“I’m not ready to see him,” Hannah admitted quietly.

“We can’t ignore him forever,” Miriam told her. “I tried really hard to ignore my past forever. It turns out that’s not how any of this works.”

Hannah hissed before snuggling in closer to Miriam, who hugged her tight.

“I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t go with him. Have you thought about therapy for the whole can’t-leave thing? I mean, if you want. It’s okay if you don’t, you don’t need fixing.”

Hannah sighed. “That’s what Rabbi Ruth keeps telling me to do.”

“Maybe you should listen to them,” Miriam suggested.

Hannah sniffed. “Maybe we should both go to therapy.”

“I will if you will,” Miriam said.

“Deal.”

They sat there, holding hands in front of the fire like they had when they were little, sharing the tissue box.

“I think you should be manager of Carrigan’s All Year operations,” Hannah said, after a few minutes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I always thought so, from the beginning. I just get weird when things are outside of my immediate control. I shouldn’t have put you in the middle of that.”

“It’s not like I’ve never put you in the middle of me getting weird.”

“I have all this anger, since Blue left,” Hannah admitted. “Waves of rage that overtake me, and I don’t know what to do with all of it. If I have everything locked down, in order, it feels like it won’t pull me under.”

Miriam knew exactly how it felt to try to lock everything down so it wouldn’t pull her under.

“Is it working?” she asked her cousin.

“Nope.” Hannah shook her head, emphatically.

“We’re gonna save this farm,” Miriam said, patting their joined hands, “and then we’re going to get some therapy.”

“In the meantime, I’m going to work really hard on giving up some control,” Hannah promised. “Because Noelle’s right. Why is she always right? It’s annoying.”

“Speaking of Noelle…” Miriam began, and Hannah raised her eyebrows. “When she advocated for me earlier, it made me want Things.”

Hannah laughed. “I think you already wanted Things.”

“Okay, true, but I want them NOW. I don’t want to wait anymore. What do you think?”

“Do you need my blessing?” Hannah joked.

Miriam shrugged. “Kind of! And I need your advice about how to get her on board.”

“Well, you have my blessing, if you can convince her. She’s a little gun-shy,” Hannah said, standing up and gathering their crying tissues. “As to how, my best bet would be an ambush. Catch her off guard, so she doesn’t have time to let her brain talk her out of a good thing.”

Miriam thought about it. She could do an ambush. It had Shenanigan potential.

“Don’t hurt her, or I’ll have to kill you,” Hannah added, as she headed for the door.