“Were you lonely before?”
Nora nearly choked on her coffee.
“Ruby.”
Julian held up a hand gently.
“It’s okay.”
He looked at Ruby.
“Yes,” he said. “I was.”
“But you had lots of buildings.”
“I did.”
“And money.”
“Yes.”
“And people who worked for you.”
“Yes.”
Ruby frowned.
“That’s a lot of stuff to still be lonely.”
Julian smiled sadly.
“It is.”
She thought about that.
“Maybe you needed a borrowed kid.”
Nora went still.
Julian looked at the little girl across from him.
There were moments in life when a person could ruin something sacred by reaching for it too quickly. Julian knew that. He had spent a year learning that love was not acquisition. You did not buy your way into a family. You did not donate your way into trust. You did not sit once and claim a permanent chair.
So he answered carefully.
“Maybe I needed to remember how to show up.”
Ruby nodded like that made sense.
Nora’s eyes softened.
Not a promise.
Not a fairy tale.
But something honest.
