But the damage had been done, and now the school, the neighborhood, and even some of our mutual friends were asking the same question: How could Rachel have done something like that?
It wasn’t just the physical destruction of the sewing machine. It was the way she had dismissed Lily’s dreams, the way she had used power to humiliate her stepdaughter. It was how she had tried to teach her “respect” by teaching her to lose everything she had worked so hard for. It was heartbreaking.
Meanwhile, Lily seemed to be handling it better than I had expected. Her quiet resilience was both humbling and heartbreaking. She didn’t say much about the incident, but every time I saw her pick up the fabric again, every time she sat down to sketch or work with the new sewing machine she had received, I saw the fire that had never truly gone out.
A few days after the incident, I received a call from Lily’s school. The teacher on the other end sounded almost giddy.