Lily clasped her hands tightly together, her fingers ice-cold.
“I… I don’t remember much,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Just a few scattered images… a warm room… someone singing a lullaby… and… and a faint floral scent. Like…”
She trailed off, frowning.
“Like…”
“Like lily flowers?” Victoria asked, her voice trembling.
Lily’s eyes widened.
“Yes. But I don’t know why I remember that scent.”
Victoria raised a hand to her mouth, trying to smother a sob.
Old fragments of memory suddenly fell into place with merciless precision.
“My dear…” she breathed, but her hand froze midair, not daring to touch the girl before her.
She was afraid.
Afraid to hope.
Afraid to be wrong.
Afraid to shatter again.
“I want to be sure,” Victoria finally said. “I want a test. To know the truth.”
Lily bit her lip.
In her eyes, fear and hope swirled together like two currents colliding.
“And if… if I’m not?” she asked.
Her voice shook so much it nearly broke apart.
Victoria answered slowly:
“Then I will still help you find your real parents. I promise.”
Lily bowed her head. Tears fell onto her white apron.
Between them, the air was heavy with unspoken tension.
At last, she nodded faintly.
“Yes… I agree.”
The next day, they went to the Langford family’s private hospital.
The moment the samples were taken lasted only minutes, but to them, it felt like a lifetime.
Victoria sat beside her, hands clasped so tightly they turned white.
Lily tried not to look at her, but that warm gaze made her feel strange… and familiar in a way she couldn’t explain.
“Today… feels like a dream,” she whispered.
Victoria gave a sad smile.
“It does for me too.”
As they left the hospital, the afternoon breeze brushed through Lily’s hair, making the necklace around her neck sway softly.
Victoria stared at it for a long moment.
The metal shimmered under the sunlight… heartbreakingly beautiful.
“You know…” she began, then quickly corrected herself.
“…you know, that necklace once meant the world to me.”
Lily gently held the pendant.
“I don’t understand why… but I feel safe when I wear it.”
They stood there in the hospital courtyard, two people bound by an invisible thread—fragile yet astonishingly strong.
A few days later
Victoria’s phone vibrated.
She looked at the screen.
“The hospital.”
Inside her, fear and hope clashed once more.
Lily, standing beside her, held her breath.
Victoria answered.
“Yes… I’m listening.”
The doctor’s voice crackled through the speaker.
The pages of the report rustled faintly in his hands.
Then—one short sentence.
Both women fell silent.
Neither reacted immediately.
As if the world itself waited for them to breathe.
Lily turned to her, eyes brimming with tears.
“Ma’am… the result… does it mean…?”
Victoria looked at Lily for a long, long time.
In that moment, she wasn’t seeing with her eyes alone—but with a heart that had been wounded for twenty-five years.
She opened her mouth to speak…
Finally, Victoria placed a trembling, warm hand on Lily’s shoulder.
“Lily…” she said, her voice breaking.
“You are my daughter.”
Lily froze.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
In her eyes, a spark of light mingled with deep bewilderment.
“No… I—I really am?” she stammered.
Victoria nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“The doctor confirmed it. Our DNA matches completely… You are the child I lost twenty-five years ago.”
Lily covered her mouth, her breath hitching.
Her whole body trembled like a leaf in a storm.
“But… why me? How did I end up at the orphanage… I…”
She collapsed onto a chair, trying to find words amid the foggy memories and unfillable gaps.
Victoria sat beside her, gently holding her shoulder—not as an employer, but as a mother reunited with her lost child.
“In that fire,” she whispered, “someone got you out first… but it was chaos, and I couldn’t find you afterward. I searched for years… I never gave up.”
Lily sobbed.
“And now… I really…”
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “daughter”—as if saying it would shatter the dream.
Victoria squeezed her daughter’s hand.
“If you allow me, I want to say it for you.”
Lily looked up, her eyes red, fragile like a lost child who had just found the light.
“Say what?”
Victoria smiled through her tears.
“You are my daughter. And I love you.”
Lily broke down, unable to hold back.
She threw herself into Victoria’s arms—the embrace she had never known, yet her heart recognized instantly.
They held each other for a long time.
Time seemed to stand still.
Two lives torn apart were finally whole again.
But when their tears had barely dried, another question slipped into Lily’s thoughts.
“Mother…”
It was the first time she said it—soft, trembling, but more beautiful than any sound.
“…who brought me to the orphanage? During the fire… what really happened?”
Victoria froze.
Worry flickered in her eyes.
“I’m not sure. Many things from that night don’t match the reports.”
Lily tightened her grip on her mother’s hand.
“I want to know the truth.”
Victoria looked deeply into her daughter’s eyes—eyes carrying both past and future.
“Then we will find out,” she said.
“From now on, nothing can stop me from protecting you.”