The shipbuilder's daughter

Prologue: New York, US

Lily opens her eyes.

She could barely sleep during the night and eventually fell asleep, mentally exhausted, around 3 am and slept until this exact moment - "almost 6", she thought while taking a look at the small wooden clock on her nightstand. 

She gets up and slowly walks to the large window. On her way, she meets her own reflection in a mirror and stops for a second. Her eyes were still red and swollen, her skin was never so pale and it even looked like her hair was sad too. She looks at herself for a few seconds and sobs, it never really stopped for those last four days, then keeps walking to the window through which she takes a look at the streets. 

The streets of the city are crowded since the Carpathia brought her and the other survivors back to land, everybody trying to catch one of them in order to get their story or even simple pieces of information. Lily looks at the paperboys running here and there, holding the big headlines: "Titanic disaster, great loss of life". 

" Miss Andrews?" asked a woman's voice behind Lily's door, knocking at the same time. The woman didn't wait for Lily's answer to gently enter the room and was surprised to see her in front of the window.

"You can still call me Miss Lily, Hilde" says Lily, still looking outside. Hilde looked a bit taken aback and uncomfortable before responding. "Well Miss, since your father is no longer with us, I must call the representative of this house by the name of the family, I know this is -". Hilde stopped when Lily turned her eyes to hers. She waited for almost a minute, staring at the middle-aged housemaid. "You can still call me Miss Lily, Hilde" Lily repeated. 

Hilde was ready to leave the room, but she eventually stops before almost turning back. "I must remind you that you and your fiancé are both expected at the Senate inquiry at 10 o'clock. It takes place at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Miss Lily.", Hilde informs, before finally leaving the room, understanding that Lily Andrews obviously needed time to recover from this terrible loss.

Lily's eyes went back to the crowded streets, where the paperboys are now shouting, being undoubtedly under pressure on who is going to sell his paper better.