The first time Connie Simmons invited Max Hinkle over for dinner, things did not go well. For starters, there was the little matter of the fire. Connie had been in such a tizzy getting everything ready that she didn’t notice she had set her grandmother’s crystal candlesticks too close to the sunflowers she’d chosen from the farmers’ market that morning. Sunflowers, with their tendency to turn toward the sun, make Connie feel hopeful somehow. Thankfully, only two stems were singed, and she got the fire put out just as Max rang the doorbell.

It looked as though things might go just fine after that, until she was clearing the table and realized she’d forgotten to put out the potatoes, which she had left warming in the oven.

“I thought it was a little strange,” Max would tell her later, “that we didn’t have a vegetable. But I didn’t want to seem rude by asking about the smell coming from the kitchen.”

To top it all off, Connie hadn’t thought to ask Max if there were any foods he couldn’t eat. It wasn’t until dessert, when he turned a disturbing shade of purple and started wheezing like her phlegmy Uncle Ralph, that she wondered if hazelnut-flavored coffee might be an inappropriate choice for someone allergic to nuts. Lesson learned.

In her defense, Connie had cooked so many meals for one over the years that she was worried she might not know how to prepare dinner for two at all. She realizes that “cooked” might be a bit of a stretch, seeing as how she mostly thawed frozen dinners or reheated leftovers. But her heart was in the right place, and right now that meant it was resting in Max Hinkle’s fine and sturdy hands.

Connie had been knee-deep in the receiving line at her father’s funeral when she recognized a face from her past, a man she hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years. She’d had a crush on Max during their days together at Luckettville High, and after her marriage fell apart—didn’t her best friend tell her it would?—Connie occasionally found herself daydreaming about Max, about what might have been.

Max had moved away from Luckettville soon after high school, gotten married and divorced, and come back only recently; the dance of so many in their generation. Connie had never left the county, and sometimes she feels that her lack of worldly experience shows in her face. When she looks in the mirror she thinks she can see Luckettville etched in the lines around her eyes.

Now that she and Max had been out on several more dates since that memorable first dinner at her place, and were, she hoped, becoming a couple, Connie invited him over to dinner for another try. She decided to appeal for assistance this time around, instead of forging ahead on her own as she had done for most of her life. And really, where had that gotten her?

Her ex-husband had been a great cook, thankfully, so for several years—four years, two months, and three days, to be exact—Connie didn’t have to worry about what would be on the supper table every evening. Since they split she had fed herself as best she could, relying on those staples one learns to cook upon leaving home for the first time, like green bean casserole with fried onions on top and chicken divan. Cooking was just about all her ex was good at, but that’s a story for another time.

Connie called her oldest sister, Addison, the only one of the sprawling Simmons clan who could cook with any flair at all, and asked her to e-mail an easy-to-prepare but guaranteed-to-impress dinner menu.

“Something romantic,” said Connie, who hung up quickly so her sister wouldn’t have time to inquire. That’s all Connie needed, word getting out to the rest of the family that there was a new man in her life. Not that rumors weren’t likely already flying around town—this was Luckettville after all—but Connie wanted to keep Max to herself for as long as she could.

If you must know, Connie didn’t trust that Merridy May—who names their child that?—at church. Every Sunday, when Connie and Max made their way to their favorite pew at All Souls Chapel, on the right, halfway up, Merridy May smiled at Max like a mule eating briars. Connie wasn’t worried that Max might stray, not really anyway, but a girl can’t be too careful. Especially one who’s single and middleaged and living in Luckettville.

Here’s what Connie’s sister suggested: shrimp salad for an appetizer, chilled and dished up in Grandmother Simmons’s sherbet glasses (Connie’s sister still wasn’t over the fact that MeeMaw willed those to Connie instead of her, leaving Addison with the less elegant, and chipped, she might add, highballs); bacon-wrapped fillet with roasted asparagus for the main course; and baked chocolate pudding for dessert.

“Even I can make these dishes,” said Connie when she opened her sister’s e-mail, delighted to find such a perfect lineup for dinner for two. She’d never thought to roast asparagus, having been brought up on the misguided premise that steaming was the only way to go. When she sampled the green spears before dinner, she vowed never to eat asparagus any other way.

Max showed up promptly at seven, with flowers. Sunflowers, to be exact. “Everyday bloomers,” he said his mother called them, picked from the yard and full of heart.

“I wanted you to have a spare bouquet,” he said, smiling. “Just in case there’s another fire.”

After dinner, during which nothing went up in flames and all the food made it to the table in a timely manner, Max declared the meal delicious. He also proclaimed his love for Connie, telling her his heart had always been in Luckettville.

“Mine too,” she responded, realizing that a girl didn’t have to travel far and wide to find what mattered. “Mine too.”