You’ve kept me waiting a long time,’ she said.” I didn’t realize Alice had come to stand behind me again. “And you ducked your head, like a good Southern gentleman, and said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’” Alice laughed at the memory. Jasper smiled down at her. “You held out your hand, and I took it without stopping to make sense of what I was doing. For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope.”
