Page 38 of Lillian

We don’t even get halfway up the porch steps before I hear the noise. It sounds like at least a handful of kids are running around inside, screaming and playing.

Lillian opens the front door, the noise intensifies, and I follow her in. The front door opens up immediately into the living room, with the kitchen straight ahead blocked off by a wall with a waist-high cut-out so you can see straight through, giving the space an open layout feel. Through it, two couples are leaning around the counters and walls in a circle with their heads bent together.

One is Kim, standing next to a man with a rugged, outdoorsy look, who I imagine is her husband. The other couple is older. A man and a woman who share similar traits to both Kim and Lil. Their parents then.

The TV is turned up loud with a kid show I’m not familiar with on the screen in the living room. Which means they didn’t hear us come in yet.

“Morning!” Lil calls out, and the four of them jump apart like they’ve been caught doing something they aren’t supposed to be doing.

“Aunt Lillian!” a young boy calls out at her appearance and runs toward her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Hey, Nicky,” she smiles, and the love on her face makes an ache start up in my chest. Grace comes running up next, and she bends down to pick up her daughter. She wraps her up in a big bear hug, kisses her blonde head, and sets her back down.

As she’s squatted down in front of Grace, she gives her daughter all her attention. “Did you have a good night?” she asks and smooths down a few stray curls.

“Yeah! It was so much fun, Mommy. We had ice cream and watch wizards and stayed up past my bedtime!” Little Grace’s eyes are lit up in delight, but Kim shouts from the kitchen.

“Hey, stinker! What did we say about telling Mommy that?” Kim says with faux outrage in her voice, and Lillian rolls her eyes good-naturedly at her sister.

Grace looks sheepish but rattles off what Kim must have told her word for word. “What Mommy doesn’t know, won’t hurt her.” She nods, proud of herself for remembering. I have to smother my grin.

“Kimberly!” Lillian and the older lady both shout at the same time, but her sister shoots a mischievous, completely unrepentant smile to Lillian.

Lillian rolls her eyes but holds up the pink blanket for Grace. “Here you go, sweetie.”

“Yay!” She screeches loud enough that I have the urge to cover my ears despite all the noise that is still coming from down the hall. There must be other kids here. Kim’s, maybe? She’s got Nicky plus the baby she’s carrying right now. Which, guessing by how big she is, I’d say she’s close to popping. But she doesn’t look old enough to have many more kids running around.

Grace and Nicky both take off down the hallway on the left, and Lillian peers down it and asks what I was just wondering. “The neighbor’s kids here, too?”

“Yeah. It’s not a true slumber party if the whole gang isn’t here,” Kim tells her sister as we join the group in the kitchen.

When Lillian and I get within spitting distance, it’s like the whole house quiets. The four of them stare at me with varying looks on their faces while Lillian sits back and observes. Her dad gives me a once over with an expression I can’t read, her mom’seyes are bugged wide but with an unpleasant twist to her mouth, Kim’s husband is outright glaring, and Kim’s face is anticipatory.

I don’t know whether to introduce myself or crack some joke about them clearly already knowing who I am. The former seems too formal, stuffy, for a group lounging around in pajamas, clearly at ease with one another, and the latter seems too risky.

Luckily, I’m off the hook when her dad speaks up. “So, you’re the ex? Lincoln?” His voice is deep and gruff. Sort of intimidating, too, if I’m being honest. Just one of those voices, mixed with the build of the man and the way he holds himself, that you know he’s ex-military. Likely has a gun collection he wants to show me just in case I’m thinking of hurting his daughter again.

“Yes, sir,” I agree.

He grunts, then shoves off the counter where he’s been leaning. “Any good on the grill?”

“I’m not too bad,” I respond and follow him automatically toward the sliding glass doors in the kitchen that lead out into a small fenced-in backyard.

“Good, because you’re manning the Blackstone.” In the backyard, on a patch of dead grass because there is no back porch or patio area, is the Blackstone grill with a whole host of ingredients off to the side. There are breakfast sausages, patties, cartons of eggs, and various seasonings.

“The girls’ll bring out the pancake mix in a minute,” he tells me as he takes the lid off and turns the burners on different heat settings before turning to me and handing me the spatula.

“Got it,” I say, taking the spatula from him. “So you guys do this every Sunday?”

“We try to. As often as we can,” he replies as he opens up a cooler near the grill and pulls out a Coors Light. He lifts it up for me in question.

“Oh, no. I’m okay, thanks, though.” Not at nine in the morning on a Sunday.

He tosses it at me anyway, and I catch it with the hand not holding the spatula. “It’s God’s day, son. Nobody is going to judge you. Jesus himself was the ultimate lush. With the water to wine stunt.”

Well, okay then. There’s an echoingcrackas we both pop the tops of our drinks and lift them up to each other before taking a sip.

I set my drink down on the tray with the food, hover my hand over the grill to see if it’s heated up enough, then start to work, throwing on the sausages and bacon. Her dad sits there in silence, watching me.

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