Hannah’s voice is raspy and sleepy in her ear. “It is. You’re right.” She yawns, snuggling down into the blankets with a quiet sigh. “Thank you for talking to me tonight. You’re the one who was injured and you’re calming me down in the middle of the night.”

Caroline lays down, too. “Thanks for caring. I promise not to be hit in the face again.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Hannah laughs softly, tiredly. “Goodnight, Caroline.”

“Goodnight Hannah.”

***

The afternoon is fairly hazy for her when she thinks about it, but there’s something that stands out to her after they hang up the phone.

“This is just what I was afraid of! As soon as you knew –”

It sticks in her mind, a new mystery. What was Hannah afraid of? And what in the world does she think Caroline knows?

xiii

xiii

That phone call is the beginning of a new routine for them.

Every night around ten, when Hannah usually goes to bed, Caroline gets a text. And if she’s prompt enough – not in the shower or caught up in work – and texts back, she gets a phone call.

It’s usually pretty brief, with Hannah’s voice soft and tired.

“How are you? Do you feel okay?” is always what comes out of her mouth first, even if Caroline has seen her earlier that day.

And she’ll roll her eyes even as she feels so freaking cared for, as she confirms. “I’m perfectly fine. Better with makeup now than I’ve ever been in my life.”

When Hannah laughs, Caroline gasps. “I knew it would be funny to you at some point.”

The laughter immediately indignantly cuts off. “I – no,” she protests, weakly.

It’s a short conversation later – maybe ten minutes, maybe twenty – before Hannah yawns widely and murmurs. “Goodnight, Caroline.”

She loves it, going to bed with Hannah’s voice in her ear. The only thing she can do to exert any control over herself, really, is not let herself wait for when ten o’clock rolls around. She forces herself to keep in her normal routines; if she has work to finish, she doesn’t let herself take a break. But… it’s more often than not that she rushes to answer.

She doesn’t get the answer to what Hannah meant when she’d come storming in, about what she was afraid of. She tries to ask a few days after the whole incident, but Hannah brushes it off with a nervous titter. “It – nothing. I don’t even know.”

It doesn’t sound natural at all, but rather, like she very much doesn’t want to talk about it. So Caroline drops it, even though it remains on her mind. She’s never done very well with unanswered questions.

***

She finally gets the answer on her birthday.