Lily didn’t get any hint that Edward might even a little bit believe her. To her, his questions - ’And why should she? And when?’ - sounded like a rebuff. She set her jaw, glaring defiantly at him. But behind that defiance, there was a glimmer of hurt in her eyes.
Even though she didn’t particularly like Edward, Lily was still usually well-brought-up enough to know that there were certain ways to talk to adults and certain ways you shouldn’t. But she’d also developed a hair-trigger and, really, quite explosive temper since her father died. Edward had seen it once before; right before breaking his leg.
“I don’t know when!” she finally let out, frustrated, after a prolonged silence. “Probably after you’ve had some new baby of hers and you forget all about Britta and you don’t even notice! The way you forgot about Riley and don’t even notice the way you’ve hurt him! You’re so busy seeing everything sunny and bright that you never see the bad parts - even when you need to! Even when you’re responsible for them! You think a woman, a woman like…. that?” she asked, pointing in some vague direction that meant to indicate Rosalie, “won’t take advantage of that? You think I’m just a child,” she spit at him, “but I already know girls like her. She’ll pack Britta off and you won’t even notice, you won’t even care about her anymore. The way you don’t care about Riley, and you never cared about-”
Her voice caught. She had fierce, angry tears in her eyes. Not because of Edward! She didn’t care about him! Well, not exactly. She was going to say, ‘and you never cared about Milo or me.’ But it made her remember Milo. Off in the army somewhere. Gone. With nothing more they could do to protect him. Just like their father had been. In some ways, Lily already half saw Milo as dead. And then something occurred to her. Edward was a lord. He was an important one; he was going to be a duke! And in that moment, she knew that he had done nothing to stop the expansion of the draft. Of course she didn’t stop to ask, or wonder how much Edward could have really done in the face of the Grand Duke, but in that moment she knew he hadn’t even tried. And as irrational as it was, a new wave of anger hit her, certain that it was Edward’s fault that Milo had been taken from them and forced into the army, where surely he would die.
“You know what?” Lily finally began again. “Maybe you should marry her. You’re both… you’re both terrible, just in different ways. She’ll do whatever she likes and convince you that you’re happy, and you won’t ever even wonder if it’s true. Fine, congratulations! But Britta deserves better than either of you!”
As Lily spoke those words, a plan was already starting to form in the back of her head. Britta did deserve better. A family who would love her through good times and in bad times. Who wouldn’t forget about her when there were five new babies, and send her away to boarding school. Maybe it was because, like her brother, the entire ordeal of being sent to Serendipity left Lily feeling decidedly unwanted, left her very convinced that Britta needed a family where she was, above all, wanted unconditionally.
