The following Sunday, my sister visited while Julian and Maya were there. She’d spent countless weekends helping me search for him.
When Julian mentioned his job, she put down her coffee.
“Did you see your missing-person flyers?”
“Yes.”
“And you let your mother keep searching?”
Julian glanced toward the door.
“Maybe I should leave.”
“No,” I said.
I turned to my sister.
“You have every right to be angry. So do I. But I won’t have him shamed in my living room.”
“He needs to understand what he did.”
“He does. Rebuilding our trust is between him and me.”
My sister looked away.
Julian stayed.
Later, he showed me photographs of Maya’s pregnancy. I studied his smiling face and thought about the years I’d missed.
“Show me I can trust you to be here now, Jules.”
A few weeks later, Julian arrived with three envelopes.
One described his job. Another mentioned Maya. The third was written after she became pregnant.
