“Yes,” Julianne said.
Mira reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “Good. That means you understand it’s real. Brave people are scared too.”
Julianne looked at her sister.
Mira had always been the one who left first. She left their small hometown, then a bad engagement, then an exhausting corporate job, always before anyone else understood why. Julianne used to think Mira was restless. Now she understood her sister had simply refused to build a home inside anyone else’s disappointment.
“I don’t know who I am without all of it,” Julianne admitted.
Mira’s expression softened. “Then we’ll find out.”
Those five words settled somewhere deep.
We’ll find out.
Not fix it. Not forget it. Not pretend it didn’t happen.
Find out.
At Mira’s flat, the children discovered the promised pancakes and the suspicious gray cat. Theo, who had been quiet since the attorney’s office, sat on the kitchen floor and patiently offered Duchess a piece of bacon until she accepted him as useful.
Julianne stood in the doorway watching him.
Mira came up beside her. “He’s been carrying a lot.”
“I know.”
“He won’t have to forever.”
Julianne looked down at her hands. “I hate that they heard so much.”
“You got them out.”
“After years.”
“You got them out,” Mira repeated, firmer this time. “Don’t use survival as evidence against yourself.”
Julianne closed her eyes.
Those were the kinds of sentences she would have dismissed once as too kind to be true. Now she wanted to believe them.
Her phone buzzed shortly after noon.
Nadine.
Julianne stepped into the small guest room and answered.
