Chapter 369: Mummy’s here
Justina was leaving campus with Lucy when she spotted Sebastian near the front gates, and her heart dropped straight through her chest before she’d even fully registered why. She quickened her pace toward the parking lot, not trusting herself to walk past him slowly.
"Aren’t you even a little curious how he’s doing?" Lucy asked, and the question stopped Justina cold, right there on the path, guilt crawling up through her all over again.
Before she could answer, Sebastian had already seen her and was crossing the distance between them.
"Hey, Justina. How are you doing?" His voice was quiet, careful, none of the composure she remembered from the first time she’d met him in that police station lobby all those months ago.
Justina only nodded, unable to trust her voice, and Sebastian seemed to notice the way she shifted her weight, the way her hands wouldn’t quite hold still at her sides.
"How is he?" Lucy asked, since Justina clearly wasn’t going to.
"Not great," Sebastian admitted. "I’m here to collect his things from the school. We’re taking him abroad for treatment, better care than he’d get staying here." He turned to leave, then paused, glancing back at Justina as something had occurred to him he couldn’t quite walk away without saying.
"I imagine Nolan told you about your mother and me," he said, quieter now. "I was a terrible person to her, back then. Everything that happened, all of it was my doing. Your mother is an extraordinary woman, Justina, and if anyone in this world deserves her, it’s your father. I was the one who lied to her, who let her believe something that was never true." He held her gaze a moment longer. "I hope whatever Nolan told you didn’t poison how you see her. You’re a good kid. I know your mother is proud of you."
He gave her a small, tired nod and walked away toward the parking lot without waiting for a response.
Justina didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. The guilt that had been sitting heavy in her chest for months seemed to double all at once, twisting tighter because Sebastian had just handed her, freely and without being asked, the exact grace she’d refused to give her own mother in that bedroom, the same grace she still hadn’t found the courage to ask for.
Justina dropped Lucy at her hostel and drove home, the radio off, the silence from earlier still sitting heavy in the car with her.
—
At the Vale mansion, it was JJ, as always, who arrived home first, Fiona already waiting at the door with the news before JJ had even fully stepped inside.
"Your mother’s home," Fiona said, and JJ’s whole face lit up.
"She’s really home?" JJ was already running, bag sliding off her shoulder and hitting the floor somewhere behind her, feet pounding up the stairs before anyone could catch her.
"Easy, princess, Mummy’s still recovering," Julian called after her from the doorway, but the words landed somewhere JJ had already left behind, and by the time he’d made it upstairs himself, she was already curled against her mother’s side on the bed, arms wrapped tight around her.
"Mummy," JJ said, voice breaking, and Amara pulled her in without hesitation, holding her as best her still-healing body allowed.
"I’m here now, baby," Amara said softly, a small, sad smile tugging at her mouth. "And I’m not going anywhere."
Julian stood in the doorway and watched them, something easing in his chest at the sight of it, the first fully unguarded happiness he’d seen in that room in three months.
Amara pulled back enough to look at her daughter properly. "Have you been eating well? Look at you." She frowned at whatever weight loss she thought she saw, the reflexive worry of a mother who’d missed ninety days of feeding her children herself.
"I’m just glad you’re home," JJ said, refusing to let go, burying her face back against her mother’s shoulder.
Josh arrived not long after, breathing hard by the time he reached the doorway, an unusual sight in itself, for a boy who normally guarded his energy the way other people guarded money, never spending more of it than a situation strictly required.
He’d run the whole way up, apparently, and stood there a moment catching his breath before crossing to the bed.
"Move," he said to JJ.
"No," JJ said, not budging an inch.
"I want to hug Mum too. I said move."
"Come here, big baby," Amara said, laughing softly despite everything, opening one arm for him while JJ stayed curled against her other side. Josh climbed onto the bed and let himself be pulled in, hugging her from the side with none of his usual restraint.
"Thank God you’re finally home, Mum," he said, voice thick, holding on tighter than he probably meant to.
"How was school?" Amara asked, the same question she always asked, automatic even now.
"Forget about school. How are you feeling?" Josh shifted, settling himself properly onto the edge of the bed beside her, and Amara found herself quietly startled by how much he seemed to have grown in ninety days not just taller, though he was that too, but something steadier in his face, something older.
He reached out, almost without seeming to notice he was doing it, and smoothed a hand over her hair, then along the side of her face, gentle and careful, like he was memorizing every detail of her all over again in case he ever had to go this long without it.
Amara reached up and ran her own hand through his hair, the way she used to when he was small enough to still want that kind of affection openly.
"I’m fine, baby," she said quietly, to both of them at once. "Mummy’s here."
She said it as much for herself as for them, a small, steady anchor thrown out to settle three months of fear all at once, and for a moment, with JJ tucked against one side and Josh’s head bowed close on the other, it was almost enough to make the rest of the world outside that room disappear entirely.