Page 28 of The Woman Left Behind

Heidi showed again and put Lillian’s pancakes and a plate of bacon in front of her.

Regardless of her protestations about not being hungry, Lillian grabbed the syrup and her knife and dug right in.

“You don’t have to answer this, it’s none of my business, but you and Willie don’t seem like a fit,” Harry noted.

Smearing whipped butter and pouring syrup at the same time, Lillian gave it up freely.

“I was out at the Halfway having drinks with Molly.” She took her attention from her pancakes and gave him a small smile. “And yes, sheriff, I was underage.”

“Think the statute of limitations on that has expired too,” he joked, and was pleased as all hell that got him a full smile, and honest to God, he’d never seen a smile so damned pretty.

After giving him that, Lillian turned back to her food. “I really didn’t want anything to do with him because, okay, he’s good-looking, but he started chatting me up and it was clear he was on the make. So I shut it down. Somehow, he got my number and called to ask me out for coffee the next day. I don’t know why. He was charming, and I was freaked about Mom and Dad being gone, feeling lonely, and I guess that made me stupid. So I went. Before we even finished half our coffee, he asked me to dinner the next night. There was something sweet about that, how obvious he was about liking to spend time with me, wanting more.”

Harry never thought in his life Willie Zowkower would teach him something, but he sure as fuck filed that away.

She forked into her pancakes, took a bite, and after she swallowed, she looked at him and said, “I think it kinda reminded me of my parents. How keen he was to be with me. I fell in love fast, convinced what they found was what I found.”

“Honey,” he murmured sympathetically.

“I did love him, Harry,” she replied quietly. “I mean, it was real. But I wanted what my parents had, and it wasn’t that. Not to mention, Willie’s family was constantly in our lives. They’d knock on the door at all hours. They were always trying to get him involved in stuff he never told me about, but I knew if it came from a knock at two in the morning, it wasn’t right. He just,”—she flipped one hand one way, her fork the other—“couldn’t say no.”

She took another bite, put her fork down, went for a rasher of bacon, munched it and returned to him.

“Rita had a definite hierarchy in her family, and she expected me to take the role she assigned, that being letting Willie do what he wanted, support his brothers and father, and just cook the food for the table and keep her son satisfied in bed.”

Holy fuck.

“Jesus, was she that open with that shit?” Harry asked.

“Entirely,” Lillian answered. “This was not what my parents had, and Willie was too weak to stick up for me or put up boundaries. I eventually got fed up with it and kicked him out.”

Harry snatched a piece of bacon and got another smile from her when he did.

Then she started talking again. “The thing that makes me sad about it is, in that family, Willie was the odd man out. I hurt for him, knowing he knew he didn’t fit. I sometimes wonder if he fell so fast for me because I had my own house, and he thought he could escape. And honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he did something blatant, something big that would make Rita send him on the run, doing it just for an excuse to get away from all the oppression.”

Harry couldn’t say he’d noticed Willie was the dark sheep, but he’d never been married to him.

What he could say was that none of the Zowkowers had ever done anything as brazen as fucking a man up with plenty of witnesses, necessitating him getting out of town fast, and staying out.

So what Lillian said definitely held merit.

On this thought, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, looked that way and noted Kimmy, MP’s lovable but crotchety and criminally (though, regrettably not officially) nosy loon, bearing down on them.

He gave her a look.

She shot one back.

Then her gaze turned to Lillian, who peered over her shoulder to see what had Harry’s attention.

Kimmy took one look at Lillian and her swollen eyes, she stopped dead, pivoted and marched right out.

“Oh my God,” Lillian breathed, and Harry looked to her to see her beautiful face filled with marvel. “We discovered a way to stop Kimmy from bellying all the way up in our business. I just have to learn to cry on cue.”

He laughed softly and she smiled at him as he did.

She then frowned, but it was obviously fake.

She did this before she said, “You suck.”

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