He made a dismissive noise. ‘I haven’t done anything, really. It’s you… It’s all you.’

‘No, Brody. It’s you too. You listened when no one else would, when no one else could… Not in the way I needed them to. And you haven’t been afraid to tell me the truth when I needed to hear it.’ She looked helplessly up at the stars, as if maybe they could help her convince him. ‘I wouldn’t have made it through this year without you…’ She trailed off, suddenly wondering if she was reading more into this relationship than there was, but then she thought about how he’d said that he’d called just to hear her voice and it made her feel even more confused.

‘I would love to spend New Year’s Eve with you, Anna. I just… can’t.’

Anna waited, sensing there was more to come. An explanation of some sort, at the very least, but when the silence stretched on longer than she could bear, she said, ‘Brody…?’

She heard him exhale heavily.

‘Are you okay? Is everything all right?’

She could almost hear him wrestling inwardly with his answer. Tell me, she urged him silently. Tell me what it is. Trust me like I trust you.

She heard the kind of intake of breath that only occurs when someone is about to say something. Something big.

And then he let the air out again.

‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’ There was a finality in his tone that told her it would do her no good broaching this topic again this evening. But she wanted to meet Brody. She wanted to see his smile, not just hear it. She wanted to give him a hug and thank him for his friendship.

It had saved her.

For too long she’d been the leach in their relationship, sucking the strength and wisdom out of him because she’d been desperate and grieving. Okay, she was still grieving. But she was no longer desperate, she realized. Somehow, her mourning had entered a new phase, and it was time to stop feeling that she and her pain were the centre of the universe and to start looking outwards again. She closed her eyes with shame at how utterly self-absorbed she’d been.

Was she doing it again now? Was she just thinking about what she wanted and not taking his feelings into account?

Maybe, she had to admit.

Perhaps she needed to back off the idea for now. But that didn’t mean she and Brody couldn’t find some other way to connect further, did it?

‘Okay,’ she said, her mouth forming the beginning of her sentence before her brain had fully formulated her thought. ‘Well, we’ve been virtually anonymous to each other for the five or six months we’ve been talking on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure you’re not an axe-wielding serial killer by now—’

He let out a huff of laughter, and it was as if, in the last few minutes, Anna had developed superhero-like sensitive hearing where he was concerned. She heard the mirth but, underneath it, she also heard what he was desperately trying to keep hidden – relief. He was glad she hadn’t kept pushing that they meet.