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beginning of many warm acquaintanceships. And then there had been Hannah, who lived immediately adjacent in a crisply painted white cottage,converted from what had once been the carriage house to Gus’s stately home. Hannah had come to the door in faded gray pajamas, her medium-lengthred hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Her skin was pale and free of makeup, and she eyed Gus suspiciously through thick black glasses.
    “What kind is it?” Hannah had asked, gesturing toward the pie, her body partially hidden by her wide mahogany door. She was even thinner back then, all sharp clavicle and bony wrist. And nervous, tremendously nervous. Of course, Gus was immediately smitten: she simply had to add Hannah to her collection of darlings. To the ones she wanted to nurture and nourish. Her girls, their pals, her coworkers: everyone was clay that Gus was eager to mold. She made a pest of herself that summer, dropping over next door with all manner of muffins and cookie bars, her resolve to befriend her neighboronly heightened by the fact that no one else seemed to visit the gentle, wary woman in pajamas. Certainly Hannah, already in her thirties then, was far too old to be a surrogate daughter; Gus imagined she would become like a little sister. But what happened instead was far more welcome: the two women found they had much in common—a shared love of gardening, an unconventional work schedule, a devotion to finding the perfect chocolatechip cookie, and a love of rising early—from which a true friendship sprang.
    When the body wakes up before dawn, as Gus’s typically did, there can be several hours when it seems as though there is no one else in the world. A peaceful time for some. Not Gus: she found these early moments, the house dark, the girls’ rooms empty, the cats snoozing in far corners, to be tremendouslylonely.
    Fortunately, Hannah was quite likely to be on her way over by 7 AM, crossing the unfenced property line between their two homes. Because once it became clear that Gus was going to be persistent, Hannah accepted her friendship as the most natural thing. From early on, she had the peculiar habit of never tapping on the door when she came by, always calling out and making her way inside. With anyone else Gus would have found such a gesture intrusive; with Hannah it seemed perfectly normal. The two of them spent many an early morning sitting in Gus’s bay window, on those overstuffed chairs, dipping biscotti into their cappuccino and having the very same conversation they’d had the day before. That was the thing about their friendship: it was all about the being together, never about doing anything.As such it made few demands. Theirs was an easy intimacy.
    It was also precious: Hannah was the first real friend Gus had made after becoming well known. There was no handbook for becoming semi-famous. (Or at least nothing that had been handed to Gus by the CookingChannel.) In a society thirsting for celebrity, it didn’t take much for people to elevate a widowed mother with a knack for entertaining into a culinary guru. And so even by the late nineties, Gus had developed quite a following, with the requisite cookbooks and calendars, too. It was great; it put Sabrina and Aimee through some good schools. But her sort-of-but-not-quite fame also made it a hurdle to connect—people already “knew” her from TV and therefore it could be a tremendous disappointment to them if Gus turned out, for example, to be even slightly different than they envisioned. To be plain, it had been difficult to make friends. Oh, easy enough to meet people who wanted to say they were chummy with the host of Cooking with Gusto! More challenging to get to know individuals who wanted to know Gus.
    Hannah Levine had been entirely different.
    For one thing, she didn’t watch television. Well, not exactly. Hannah watched multiple channels nonstop: CNN, MSNBC, and CourtTV. But dramas, comedies, home decor or cooking shows? Hannah didn’t