“I want Abbie to have everything. Every opportunity I could never have. Including having two parents being there for her. But I just couldn’t stay for that, anymore. Not that he ever wanted to spend time with her, anyway.”

Hannah lays it all out for her, over periodic pauses and staring out the window with a far-off look in her eye as she recounts what she refers to as “her mistakes.”

“I’m embarrassed,” she admits, as they watch the snow fall outside of the café, one afternoon in February. Well, as Hannah watches it and Caroline watches her. “I’m mortified to tell you – to tell anyone – about…” The look on her face in the reflection of the window she’s staring out of grows hard – shame and bitterness welling up in those gray eyes. “My mom, before she died, never knew how controlling he was, how –” She breaks off and clears her throat. “I hid it from her as much as I could because I didn’t want her to worry. But she wanted me to leave him, too.”

“And I’m an idiot. An absolute idiot for staying with him for so long. For dropping out of college and giving up a degree I wanted so badly, that I worked so hard for. For letting him make me afraid to think certain thoughts or be who I am or want what I want. For thinking an angry, lying, absent parent would be better for Abbie to see and be let down by every day than for her to see me be strong. I wish I could go back in time, to my twenty-two year old self and shake her –”

The self-loathing in her tone is something Caroline has heard many times before with other clients. It makes her sick every time.

Particularly paired with the mirroring look in Hannah’s eyes, though. As if Hannah is able to perfectly picture herself, looking like she would do anything to be able to go back and just – change it all. Wondering why she didn’t.

Their meetings are taking a lot out of her, it’s plain for Caroline to see it after a couple of weeks.

She writes on her legal pad a contract for Hannah. It’s simple.

I, Hannah Shailene Dalton, will not refer to myself as an idiot in the presence of Caroline Amy Parker. I acknowledge that I have nothing to be ashamed about for living my life to the best of my ability.

And she signs her own.

I, Caroline Amy Parker, promise Hannah Shailene Dalton that there is never any judgment regarding her marriage and the choices she made to survive.

Hannah signs hers with a head shake and a reluctant smile, even as her eyes warm to melted silver.

***

The day after they sign their contracts, Caroline makes a detour to The Bean Dream before she goes to have dinner at her brother, Brian’s.