Nadia's POV
I listened from the top of the stairs.
Not the whole conversation. Just enough to hear my father say he owed Julian an apology, and Julian accepted it without using it as leverage. I went back to the nursery before it finished because I didn't want to know more than that. Some conversations are between the people having them.
But I sat with Elise in the rocking chair and thought about my father downstairs doing the thing he'd never been good at, which was saying the wrong he'd done out loud to the person it affected.
He'd never said it to me directly.
I noticed that without deciding what to do with it yet.
After Thomas left, Julian found me in the kitchen. "How much did you hear?" he asked.
"Enough."
He nodded. Didn't push. "He didn't apologize to me," I said. "He apolo
