Then she brought me a friendship bracelet.
We had been inseparable ever since.
She was there when my father died.
She stood beside me at my wedding.
She was the first person outside the family to hold Mason.
And when his diagnosis came, Hannah never treated him as fragile.
She never said, “Poor thing.”
She never talked about him as though he wasn’t in the room.
She simply crouched in front of six-year-old Mason one afternoon and asked, “So, do you still think the number fourteen bus has the best route?”
Mason looked at her suspiciously.
“No. Twenty-seven.”
“Why?”
“It passes the train station.”
“Fair.”
From then on, she belonged to him too.
When Mason was eight, Hannah began asking whether she could take him out occasionally.
“For practice,” she said.
“What kind of practice?”
“Being somewhere that isn’t home, school or therapy.”
She made it sound sensible.
