They go out, mostly on weekends, but sometimes after school – to the aquarium, to the Museum of Science, the Children’s Museum – and occasionally her nieces or nephews join them. But Abbie is always thrilled to go anywhere and her enthusiasm is contagious. Her mind is like a sponge and she asks Caroline a thousand questions, several of which she has no idea how to answer without Googling first.

It’s fun and Caroline feels like it chases away those cobwebs of loneliness that have been making their home in her life for the last few years.

Boundaries, she tells herself, are still somewhat in place. Right.

***

Her relationship with Hannah also grows.

She comes over to pick up Abbie and often ends up staying for dinner. The first time, she’d lingered in the doorway, looking tired after her double shift. And it had only taken Caroline a moment of enticement with Hannah’s own home cooking having been freshly reheated to lure her inside to relax.

After Abbie regales her with the stories she’d told Caroline earlier, Hannah takes over and talks about the clientele at The Bean Dream.

She learns about the intern who comes in every morning at nine fifteen sharp and is wildly frantic, every single day. The businesswoman who comes in and orders without looking up from her phone, to the point that Hannah doesn’t even think she knows what she looks like. The foreman who grumbles about coffee prices. She’s invested in the drama between Hannah’s boss Jo and her revolving door of suitors.

Hannah deserves something easy for once. A break from the hoops she’s been jumping through for years and from the uphill battle she’s been shouldering alone for the last year. And Caroline finds that she’s happy to co-shoulder.

It’s easy and warm and feels a lot like her house is a home.

As they stand literally shoulder-to-shoulder to wash dishes after dinner, Hannah admits, “I never thought we would become friends.”

And she pauses as she rinses a glass, the term throwing her for a loop. “Is that what we are? Friends?”

Hannah gives her a look like she’s absolutely insane. But her voice is gently teasing. “Yes, Caroline, we are.” She plucks the glass from Caroline’s fingers. “If I were just anyone, would you be watching my kid or having dinner with me? Because if you weren’t my friend, I wouldn’t be trusting you with Abbie or wanting to hear your stories about your work and family.”

“You have a point,” she concedes with a grin, even though she thinks I don’t really do that with my friends, either.

But she likes this routine. She likes these nights, the weekend outings. She likes that they are friends.

Sometimes, she thinks, boundaries are overrated.

***

She wishes she and Hannah hadn’t only known each other peripherally for so long.