Chapter 320: I had every right to be
Julian didn’t say what was wrong. He didn’t need to. He’d already understood there was a root sitting under the question, and that pulling at the leaves wouldn’t get him there faster than just being present while she found her way to it herself.
Amara looked at him.
She didn’t say Amira was here. Not yet. The words were sitting somewhere behind her sternum, ready, but she wasn’t ready to hand them over, standing in the hallway with the twins still circling underfoot and a paper bag of churros somewhere being divided unequally.
"Okay," she said instead. Quietly. "You’re right. I know."
Julian held her gaze a moment longer, long enough to tell her, without saying it, that whatever this was, he’d wait for it, and that the waiting cost him nothing.
Then he straightened and turned, calling toward the kitchen with easy authority. "Celia, bath time for these two, please, and a change before dinner."
"Yes, sir," Celia said, already moving, scooping Josh up with practiced ease while the second nanny took Justina’s hand.
"Bye Mummy," Justina said, pony still clutched tight, already being carried off toward the stairs, already talking again something about whether the pony could come in the bath.
Amara watched them go. Julian came back to her in the hallway.
She was still kneeling where the twins had been, her hands resting empty on her thighs, looking at the space they’d just left as though it could tell her something. He crouched beside her, then reached for her elbow, gentle, steady.
"Come here, darling." He drew her up with him, careful, as if she might be unsteady on her feet, and in some way that wasn’t about her legs, she was. "Talk to me. What’s wrong?"
She let him pull her up. She stood facing him in the quiet hallway, the house settled now into its evening sounds, water running upstairs, Celia’s voice low and cheerful, the clatter of bath toys.
"Amira was here," she said.
Julian’s face didn’t change much. He’d been braced for something since the moment he walked in. "Okay," he said, evenly. "And you sent her away." He said it like a fact he already half-knew, offering it to her gently so she wouldn’t have to be the one to say it first.
"You don’t have to feel bad about that. You don’t have to feel guilty about cutting some people out of your life. You gave her more chances than most people would have given anyone. You don’t owe her another one just because she came back and begged."
"I know," Amara said. "But she didn’t come here to beg." She looked at him. "She came to ask for help."
"Help?" Julian’s brow drew together. "Help, what for?"
"She has a daughter." Amara’s voice caught slightly on the word, then steadied. "About the same age as ours. It must be Leo’s. The baby, her name is Hope." She pressed her lips together for a second. "She’s sick, Julian."
He went very still, listening now in a different register.
"I was so angry seeing her again," Amara went on. "I had every right to be. But she got down on her knees, Julian. In the garden. On her knees, begging me to help save her daughter, and I couldn’t even bring myself to ask her what was wrong with the baby. She’s just a baby." Her voice was rising slightly, the words coming faster now, the anxiety underneath them starting to surface.
"I’m a mother. What kind of mother sends another mother away like that? Tells her to go to the foundation tomorrow and just...just closes the door? She’s still my family, Julian. The only sister I have. What if.."
She stopped herself.
"What if what?" Julian said quietly.
Amara looked away from him, toward the window, toward the dark garden outside where the bougainvillea had gone purple-black in the evening light.
"What if I get punished for it?" she said, smaller now. "For not showing her enough sympathy. For not even asking if she’s alright. What if something happens to my children because I couldn’t bring myself to be kind to my own sister when she needed it?"
Julian took her face in both hands, gently, turning her to look at him. "Amara. Look at me."
She did. "I didn’t even ask what’s wrong with her," Amara said. "I should have asked." Amara’s eyes were wet now, finally, the held thing in her chest loosening.
"She had her hair back to black," she said, almost absently, the way grief sometimes wanders sideways into small details. "No more red. She looked so tired, Julian."
"I know," he said. Though he didn’t, not really, he hadn’t seen her, but he said it the way you say it when what matters is that she’s not standing in this alone.
He pulled her in, and she let her forehead rest against his shoulder, and for a moment neither of them said anything else. Upstairs, Justina’s laugh rang out over the sound of running water, bright and entirely unaware of anything.
Julian held her a moment longer, then drew back just enough to look at her properly.
"You’re a really good person, my love," he said. "You have a kind heart. God isn’t going to punish you for protecting your own peace." He brushed a thumb gently along her jaw.
"After everything Amira’s put you through, it’s okay that you didn’t invite her into the house. It’s okay that you offered her help the way you’d offer it to a stranger, and told her to go to the foundation. That’s not coldness, Amara. That’s a boundary you earned the hard way." He paused.
"But I understand how you feel. I’ll make some calls. Find out how she’s doing, and what’s wrong with the baby."
"No," Amara said, shaking her head. "It’s okay, you don’t have to. We’ll find out at the foundation tomorrow anyway."
"I know you," Julian said, a small smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "You won’t be at peace until you know. So let me find out tonight, so we can both rest." His thumb traced once more along her cheek. "Alright?"
She let out a breath, something loosening in her shoulders. "Thank you, Julian."
"Of course."
"And," she added, glancing up at him, "I also know you bought back the Pedro corporation."