Tim sighed and reached for my hand. “I’m sorry, babe. I told you it wasn’t a nice story.”
   “And what happened? Did you marry her?”?
   “Oh, hell no. Mama never would have signed for me. It turned out she wasn’t pregnant. Couldn’t even get pregnant again, some kind of problem when her second was born. Her daddy took her home and Uncle Merle took us all back to our house.”
   “Was that the end of it?”
   “Nope. Just the beginning really. She would walk past the house two or three times a day, every day, until Mama went to the sheriff. He had a talk with Lurlene’s daddy and she slacked off. Years went by. I took up guitar, started singing in bars to make a little money. Long story short, I hooked up with my cousin Mark, Merle’s boy, and another guy we picked up along the way and formed T Three. We got really lucky. Hit song at the right time. Got an agent, a contract and headed uptown. Thought we were stepping in high cotton. Mama quit the truck stop, Luke finished school and passed the bar, became a full-fledged lawyer and joined a firm in Austin. First time since daddy died things were really looking up.”
   “Then Lurlene showed up again. Started calling radio stations, television studios, even some magazines. Told people we were married, that the boys were mine, all kinds of stuff she dreamed up. Earned a label as a nut job, and a restraining order from my brother Luke. Then she started showing up where we were performing, followed us all over Texas. Then it was all over the country. She even got into my hotel room one night.
   Had to have the police get her out.”
   “Wasn’t there anything you could do?”