“Here,” Thomas said, handing her the cocktail shaker. “Just take the whole thing with you.”

*   *   *

The bad thing about staying in a genuine retro ’50s motel room, Annajane decided, was that all that authenticity meant that she didn’t have a television. She’d finally given up on her jingle project after an hour of staring at the old ads and listening to the old commercials.

Instead, she reached into the box of old Quixie recipe booklets she’d rescued from one of the boxes that had been headed for the Dumpster. She decided to look for anything approaching a muffin recipe that Thomas could use.

The booklets had apparently been produced in-house and given away at grocery store displays or as mail-in premiums. She was leafing through a booklet called “Quixie Entertaining Tips” when she came to a page featuring recipes for “Summer Quix-E-Que.” Among the dishes was a Quixie-marinated barbecued chicken, the baked beans recipe Annajane had seen in an earlier advertisement, and a chocolate sheet cake recipe with “Choco-Quixie frosting.”

On the page facing the recipes was a full-page black-and-white photo of teenagers enjoying a summer cookout. As she was marveling at the teenager’s clean-cut outfits, she realized, with a start, that the perky brunette who was holding an upraised bottle of Quixie in her hand was none other than a teenaged Ruth Hudgens.

“Oh my gosh, Mama,” she said softly. Her mother’s dreamy-eyed smile was directed at a trim lad dressed in a madras short-sleeved shirt and sharply pressed khakis. He looked enough like Mason to take her breath away, but as she looked closer, she realized she was staring at a teenage Glenn Bayless, who had his arm around the very young, and very adorable, Ruth.

Annajane knew the photo had been staged, but as she studied the faces of the other teens, she realized that Sallie Bayless was not among the partygoers.

“Mama and Glenn?” she murmured. Had the two of them ever dated? Emboldened by the martinis she’d been sipping, she picked up the phone and called her mother.

“Hey, Mama,” she said softly. After a few minutes of chatting about her job prospects and some sharp questions about why she didn’t come to her senses and make up with Shane again, she finally managed to get to the point.

“Listen, Mama,” she said, staring down at the recipe booklet spread out on her bed, “I was going through some old Quixie ads, and I found one with a photo of a barbecue layout that you were in. Do you remember that?”

“That old thing?” her mother chuckled. “Good Lord, honey, I haven’t thought of that in years.”

“You were wearing a little cotton shift dress and had your hair in a flip; you looked so cute, a little bit like Jackie Kennedy back in the day,” Annajane said.

“People did used to tell me that,” Ruth admitted. “I bet I wasn’t but eighteen when they took that picture. I made that dress myself. It was my favorite.”

“It’d be right in style today,” Annajane said. “Mama, in the picture, Glenn Bayless has his arm around you. And the two of you look pretty lovey-dovey.”

“What?” Ruth sounded startled. “Annajane, the photographer posed all of us like that.”

“You’re looking at him like he hung the moon,” Annajane said. “And he’s looking at you the same way. Mama, did the two of you have a thing, back then?”

She heard Ruth sigh. “We went out a few times that summer, yes. I wouldn’t call it a thing.”

“Was this before or after Glenn started going with Sallie?”

“Now, why are you digging up all this ancient history? You are good and done with that family, I hope.”

“Humor me, Mama, please?”

“I can’t remember back that far,” Ruth groused. “I think that was the summer after our senior year. Glenn and Sallie dated all through school, but then I seem to recall that they broke up right before the prom. And I ended up going with Glenn, and then we went out a few times that summer. But then your daddy came home from overseas, and I never gave Glenn another look. He and Sallie got back together right before he went off to college. And I ended up marrying your daddy. Now, can I please go on to bed?”

Annajane ran her finger over the old photograph. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you’d gone out with Glenn?”

“It was years and years ago,” Ruth said. “Way before you were born. What difference does it make?”

“I thought you hated all the Baylesses,” Annajane said.

“I never said I hated them,” Ruth corrected. “I just said I didn’t care for the family. Especially the mother.”

“All these years, I’ve wondered why Sallie didn’t like me; this explains everything.”

“Sallie Bayless didn’t like you because she thought she was better than you and me and everybody else in this town,” Ruth said.

“But she hated you, probably because she had some idea that you stole Glenn from her,” Annajane said.

“Stole him! I did no such thing. Glenn was a nice enough boy, but even back then he had a wandering eye. I wasn’t the only girl he was seeing that summer.”

“But I bet he only went running back to Sallie after you threw him over for my daddy,” Annajane guessed. “And to somebody like Sallie, that would be unforgivable. And unforgettable.”

“That woman is bad news,” Ruth said flatly. “How we were ever friends is beyond me.”

“You were friends?”

“Best friends. In grade school,” Ruth said. “Like you and Pokey always were. Although I will say that Pokey is nothing like her mother, thank the Lord.”

“And then what happened to break up the friendship?” Annajane asked, fascinated.

“Boys!” Ruth said. “Sallie Woodrow was boy crazy. She didn’t have any time for girlfriends once she discovered boys.”

“Wow,” Annajane said. “Just … wow.”

“If that’s all you wanted to know, I’ll say good night,” Ruth said. “It’s too late for an old lady like me to be up this time of night. But honey?”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Send me a copy of that picture, would you?”

After talking to her mother, Annajane couldn’t settle down. She’d tried reading, but couldn’t concentrate. And her iPod was packed away in boxes with all the rest of her belongings. She could hear voices outside from the courtyard. People having a good time. It made her deepening depression even worse. Everybody in the world, it seemed, had a man. Except her.

The room did have an old hi-fi, though. Annajane lifted the console lid and picked up a half-dozen old record albums. Most of the artists were ones she recognized only because her step-father had inherited his father’s old record collection. She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the selection: the Ray Conniff Singers, Perry Como, Brenda Lee. Pat Boone? Harold and Thomas were dears, but their musical taste definitely ran to midcentury cheese. She considered the last album in the stack, Johnny’s Greatest Hits, by Johnny Mathis.

What the hell, she decided. She had to study the console switches and knobs for a few minutes to figure it out, but then she put the record onto the turntable, turned up the volume, and dropped the needle on the record.

Lush strings and background singers filled the room. Annajane stretched out on the bed, propped her head up on the pillows, and poured herself another martini.

“You ask how much I love you,” Johnny crooned in his velvet voice, “Until the twelfth of never.” She managed to make it through two more syrupy ballads, “Chances Are” and “Wonderful Wonderful,” before she broke down in great, sorrowful sobs.

“That’s it,” Annajane cried, lunging for the hi-fi’s on-off dial. Much better. Thank God the proprietors of the Pinecone Motor Lodge’s tastes didn’t include vintage Journey, or she would have slit her own wrists with a dull nail file. She poured herself a little more martini and decided that was better yet.

The twelfth of never, she reflected, sipping her drink, could have been the theme song for her relationship with Mason, with never the operative phrase. They’d been so close this last time to finding their way back to each other. But close, her mother had always warned, only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades.