assuring each that she loved only him. With luck, after the dust settled, her plans could go forward unchanged. Loretta was a stunning beauty, and she knew it. She thought it was only logical that men should fight over her, and they often did. When she got sick with the cirrhosis that killed her at thirty-five, the hardest thing for her—harder than dying, Barbara Jean thought—was saying goodbye to her beauty. Loretta died hard and she died ugly. Liver disease whittled away her cute, round
