Eight months later, sitting in the accessible garden she had meticulously designed at her home, he told her he loved her. “I fell in love with your mind, your compassion, and the way you refuse to be anything less than who you are,” he said, his hand covering hers. “The chair is just how you get around. It’s not who you are.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “You and Lily showed me a future I had stopped letting myself dream of.”

Two years later, they were married in that same grand ballroom. Lily, resplendent in a purple dress, was the flower girl. And as Michael took Charlotte’s hand for their first dance as husband and wife, she marveled at how a little girl, lost in a crowd, had helped her find her way home.