Chapter 5: Lily Speaks
The next morning, Lily found me sitting at the kitchen table with the documents spread out in front of me.
She looked at the papers.
Then at me.
“She took from you too,” she whispered.
I nodded.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Lily sat down across from me.
“She told me I was nothing,” she said softly. “She said you would get tired of me once the baby came. She said your family would never accept me.”
My jaw tightened.
“She made me eat alone. She threw away the meals you cooked for me. She said if I told you, she would make you believe I was unstable.”
Tears slipped down her face.
“But the worst part was… I started believing her.”
I moved to her side and knelt beside her chair.
“No.”
She looked at me.
“You are my family,” I said. “You and this baby. No one else gets to vote.”
Lily broke then.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
May you like
She simply leaned forward and cried into my shoulder.
And I held her like I should have been holding her for months.
