The story that Cannie tells on pages 52 through 60 about how she had come to write a column about weddings and their brides for a local newspaper helps give the reader a deeper understanding of Cannie’s longing to find answers about love and marriage. The first few pages of the story contain dialogue between her and a bride, Sandy, who Cannie interviews at her house by Sandy’s request when she is upset that she can’t describe the color sea foam in the newspaper column. This interview marks the beginning of Cannie’s writing of brides’ stories in the column, telling a story about how the bride decided to get married. As the story advances, it’s mostly Cannie describing the weddings she attends and how she goes about writing the brides’ stories, and eventually delves deeper into her own confusion about how one decides to get married. The story shows a bit of the way that Cannie feels lost in the world and has a deep-seated need to make sense of marriage. In light of her breakup with Bruce, it adds a deeper complexity to her earlier decision to ask for a break because it shows just how confused she is about the idea of marriage, while simultaneously liking the idea. The last lines of the story really help to underscore this confusion when she poses the questions she wishes she could find the answers to, “How do you know when a guy is the right guy? How can you be sure enough to promise someone forever and mean it? How can you believe in love?” (60). These questions are important in understanding Cannie’s character, and they are even more telling of who she is in the present day reality of the novel than they had been during the story, before she dates Bruce.