People shouldn't be forgotten, even if they're my kind of people. Maybe, they don't have a lot of money, they don't have lawyers, but they matter.
Lilly Rush was the only female homicide detective in Philadelphia, until the later arrival of Lennie Desalle, then Josie Sutton, and finally Kat Miller. She specialized in working cold cases alongside her partner, Scotty Valens. Shortly after Lilly's change from on-the-line jobs to cold cases, her partner, Chris Lassing, transfers out because of his diabetic condition, leading to Scotty being promoted to homicide and becoming Lilly's partner. Lilly solves the most difficult cases in order to seek the truth after all these years in hopes of giving the victim's family and the victims themselves, justice. She often works long hours on these cases. Because of this, her relationship with men are relatively shaky and her family can best be described as dysfunctional.
Lilly was raised on welfare by an alcoholic mother, Ellen Rush, who often neglected her. This left Lilly to fend for herself and care for her younger sister, Christina Rush. The family lived in Kensington, a rough part of Philadelphia. At the age of ten, Lilly had been sent out late at night by her mother to buy alcohol, and a man robbed her and beat her up brutally. Suffering a broken jaw, among other injuries, young Lilly was nursed by Ray Williams, whom she later almost married as a young adult, but neither could bring themselves to get off of his motorbike to go into the courthouse after having ridden to Nashville. Later in life, Lilly confides to her boyfriend Joseph Shaw that she was once engaged to Ray, but he was not the "settling down" type. It is Lilly's lack of trust in other men that leads her to be alone most of the time. Her lack of trust can be traced back to her childhood when her father walked out, and also when Patrick, a man Lilly was once engaged to when she was still a beat cop cheated on her with her sister Christina.