“What’s your name?” I asked gently.
“Lily,” she whispered.
That was it. That was the moment my life changed.
We brought her home two months later.
People stared. Some whispered. Others asked cruel questions—about our age, about whether it was fair to her, about what would happen “when we were gone.”
But Lily didn’t care.
She blossomed in our home. She laughed. She sang. She asked endless questions. She hugged us fiercely, as if afraid we might disappear.
She grew into a thoughtful, intelligent young woman—kind to a fault, deeply empathetic, always wanting to help. When she told us she wanted to become a doctor, Thomas cried openly.
“She’s going to heal people,” he said proudly. “Just by being herself.”
Lily became our entire world.
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