The sickened luna’s last chance

Chapter 70

Ella

The restaurant was cozy and warm, with soft lighting that made everything feel intimate and comfortable. We got a table by the window, and I could see people walking by on the street outside, laughing and holding hands and swinging their shopping bags.

Real families. Real couples.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Lilith as soon as we’d ordered our food. “I didn’t mean to pry about your past. That was

rude of me.”

Lilith shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just… complicated.”

I waited, not wanting to push again but hoping she’d continue.

“The truth is,” she said, looking down at her hands, “I do view you as a daughter. More than that, actually. You are a daughter to me, Ella. The daughter I never got to raise.” She sniffled and hesitated for a long moment, then whispered, “I did have a child. A little girl.”

My eyebrows shot up. This was the first time I had ever heard of Lilith having a child. I’d always wondered, but she had never mentioned having a daughter, not even once. If anything, I’d thought that she had simply never married and had kids.

“Did something happen to her?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“She’s alive,” Lilith said quickly. “She’s alive and well. She just… she doesn’t know about me.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She hasn’t seen me since she was a baby. Less than a year old.” Lilith sighed and tucked a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “But I’ve been watching over her, unbeknownst to her, all these years. Making sure she’s safe, making sure she’s happy.” She laughed bitterly. “Although sometimes I don’t think I’ve done the best job of that.”

“So you watch her, but she doesn’t know you’re there?”

Lilith nodded sadly. “Something like that. We’ve actually interacted before, many times, but she has no idea

who I really am.”

That took me by surprise. Was she too shy to admit who she was? “Lilith, why haven’t you told her who you

are?” I asked.

“It’s complicated.”

she’d want to know

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Chapter 70

find out you’re alive and that you care

know. What if

her?”

“Did you? Abandon her?”

her.” The pain in her voice was

take it from someone who never got to meet her mother–she would want to know you. Even

“You think so?”

remember her at all, I think about her every single day. I wonder what her voice sounded like, what her

to me tomorrow and told me my mother was actually alive somewhere, watching over me, caring about me… it would be the best day of my

in shock, her face pale and her eyes filled with an emotion that I couldn’t quite

“Ella, 1-”

for the young lady, and clam

what she was going to tell me, she just waved her hand and said she couldn’t remember. I took it as a sign that I had exhausted the conversation, and whatever else she had to say, she would do so in her

spent the next half hour talking about lighter things–the shops we’d visited, plans for the upcoming week, anything to give us both a chance to recover

our waiter approached with a

front of me. “This is from the gentleman

direction. He looked to be in his thirties, reasonably attractive, with dark hair and a friendly, close–lipped

married, after all, even if it was a sham of a marriage. And I didn’t make

thought about everything that had been

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Gay, 20 Aug

3

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Chapter 70

and I’d spent the last five years of my life living like a nun, following all the rules, being the perfect Luna wife while my husband ignored me

was so focused on being proper? How many