The other woman lifted a shoulder.
Okay, they needed a new topic of conversation. “Do you have any siblings?”
Tilly shook her head. “Nope. I’m an only child. My mom and I were close, but she passed away a few months ago…an aggressive form of brain cancer. It felt like she went from a few bad headaches to only having a couple months to live in the blink of an eye.”
Harper’s heart clenched. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. I felt kind of lost after she died. She was my only family and my best friend. It’s part of the reason I came back here and moved into the house she left me. It’s the house she grew up in, then raised me in, and I guess it makes me feel close to her again.”
Harper touched the other woman’s hand. “Then this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
She still didn’t know the details of what had driven the woman away, but she did know that coming back had been hard for Tilly, and she’d done it anyway.
They’d just rounded a corner when they stopped abruptly at the sight of Kayden in front of them.
His eyes hit Harper, and he dipped his chin, then they shifted to Tilly. And even though she was pretty sure he tried to conceal it, there was the smallest tightening of his eyes. “Matilda. I heard you were back in town.”
“Tilly. And yes, I am.”
“For good?”
“Yes. For now, at least.”
Kayden didn’t need to say anything for Harper to see the displeasure on his face.
She cleared her throat and touched Tilly’s arm. “It was nice to see you, Kayden.”
They moved past him, and Tilly all but deflated.
“Hey. You okay?” Harper asked gently.
“Yeah, I just…I tell myself I’m strong enough to deal with people blatantly disliking me, but some days, I don’t know if I am.” When Harper just frowned, Tilly took a deep breath. “My father was a stockbroker. He invested a lot of the townspeople’s savings. Or at least, hetoldthem he was investing it…then one day, he took the money and ran.”
Harper gasped. “Oh my gosh!”
“Yep. My mother and I stayed for a bit, but we got so much backlash from the community that we left after a month. I guess that probably didn’t help clear our names. Mom never sold her house because it was owned by my grandmother at the time, but even after my grandmother died, she kept it.”
God, this woman had been through so much. “You shouldn’t be paying for your father’s crimes.”
Tilly looked up and down the street. “Well, now that I’m back, let’s hope I can prove to the community that I’m not my father. It will be hard though. One of the people he stole from was Toby Walker, Kayden, Eastern, and Cody’s father. He was the most wonderful man you’d ever want to meet, and he trusted my father implicitly. From what I heard, Toby ended up losing the family home and needed to mortgage the bar.”
Her heart clenched for Cody and his brothers and the father she’d never met. “That’s awful. But still not your fault. Trust me, I know better than anyone that the sins of our parents are not our burdens to bear.”
Tilly blinked back obvious tears. “Thank you, Harper. I needed to hear that today.”
“Of course.”
They’d just arrived at Tilly’s car when a figure down the road had Harper’s gaze catching.
Wait, was that…
She gasped before quickly yanking the passenger door open and dropping into the Mazda and ducking as low as she could.
Tilly lowered behind the wheel, throwing a worried look her way. “Are you okay?”
“I need you to drive.”
“Harper—”
