Lance

Lance is Mattie Devore’s deceased husband, whose death remains a defining absence in her life. Though the supplied passages give little direct account of him, they show the continuing force of his loss: Mattie identifies the last time she truly cried as the period when Lance died, and later reaches for Mike Noonan’s company when another crisis overwhelms her.

Identity and Background

The evidence identifies Lance through Mattie’s marriage to him and her grief after his death. He is not present in the narrated scenes, but his absence shapes the emotional circumstances in which Mattie raises Kyra Devore and faces the conflicts that follow. The passages do not specify the circumstances or date of his death; they establish its personal consequence through Mattie’s recollection.

Grief and Its Recurrence

After Maxwell Devore dies, Mattie cries over the telephone with Mike listening. When she regains some composure, she apologizes and says she has not cried like that—truly cried—since Lance died. The comparison makes Lance’s death the reference point for an earlier, profound release of grief, while the present scene shows that bereavement has not made her immune to later shocks.

Lance’s memory also gives the conversation with Mike its emotional context. Mattie asks him to come to lunch because she needs to talk; the request follows her admission that she has been crying as she did after her husband’s death. What persists is not a detailed account of their marriage, but the measure of feeling his death left behind.

Relationships and Narrative Role

Lance’s relationship with Mattie is disclosed through her own recollection: she connects him to the last time she remembers weeping so completely. His place in the story is therefore largely relational and retrospective. The novel brings him into view at moments when Mattie’s present distress opens onto the older loss that preceded it.

The contrast between the two occasions is consequential. Lance’s death is recalled as a past bereavement; after Maxwell’s death, Mattie turns to Mike for immediate support. Her recollection frames the present as another moment of emotional upheaval without equating the two losses or supplying details the text does not give about Lance himself.