Lily

Lily is William Henry Devereaux, Jr.’s wife and a public-school teacher whose loyalty to her community, care for her family, and enduring attachment to her father give shape to several of the novel’s central relationships. She and her husband differ over whether love is best served by blunt honesty or by tactful silence, but their closing routines suggest a renewed closeness grounded in shared life rather than resolution by declaration.

Identity and Commitments

Lily teaches in Railton’s beleaguered public secondary-school system. Rather than use her seniority and teaching ability to pursue honors students or a lighter position at the college, she chooses to teach students assigned to the low track, whom other teachers disparagingly label. Her work places her within the community’s most difficult educational circumstances, a commitment that William Henry Devereaux, Jr. understands as a reason for her to turn toward Railton rather than away from it.

The couple’s contrasting running routes make that difference visible. At the bottom of their hill, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. usually turns away from town; Lily turns toward Railton, preferring the flatter and, to her, prettier route. He reads her choice through her background as the daughter of a Philadelphia police officer: she has reason to want distance from the town, but also an inclination to confront its problems. He imagines that from the last hill she can see Railton below and regard it as her task, while acknowledging that this is his interpretation, not something she has told him.

Their home in Allegheny Wells serves different purposes for them. For him, it represents a deliberate retreat from town; for Lily, it is a temporary place to recover before returning to her work. That contrast is not simply a difference in preference: it reveals the different directions in which each spouse’s attention is pulled, toward withdrawal for him and renewed engagement for her.

Marriage and Different Ideas of Candor

Lily’s approach to family difficulty is protective and patient. When she says that parents should stay out of their children’s lives, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. understands her to mean that they should present their children’s behavior in the best possible light at home and let them have room to fail. She is reluctant to treat a child’s mistaken judgment as a reason for parental intervention or condemnation.

That approach extends to social tact. Lily expects her husband to act surprised when an event is predictable, partly to spare other people’s feelings. He objects that such pretenses make him perform a version of himself that feels undignified, and that one harmless pretense can lead to later ones. Their disagreement is affectionate but real: she weighs the comfort of other people, while he is uneasy with the accumulating falsehoods required to maintain it. Her teasing response to his complaints suggests that she knows his habits well and does not regard his self-assessment as the final word.

Their differences become more consequential when their daughter Julie Devereaux worries that her parents might divorce. Julie’s fears have been encouraged by her older sister, Karen, who had become alert to the possibility of divorce after seeing friends’ parents separate. She interpreted ordinary disagreements and conversations she did not fully understand as signs that her own parents might split, and Julie absorbed some of that anxiety. Julie tells her father she could not bear a divorce at that moment. The episode makes the children’s interpretation of their parents’ marriage part of the family’s emotional life, even when the parents have not intended ordinary friction as a warning.

Lily also asks her husband to address Julie’s perception that he fails to notice when Lily is unhappy. When he asks Lily directly, she says that she is not often unhappy; the available exchange leaves the question of when she is unhappy unanswered. The brevity matters: their marriage includes attention and concern, but does not turn every private feeling into a full explanation.

Motherhood and Family Privacy

Lily’s instinct to protect her children does not mean that she can control what they fear or what they learn from one another. Julie believes that her mother tells Karen things she does not tell her, and resents the imbalance. The sisters’ different access to their parents feeds Julie’s suspicion that something may be wrong, while her father struggles to respond without making her fears more definite than the evidence warrants.

The scene also clarifies the cost of Lily’s preference for giving children room. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. finds it difficult to pretend that a plainly unwise choice is a wise one. Lily, by contrast, treats restraint as a form of care: allowing children to make mistakes can be kinder than imposing a parent’s judgment in advance. Neither position erases the other. Their family life repeatedly requires them to decide what to say, what to leave alone, and how much uncertainty their children can bear.

Lily remains closely connected to Julie after Julie joins Russell in Atlanta. By the third week of August, Lily and her husband have taken to running in the early morning to avoid the summer heat. They sometimes run toward Railton and sometimes toward Allegheny Wells, but avoid the turn that would take them past Julie and Russell’s former home. Lily and Julie speak almost every day, though William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is not allowed to see the phone bills. The detail combines continuing maternal closeness with the small privacy Lily maintains within her marriage.

Angelo and the Distance Between Generations

Lily’s relationship with her father, Angelo, is marked by love that survives estrangement. Her mother died when Lily was still a girl, and Angelo’s devotion to his daughter helped her through that loss. They were once a close team. Her departure for university changed their relationship quickly: Lily acquired new language and perspectives, and asked him to stop using some of his old expressions around her. As she dated men he disliked and eventually married William Henry Devereaux, Jr., Angelo came to experience her adult life as a rejection of his own values and identity.

The conflict is intensified by the same education that enabled Lily to pursue her life. Angelo sees her learned speech, her choices as a parent, and her concern for young people he regards as socially dangerous as evidence of how far she has moved from him. Lily, meanwhile, cannot simply stop loving him because his bigotry shames and angers her. Her attachment carries both the memory of her childhood dependence on him and the pain of the gulf that opened after she left home.

The story’s final family scenes show that estrangement has not exhausted that bond. After an incident at Angelo’s home, Lily turns away rather than watch as he takes her in his arms; she nevertheless lets him embrace her. William Henry Devereaux, Jr. reads the gesture as a reminder that he has taken his wife’s affection for granted, recalling Teddy Barnes’s earlier warning. When he asks whether Angelo is present, Lily confirms that her father will stay with them for a while. Her acceptance makes room for a difficult relationship without pretending that its history has disappeared.

Change and Narrative Significance

Lily’s late-story presence is associated with renewed domestic routines rather than a dramatic explanation of every conflict. In a dream, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. imagines himself playing basketball on a donkey and hears Lily affirm her love; when he opens his eyes, she is there. Later, as his attention shifts to Angelo’s return and Lily’s response to him, he recognizes the depth of her affection with a force he had previously underestimated. These moments place her beside him not as a solution to his troubles but as one of the people whose knowledge and love help him understand his own conduct.

The closing morning runs bring their differing orientations together without erasing them. Sometimes the couple runs toward Railton, sometimes toward Allegheny Wells; neither direction becomes the sole meaning of their life together. Lily remains committed to her work and to her daughter, while making space for her father in the household. Her importance lies in this combination of engagement and restraint: she faces obligations that her husband would rather evade, and she tries to care for the people around her without forcing every difficulty into the open. The novel’s final image of shared routines suggests not that family tensions have vanished, but that affection can persist through silence, distance, and change.