Full Name: Lila Penelope Evans (neè Whiteley)

Date of Birth and Age: October 3rd, 1934, 33

Sexual Preference: Heterosexual

Ethnic Background: English, Irish

Occupation: Housewife

Family

Husband: Arthur Evans

Father: Elliott Whiteley (Deceased)

Mother: Cara Whiteley (neè Walsh) (Deceased)

Siblings: Shannon Gordon (neè Whiteley) and Grayson Charles Whiteley

Brother-In-Law: Gregory Gordon

Nieces and Nephews: Stanley (17), Mable (14), Douglas (12), Kathrine (10), Maisey (6) and Eileen (3), all Shannon and Gregory’s

Current Residence: Family home near the edge of New Shelby with her husband, brother and housekeeper

Appearance: Lila Evans is not exactly intimidating with her stature by any means. She’s 5'4" in only her stockings and of average frame. Her face is oval shaped with the smallest bit of a cleft in her chin. She’s managed to keep her complexion fairly clear in her thirty-three years with just the smallest bit of a tan. Her medium brown hair is usually pulled back and pinned up into a bun or some other manner. When she lets it down however, it is very curly. Her hazel eyes are very kind and sincere. Her nose is a bit small for her face, which she tries to keep from drawing attention when possible.

She dresses proper to her station in life. She makes a small part of her clothes, but most are bought from the bigger cities. Lila still has a certain respectful image to maintain in town. It is not odd, however, to see her with flour mussed up in her hair from baking something and still wearing an apron if she gets to running out of the house before she thinks about it.

Personality: Lila is the sort of woman that has never had much issue with her place in life. She is perfectly happy just working at home and having things clean and just so for the males in her life. She’s particularly fond of baking over any other type of cooking, though she’s capable of making complete meals in the event that anything would ever happen to her former nanny and current housekeeper/cook. She likes doing little household things such as sewing, knitting and darning socks to take care of anyone else. She’s also able to make clothing with all the right supplies and an occasional pattern. Lila also takes care of the horses in the stable. However, if anything was needing to be repaired other than clothes, she had no idea at all what she’s doing.

She is not a very patient person with other people, especially those that seem very lacking in the brains department. She has little time for fools or tolerance for them. You can tell easily if Lila is not fond of you, which is a rarity, by the way she’ll just avoid talking to you entirely. Of course she might just be in a hurry to get somewhere, but more than once and you either have very bad timing or Lila is just not fond of you. While she enjoys gossip, she’ll usually not believe it unless she finds some grain of truth to it. Unless they opinion is coming from someone in her family, she forms her opinions of people on her own.

The one thing that has really changed about Lila since learning that she’ll never have children is that she can become smothering of people she’s close to. She will make sure both of the men look just so before they walk out the door. She’s just mothering them without realizing she’s doing it. It’s usually easy to get her to back off. She’s the sort of person that would do very well with cats or dogs.

She’s also capable of hitting the broad side of a barn with a gun, but anything smaller and she’s likely to miss except at point-blank range. If needed though, she has no problems with holding a gun or pointing it at someone, which has included her husband in the past. She's not fond of guns, but she'll defend her family as needed.

Special Skills/Weapons Used: Lila is very good with a needle, either sewing or knitting. She is a very good listener, but she'll also remember about anything you say. Lila grew up with horses, and is very good with them and keeping She’s also good at baking and could probably at least seriously injure someone with a frying pan if needed.

Weaknesses: Lila is not very good at completely maintaining her cool when the right buttons are pushed and can go into an episode of anger or depression. She also worries a great deal about her family and what the future is going to hold, but for now there's little that can be done other than to sit and wait.

History

Lila Whiteley was the second child born to Elliot and Cara Whiteley, having a two year old sister when she was born: Shannon. The two were always close, partly due to the closeness in age compared to her brother born shortly after her fifth birthday, but there was also a fair amount of sibling rivalry because of the closeness. She wanted to do everything to keep up with her sister in anything and everything. If Shannon could do it, Lila wanted to do it twice as well. She wanted to make her mama proud with helping out. Grayson’s addition to the small family only thrilled her though.  She was still too small to try and carry around her baby brother (though she tried a few times and only brought her mother running to see what was wrong), she could still help by sitting and feeding him. She learned how to read and write out of the family bible, reading and copying passages out of it.

