Test City was a cruel place. Ella felt the disappointment like a knife in her heart as it became clear that the woman she was hugging wasn't her mother. That the truth came from a voice that sounded so much like her mother made Ella start to tear up. "I am sorry," she murmured, letting go of Lady Carter. She'd made a terrible mistake, had gotten her hopes up so high in such a short time, and now it was like she'd lost her mother all over again. Ella thought herself to be quite foolish, at the moment.
"Forgive me, Lady Carter," she added, stepping back to curtsey. Though she desperately wanted to cry, Ella did her best to keep her voice even and to stop the tears from falling. It wasn't Lady Carter's fault that she'd been so foolish. "You look and sound like my mother, who died from illness when I was a young girl." She was not nearly as strong as her mother had asked her to be, as Ella felt the tears start to fall down her cheeks. She tried to wipe them away with her hands.
"I'm sorry. I just- I've missed my mother very much." Ella missed both her parents, but her mother especially so. Her life would have been so much different, so much better, if Lady Tremaine had never come into her father's life. "My father passed a few years ago, and his wife is so cruel. I just wanted to talk to my mother. She always knew how to make everything better."