They start spending weekends together, undertaking projects.

The Daughter tells Hannah about the real estate office, about her clients and friends, the art students back in college, as they lay together in bed. Hannah shares stories about her clients, their wants and gripes. She's an architect with her own up-scale office in town, but she'd much prefer to spend her days with a hammer in her hand, pulling out rotting wood and fixing up old houses herself. 

Together they restore the rusted gas pumps which now stand proudly side-by-side, two gleaming fire-engine-red twins with the logo of a long-gone gasoline brand crowning their heads like moons. A few days after they're finished a retired couple on vacation stops just to look at the pumps and take pictures. Didn't think there were any more of these left anywhere, you're too young to remember but....and they leave two hours later with one of her tree portraits, a magical looking family of maples in their autumn dresses, enveloped in bubble-wrap and wedged into their backseat between suitcases and a drinks cooler.

An up-close study of the interior of Hannah's motorcycle turns out more striking than the Daughter imagined. It starts a series of canvases based on machinery. See, says Hannah, first the garage and now the hot-rods. The Daughter remembers all of the shiny little cars in their cardboard boxes that were just as out of reach as the garage itself, and agrees. Why hadn't she thought of it sooner? 

Cogs, vents, motors, springs, wires. What she learned from painting trees she now applies to the man-made bramble of motors and tubing. The arousing scents of grease and motor oil seem to waft out from the new images and even Clover, who has no interest in machines, is enthusiastic.

For her birthday, Hannah gives the Daughter an Indy 500 souvenir ashtray. They laugh until they can't breathe.

The Daughter tells Hannah the history of the dollhouse that's sleeping down in the mini-cellar. About the dark-haired girl at her birthday party and that, years ago, a former girlfriend wanted to sell it for beer money. She was right, says Hannah, her eyes soft in the candlelight, you should've.

At the end of January, the Daughter mounts her second show.

The show stopper? A painting of the garage as it must have looked in the 60s when it was a buzzing hive of activity, and below it – the toy garage itself – dug out of the recesses of Ray and Hannah's parents' attic and decorated with toy cars zooming in and out of its three pull-up garage doors and around the red gas pumps. It's a present from the both of them, even if Ray is now rather sheepish in the Daughter's presence. He writes a sparkling article about the show, under-the-hood art in a real-life grease monkey atmosphere, and is at both the vernissage and opening in his best suit jacket.

The roads are clear and guests are plentiful: wound-up tight in coats and scarves, they seem relieved to have a reason to escape their own homes in this dark, blank period of the year. The Daughter greets them all, offers kettle-hot tea and coffee, and encourages them to take part in the raffle.

In a corner, out of the way, stands the dollhouse, relieved of its grave clothes and resurrected after all these years. Hannah's hauled it up out of the mini-cellar, re-wallpapered and re-shingled it so it looks brand new. The furniture and possessions of the dollhouse family have also been unwrapped and placed in the rooms again. To the Daughter's surprise, a number of people write their names and phone numbers on a scrap of paper and drop it into the box next to the dollhouse. She catches Freda slipping her name in twice, and Clover eyeing it possessively, but obviously having decided she's too old for such things.

And suddenly, they're there. The Father and Mother.

Hannah sent them the article and an invitation. They all shake hands, Hannah introducing herself. So, this the garage, huh? Where's the rock band? quips the Father in his usual attempt to lighten the atmosphere before he ducks out of sight, leaving the women to themselves. The Mother smiles, but it's a tight-lipped, wrinkle-inducing smile. We're proud of you, sweetheart, it says, even if we don't understand this. Hannah shows the Father and Mother around the show. They nod and point, reminiscing about the Daughter's college days, although they don't seem able to connect that to the art they see around themselves now.

They're nervous, thinks the Daughter.

That's because they don't know you yet, answers the garage.

It's the Father who discovers the dollhouse.

Hey, don't I recognize this?

Oh, SWEETHEART! Your dollhouse! And you still have it out to play with! Remember what wonderful times we had together with this house? You only ever wanted to play with it! the Mother's hand lovingly glides over the roof. When she was little she only wanted to play dollhouse, never anything else! It was always 'Let's play dollhouse! Let's play dollhouse!' the Mother enthuses to Hannah, her face seeming to shed decades as old memories unbox themselves and unravel out onto the garage's tiles. And all she ever wanted for Christmas or her birthday were things for her dollhouse. I remember it like it was yesterday."

The Daughter feels Hannah's hand pressing into her side and opens her mouth to speak, but the Father gets there first.

Looks like she's aiming to sell, though.

And now the Mother sees the WIN ME sign.

Oh, sweetheart, no! Not your precious dollhouse! Whatever for, sweetheart? You loved it so much! No, no, don't get rid of it. Save it for your daughter! She'll love it one day, just like you did!

The Daughter looks out through the large front windows ringed in fog from the cold for a moment, and then at the toy garage sitting like a miraculous apparition from her childhood under its bold, vibrant counter-image in oil. Go on, they say.

Mother, my name is Rachel.

Wha...of course, it is, sweetheart, but...

And no. I never liked that dollhouse very much. That was you, and Rachel points to the toy garage, and that was me.

The Mother is speechless. She turns first to the Father, then stares unbelievingly at the garage and then at Rachel.

But you DID, sweetheart. You loved that dollhouse. I remember! I REMEMBER! You did.... 

Didn't you?