“That’s right.

And we don’t have to say no forever, either.”

They placed Thomas’s sunflower photograph on the refrigerator.

It stayed there while Hannah considered her next step.

She thought often of the night at the diner, when she had expected every offer to carry an invisible price.

In the months since, she had learned to accept assistance without surrendering her choices.

She had also learned that setting boundaries did not make her ungrateful.