And another moment.
And on the third moment, the one that really sold it, she cried harder than she’d ever cried in her entire life.
She cried so hard, in fact, that Olivia canceled her next session and let Hanna babble at her for another hour, soaking through every last tissue in the office. She cried about her dad. She cried about her mom. She cried about an unfortunate haircut in high school that she’d gotten teased about for weeks. She cried about Logan. A lot.
And Milo even more.
And when she was done crying about all of them, she cried about herself, because—as Olivia had pointed out—she deserved the same amount of mourning as everyone else.
And when she finally ran out of people to cry about, she felt like a different person—empty, but in a relieving way.
“You’ve been holding onto that for a long time,” Olivia said when she felt Hanna had safely wound herself to a stopping point.
“I guess so.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Well, for starters, I’m going to hydrate.”
Olivia didn’t laugh, but she blinked, signaling that she was not going to let Hanna sweep anything under the rug with a joke.
“I have some calls to make, I think.”
“Let’s reschedule again for next week?”
She could tell Olivia was never going to let her out of her sight again.
Hanna agreed and left the office, deciding to stop at the hardware store on the way home.
It was time for her to get to work.
“What about the emerald?” Cami asked, holding up a patterned tile beneath a myriad of lighting fixtures. “With the bronze hardware?”
“Oh,” Hanna said, taking the tile from Cami’s hands. She sipped on her iced coffee, trying to ignore the pang in her chest as she assessed how far off the shade of green was from a pair of eyes she’d spent a good amount of time not thinking about. “I love it.”
“Let me see the faucets again,” Cami said, slipping her reading glasses on. It was a move Hanna recognized, one her mother would have done too. She took a deep breath, letting the moment hurt and then pass.
Hanna swiped through the photos she'd collected in her camera roll as the shipments had arrived and found the section dedicated to bathroom fixtures. She handed the phone to Cami who held it up to a few other tile samples and clicked her tongue.
“I think it’s the emerald,” Cami reaffirmed. “Oh! Sara’s calling.”
“You can answer it,” Hanna said, squatting to the bottom shelf and reading the labels on buckets of grout.
“Hola, mi amor!”
“Mom?” Sara asked over the speaker. Cami held the phone closer to Hanna.
“Hi! Your mom is helping me pick out tile for my bathroom!”
“So you do know how to answer calls,” Sara quipped. Hanna took the phone from Cami.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry.”
Sara laughed, a gentle reassurance that she understood.
“I was just calling to confirm your flight details for the wedding. The itinerary you sent doesn’t have a return flight.”
Hanna drew in a slow breath. “It doesn’t?”
