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said, unconvinced.
    â€œI didn’t talk much either. We didn’t seem to have much in common,” he admitted. “When things got bad, I tried to get her to see a marriage counselor, but she said no. She was already planning a life with Chaz.”
    Linny knew how hard this was for him to talk about.
    He shook his head. “If we’d have been closer, the marriage wouldn’t have broken up.”
    â€œMaybe,” she said, doubting it. Even if Jack was a Dr. Phil of a listener, Linny guessed Vera wanted more than he could ever give her: more status, more money, more adulation, more social buzz. Linny paused and blurted out a question she’d never had the nerve to ask. “What exactly is the appeal of Vera? I mean, besides the obvious.” Linny wilted just thinking about the blonde’s porcelain skin, darling figure, sexy voice, athleticism. . . .
    Jack was quiet for a moment. “She could make me feel like I was the most important guy in the world. She’d tell me how smart I was and laugh at all my jokes,” Jack explained, sounding chagrined.
    â€œAh, a charmer,” Linny said quietly. Her late husband, Buck, had honed those same skills. You’d be basking in the warmth of his attention and thinking he was a prince while he picked your pocket or stole your wife.
    Jack changed lanes. “Telling you about it makes me feel like a chump.”
    â€œDon’t,” Linny said fiercely, and in the glow of the dashboard, she saw the muscle in his jaw tense. Reaching over, she squeezed Jack’s hand, and he squeezed back.
    Both were quiet, lost in their thoughts. Love would be so much easier if they didn’t have to carry around the burden of all their disappointments, the ghosts of past loves. Add the complication of families and love got even trickier.
    The moon shone down a hard yellow light, illuminating fallow fields and craggy tree lines. Linny turned on the radio, but each song that played was sad. Patty Griffin sang “When It Don’t Come Easy,” and Steve Earle sang the “Fort Worth Blues.” Linny looked out the window as they passed dark houses and just felt lonely.

C HAPTER 5
    Dream Wedding Venue
    T he next morning Linny leaned underneath the kitchen table and, with satisfaction, caught the giant tumbleweed of dog hair with the wand of the vacuum cleaner. Glancing at the see-through canister, she shook her head. It was almost a quarter full, even though she’d emptied it before she’d started. How two dogs could generate so much hair was beyond her.
    She vacuumed briskly, trying to shake off her hangover funk from last night, but so far it wasn’t working. As she pushed the hose back in its holder and ran rows across the wood floors in the living room, she kept rerunning the movie in her head. Ceecee prattled about the Suttons and couples giving up too soon on marriages. Was she a well-meaning but clueless ditherer or the queen of passive-aggressive behavior? If she were the latter, Linny would have to deal with that quicksand for the rest of her life. Linny edged the vacuum into a corner she’d missed. Then there was the wall shrine to Vera and Jack, the engagement news that never got shared, and the conversation on the ride home.
    Linny wheeled the Hoover into her small bedroom and it sucked up the cluster of fur dust bunnies that circled up around the dogs’ crates. The whole evening had been one bad jack-in-the-box surprise after another. The dark thoughts she’d had yesterday scrabbled into her head. Did Jack still have any love left for Vera? Did he still pine for her? She vacuumed faster until the trailer she called home was spic and span.
    She put away the Hoover and warmed up her mug of coffee with what was left in the pot. Staring out the window at the brown stubble left in the fields from last year’s corn, Linny tried to muster some enthusiasm for this morning’s outing. Her sister—who