess what, I remember that stuff, too?