Getting ready for Marshall's arrival

The incessant ticking of the hallway's grandfather clock seemed to echo through the stillness of the Blackwood home, each resonant tick a taunting metronome that only served to heighten Lily's growing sense of restive anticipation.

Tomorrow. The word felt laden with portentous weight, pregnant with the promise of new beginnings and reinvigorated purpose. After what felt like an eternity of drifting, mired in the ashes of shattered dreams, she finally had a destination in sight – the tantalizing promise of an explosive story that could propel her back into the journalistic limelight she had once occupied with such meteoric flair.

But before she could turn her sights toward the mysteries that awaited, there were preparations to be made, loose ends to be gathered. Which was how Lily found herself puttering about the immaculate confines of the Blackwood home's spare bedroom, straightening pillows and fussing over the tight hospital corners of the freshly laundered linens.

A wry laugh escaped her lips, one tinged with the faintest hint of self-doubt. To think that she, the one-time pariah who had spurned all the cozy trappings of domesticity, was now consumed with playing the consummate hostess. But then, she reasoned with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, she supposed even the most reckless of journalistic vagabonds needed to grow up someday.

Just as she was smoothing out the last stubborn wrinkle marring the bedspread, a pointed clearing of a throat cut through the silence, causing Lily to practically jump out of her skin. Whirling around, she found herself face-to-face with her mother, the diminutive woman's hands planted firmly on her hips in a manner that could only be described as exasperated affection.

"Honestly, Lilybear," Elizabeth Blackwood chided in that gentle, musical lilt that had been soothing Lily's battered soul since childhood, "you'd think we were preparing for the Queen's arrival with all this fussing about."

Lily rolled her eyes in a well-practiced gesture, one she'd honed toan art form by the ripe age of twelve. "Sorry, Mom," she countered with an entirely unapologetic smirk, "but you know how I like to make sure everything's perfect. I'd hate for my guest to think we were a bunch of uncivilized hayseeds."

Her mother fixed her with a look that somehow managed to encapsulate both fond exasperation and the stern resolve that could only be borne from decades of parenting a headstrong, troublemaking daughter. "This 'guest' of yours wouldn't happen to be the same young man I've heard you whispering about on those 'confidential' phone calls, would it?" she asked archly.

Lily felt a flush of warmth blossoming across her cheeks, a reaction she had thought herself long-immune to after years of suppressing such vulnerability. "What? No! No, of course not!" she sputtered, silently cursing the undercurrent of panic that had crept into her voice. "It's…it's just a colleague of mine. A photographer from the magazine, here to assist with…with a story I'm working on." Lily was wondering how her mother heard her talk to friend about the break up .

Her mother's face remained a carefully cultivated mask of nonchalance, but Lily could have sworn she detected the faintest quirk of a smile playing at the corners of the older woman's lips. "A story, hmm? I thought you'd given up that nonsense when you came back home, young lady."

The gentle rebuke stung more than Lily would have cared to admit. For so long, her journalistic aspirations had been a bone of contention between them, a relentless source of strife and heartache. She knew her unconventional career path had been a bitter disappointment to her parents, who had envisioned their brilliant, headstrong daughter following a more..stable trajectory in life.

But something hard and defiant rose up within Lily's breast, stoked by the renewed sense of purpose that had been igniting in her chest like a slow burn these past few weeks. "That's just it, Mom," she said, injecting her voice with a measure of unwavering conviction she hadn't felt in far too long. "It's not nonsense. Not this time."

Turning away from her mother's inscrutable gaze, Lily crossed the room to where her satchel lay, stuffed to bursting with a chaotic profusion of notes, images, and research materials. With a deft flick of her wrist, she up-ended the bag, spilling its contents across the tidy expanse of the room's writing desk in an unceremonious clatter.

"Take a look at all this," she proclaimed, sweeping a hand over the clutter of documentation and ephemera that now littered the desk space. "Months' worth of digging – into the Drake family history, their supposed ties to the occult, the rumors about their…well, let's just call it their 'unconventional' legacy."

She turned back toward her mother, her emerald eyes glinting with that same fiery intensity that had once been the spark driving her journalistic crusades. "This is it, Mom. This is the story that's going to blow the lid off everything we think we know about the world – the one that's going to remind everyone why they used to utter my name in the same reverent tones as Woodward and Bernstein".

For a long, moment, Elizabeth Blackwood regarded her daughter in silence, hands still planted firmly on her hips. Then, almost imperceptibly, her pursed lips softened, giving way to a tender smile that seemed to banish years of aging from her.

"There's my girl," she murmured, her voice awash with a warmth and pride that caused an unfamiliar tightness to constrict in Lily's chest. "I was beginning to think I'd never see that look in your eyes again."

Before Lily could muster a response, and begin to unpack the throng of emotions roiling within her breast, her mother had crossed the distance between them, enveloping her in a fierce, grounding embrace.

"You have no idea how much I've missed this passion of yours, Lilybear," Elizabeth whispered fiercely. "How it broke my heart to watch it slowly smothering over the years, to see that bright, brilliant spark flickering and fading."

Lily's own arms tightened affectionately clinging to her mother's willowy frame like a lifeline in a raging tempest. She fought to swallow back the lump that had inexplicably formed in her throat, blinking against the unwelcome prickle of tears stinging at the corners of her eyes.

How long had it been since she had allowed herself to feel this raw, this emotionally exposed? Too damned long, she realized with a pang of melancholy.

"I'm not going to pretend I understand this story you're chasing, sweetheart," Elizabeth continued, her voice a gentle murmur against Lily's tousled chestnut tresses. "Lord knows I've never seen eye-to-eye with your penchant for courting danger and controversy." She pulled back, cupping her daughter's face in her calloused palms as she fixed Lily with an intense, searching gaze. "But if this is what it takes to rekindle that fire inside of you? Then you'd better believe your father and I have your back, no matter where this story might take you."

It was too much – the swell of emotion cresting within Lily's chest. With a shuddering intake of breath, she managed a tremulous nod, unable to find the words to express the tangled morass of gratitude and bone-deep relief coursing through her veins.

Her mother, bless her, seemed to understand. Brushing away the rogue tears that had escaped to trail down Lily's flushed cheeks, Elizabeth Blackwood managed a watery smile, one that contained more love and ferocious pride than Lily could ever hope to fathom.

"That's my brave girl," she murmured, pressing her lips to Lily's brow in a gesture of benediction. "Now, you'd better finish getting everything in order for your little photographer friend's arrival. After all," her eyes danced with impish mirth, "we wouldn't want him thinking we were uncivilized hayseeds, now would we?"

As her mother's rumbling laugh faded behind the closed door, Lily was left standing in the eye of the storm she'd whipped up, surrounded by the scattered fragments of her obsession. With a renewed sense of vigor thrumming through her veins, she closed the door and went to her room to rest.