She was eight when her mother didn’t return home from shopping in town, killed by a stray bullet from a gun fight in the saloon. Lila doesn’t remember much of the small funeral. People coming around and calling her and her siblings poor little things and the smell of lilies. And then Fola came to live with them. The black woman became the trio’s nanny and raised them as though they were her own. Soon they were treating her like a member of the family.

It was another eight years when their father decided they were going to move. Things weren’t going well in Oregon any longer and a fresh start was about what the family needed. They packed up and headed south to California. There had been gold struck there only a few years before and it seemed perfect. They moved to Santa Barbara where Elliot opened up a bank and Shannon had soon found herself a beau. Lila was quite happy for her, even when she got married six months later. She  was almost more amused at the speed of their courtship and teasing her sister about what she might have been doing that they needed to get married that quickly. She was quite pleased with becoming Aunt Lila, but was in no particular rush to find herself anyone to marry.

She spent the time with her younger brother, listening to him and spending every most of her time with him over the next four years. With just the two of them, they grew closer than ever. Fola was still taking care of the pair, though she was slowly needing to do less for them. Her father slowly started to get a little worried about her when she was nineteen and twenty years old and still not really interested in any of the young men in town. Occasionally he’d bring by one of the young men from the bank for dinner in hopes that Lila would warm up to one of them eventually. It wasn’t much later though when she met Arthur Evans in 1854.

Lila and Arthur courted for three years before he proposed. It was one thing that she had over Shannon even if she was edging on being an old maid and only now getting married. The pair immediately started trying to have their own children. No matter what they tried though she never got pregnant. She was getting frustrated and depressed. Five years of trying and Elliott sent Lila back east to be checked out by some of the best doctors. She was told that she would never be able to have children and it was pointless to keep trying. She managed to get home again before completely breaking down. She curled up in her bed for almost two full weeks without hardly eating anything.

She slowly back onto her feet, though her marriage was greatly strained. Lila would snap at her husband over every little thing, partly trying to chase him away. It got to the point more time than she’s like to admit where she grabbed her daddy’s gun and pointed it straight at him and ordering him to leave “while you’re still bullet-free”. Someone always managed to get it out of her hands before she injured anyone, but the severe strain on the family. It was just too hard for her to believe that Arthur would still want to be with her even if she wasn’t able to have children. Rumors were also going around Santa Barbara about the youngest daughter and possible other reasons she never seemed to leave the house, including that she had been sent to an asylum. Elliot decided his family needed a change before they cracked completely. Shannon and her family stayed behind when the rest of the Whiteley family left for New Shelby.

Lila got better in the new town. New places and people who didn’t know most of her family history by now helped a great deal. She stayed home rather than finding a job partly because of limited options and partly to help out her old nanny in every way possible with the house. Her father opened the bank after his competition suddenly was killed under mysterious circumstances. Her brother and husband both went to work there. She shortly considered trying to become a teacher, but quickly decided against it after thinking over being around children everyday. Things settled in and calmed down with the family until a year and a half ago. Elliot came down very ill and was soon bedridden, dying shortly after. Having no kin left in Oregon, the family buried him in a small ceremony in California.

Lila’s still been living in the same house with her husband and brother on the edge of town. She helps with cooking and cleaning and the general household keeping. She’d still be almost willing to lie, cheat, steal or kill to have a child one day, but she’s come to a certain level of acceptance that she’s not able to have her own. She’s in no particular rush to see Gray married off either and starting his own family. She’s made some considerations as to what Arthur and she would do if he did, from possibly just finding their own home to moving either back toward Oregon or more east. For now though she tries not to think of it too much.

Timeline

June 12th, before dark - Peppermint and Pleasant Conversation, Lila goes shopping at the general store and gets an escort home with Lily and Jessup Greene. [In Progress]