Chapter 209 | What Camila Learned

Priya’s next update arrived considerably heavier than her previous, careful progress reports, and Allen recognized, from the weight in her voice, that the conversation she’d finally had with Camila Duarte had proven every bit as difficult as they’d all quietly anticipated.

"We told her everything," Priya said, once the family had gathered for the call. "The nineteen-sixties incident, the cultivation pattern, the broader investigation. She took it considerably better than I expected, honestly, though ’better’ still meant several genuinely difficult hours."

"How is she now?" Vivian asked.

"Shaken," Priya admitted. "But asking the right questions. She wants to understand the full scope of what her family history actually means, rather than simply retreating from it. I think that resilience will serve her well, going forward."

Allen felt cautious, considerable relief settle alongside his own lingering concern. "Did she ask about us? About our own family’s experience?"

"She did, actually," Priya said. "I mentioned, carefully, that another family had already navigated something similar. She asked if she might eventually speak with you directly, whenever she felt ready for that conversation."

"Whenever she’s ready," Allen said firmly. "No pressure from our end."

"I’ll relay that," Priya said, something warm entering her professional tone. "I think she’ll appreciate hearing it stated so plainly. It’s not the kind of reassurance most people think to offer, in a situation like hers. Most people want to fix it for her immediately. You’re offering her time instead, and I suspect that matters more."

"Time was what we needed too," Vivian said quietly. "More than anyone realized, at the start."

---

The call came three weeks later, considerably sooner than Allen had expected, and he found himself settling in for the video connection with genuine, careful nervousness, uncertain exactly how to properly begin a conversation this delicate with someone he’d never actually met. He’d rehearsed a handful of opening lines in the hour beforehand, discarded each one for sounding either too clinical or too rehearsed, and finally decided he’d simply let the conversation find its own shape.

Camila appeared on the screen looking exhausted but composed, her own dark eyes carrying the particular, weary alertness Allen recognized intimately from his own family’s earliest days processing devastating truth. Behind her, he could make out the corner of a modest apartment, a bookshelf, a window with the pale grey light of an overcast afternoon somewhere considerably further east than his own. "Thank you for talking with me," she said, her English careful but confident. "Agent Sundaram said your family understood this better than almost anyone else could."

"We do, unfortunately," Allen said gently. "I’m sorry you’re going through this."

"Me too," Camila admitted, managing a tired, genuine smile. "Can I ask you something? How did you actually get through it? Not the investigation. The feeling. Learning your whole life had this... shadow you never knew existed."

Allen considered the question carefully, recognizing its weight far too deeply to offer anything less than complete honesty. "One day at a time," he said. "I leaned on people who loved me, and I let myself be angry when I needed to be angry, and grateful when there was genuinely something to be grateful for. I didn’t try to make it make sense all at once. I just kept showing up for the people who mattered, and let understanding come gradually."

Camila absorbed the answer with visible, considerable relief. "That’s honest," she said. "Everyone else has been so careful, so clinical. It’s strange, hearing someone just tell me it’s hard, instead of promising it gets easy."

"It doesn’t get easy," Allen said. "It gets carryable. That’s the honest promise, at least."

Something in Camila’s expression eased at the familiar phrase, echoing, though she couldn’t have known it, the exact words Vivian had once offered Corvin. "I think I needed to hear that," she admitted. "Thank you."

Vivian leaned into the frame gently, offering her own quiet greeting. "For what it’s worth," she said, "the phrase isn’t originally mine either. I learned it from someone else’s honesty, and passed it along when it mattered. I think that’s part of how this actually works — good, honest words traveling from person to person, until they reach whoever needs them next."

"I like that," Camila said, something moved crossing her tired features. "Maybe I’ll pass it along myself, someday."

"I hope you get the chance to," Vivian said warmly.

"Anytime," Allen said. "However this continues, you’re not facing it alone anymore."

They talked for nearly an hour, Camila’s own careful questions gradually giving way to something closer to genuine, tentative connection. She asked, hesitantly, whether Allen’s family had ever felt afraid of what they might still uncover, and he told her honestly that they had, more than once, and that the fear had never entirely disappeared — it had simply stopped being the loudest thing in the room. She asked about the people who’d helped them through it, and Vivian spoke, briefly and without detail, about the small circle of trusted friends who’d made themselves available at odd hours, without judgment, for as long as it took. Camila listened to all of it with the particular hunger of someone starved for company who understood, and Allen found himself, watching the conversation’s slow, considerable warmth develop, deeply moved by exactly how much this patient, difficult work continued to matter, one new connection at a time, across considerably more distance and difference than he’d ever previously imagined this fight might eventually reach.

"I’d like to stay in touch," Camila said, as the conversation finally wound toward its close. "If that’s alright."

"I’d like that too," Allen said, meaning it completely, and ended the call with a fresh, considerable measure of hope settling alongside everything else this remarkable, expanding work continued to teach him about the many different shapes genuine solidarity could take.

He found Myria waiting for him once the call finally ended, having listened quietly from the doorway through most of the conversation’s later, warmer stretch. "That went well," she observed.

"It did," Allen agreed. "I keep being surprised by how much it helps, hearing someone else’s version of what we went through. Even secondhand, even across an entire ocean."

"I don’t think it’s surprising," Myria said gently. "I think that’s simply what genuine solidarity feels like. Recognition, more than advice."

"Recognition," Allen repeated, turning the word over. "I like that. That’s exactly what it felt like, both directions."

"Then we keep offering it," Myria said, drawing him close. "However far this work eventually reaches. There will be others after Camila. There always are, in work like this. But I’d rather stand here doing it with you than anywhere else."

Allen let the reassurance settle, grateful, as always, for a partnership that understood exactly how to name what he was feeling before he’d fully articulated it himself, and together they made their way toward the rest of their gathered family, one more considerable connection settled into place alongside everything else this remarkable, patient investigation continued to build.