But I couldn’t think of any casual way to drop Jane’s legacy into the conversation. I could already picture the eyebrows flying up, the looks that would pass when my back was turned. In ways not yet realized, Jane had made my life much easier. In ways I was just beginning to perceive, Jane had made my life extremely complicated. I decided, in the end, just to keep my mouth shut and take what the local gossip mill had to dish out.

Lillian Schmidt almost shook my resolution when she observed that she’d seen Bubba Sewell, the lawyer, call to me at the cemetery.

“What did he want?” Lillian asked directly, as she pulled the front of her blouse together to make the gap between the buttons temporarily disappear.

I just smiled.

“Oh! Well, he is single- now-but you know Bubba’s been married twice,” she told me with relish. The buttons were already straining again.

“Who to?” I asked ungrammatically, to steer her off my own conversation with the lawyer.

“First to Carey Osland. I don’t know if you know her, she lives right by Jane… you remember what happened to Carey later on, her second husband? Mike Osland? Went out for diapers one night right after Carey’d had that little girl, and never came back? Carey had them search everywhere for that man, she just could not believe he would walk out on her like that, but he must have.”

“But before Mike Osland, Carey was married to Bubba Sewell?”

“Oh, right. Yes, for a little while, no children. Then after a year, Bubba married some girl from Atlanta, her daddy was some big lawyer, everyone thought it would be a good thing for his career.” Lillian did not bother to remember the name since the girl was not a Lawrenceton native and the marriage had not lasted. “But that didn’t work out, she cheated on him.”

I made vague regretful noises so that Lillian would continue.

“Then-hope you enjoy these, Miz Darwell, have a nice day-he started dating your friend Lizanne Buckley.”