Love and Mourning Glories

Sarah Johnson gets a phone call at home from her friend Rachel, a nurse at their small-town East Texas hospital, saying Sarah's husband Sam has just been brought in with a heart attack and that he is already dead. Sarah rushes over to the hospital.
She had been dreading this inevitable event, caused more by alcoholism than any bad heart. The EMT drivers tell Sarah they had responded to the emergency call at Koochies, the town's Porky's-like strip club/beer joint, not at Johnson's Garage. Sarah retrieves Sam's truck at Koochies and enters that low-life world, seeing it for the first time.
She worries about how to proceed with ownership of the faltering business. Sarah, on summer vacation as a high school teacher, had been earning a master's as a hedge against Sam's downward spiral. Now, half into her career move, she finds herself thrust prematurely into ownership responsibility.
Sarah's daughter Sue returns home from her first year at Baylor University, an expensive private school Sarah worries now she can no longer afford.
Sarah meets with Richard her accountant who advises her not to sell, but to repair the business, get it organized, and run it herself. She finds out immediately Sam had been worse off than she knew, had re-mortgaged their previously paid off house against the business, was in arrears to the IRS, was heavily in debt.
Sarah knows nothing about the business, but begins working at the garage and finds that Sam's manager Stan has been stealing hugely, catches him red-handed, and has him arrested. Meanwhile, Sam's competitor Tommy at the Firestone makes a good faith offer to buy the business from Sarah.
Stan hires an attorney and files against Sarah, claiming Sam had offered full partnership.
Cameron Mitchell, an unmarried car repair owner, is about to bail his main mechanic Dobie out of the drunk tank. While at the court house Cameron runs into and meets Sarah and her attorney, Trippet Fanning.
Not knowing why, not knowing he is smitten, even though Sarah's husband has just died, he decides against bailing out his errant Dobie and instead asks Sarah if he might borrow one of her mechanics for a half day. She agrees and afterwards also agrees to his invitation, at week's end, to have dinner together. Cameron feels very awkward, realizing he has asked out a woman whose husband had just that week died. Instead of going out to eat, they have dinner at Sarah's house, since Sue had already fixed a home-cooked meal. Cameron, they learn, has bought five acres on the outskirts of town and has recently gone into car repair himself. In the meantime he is living in his new business. At dinner, Sue announces she signed for a certified letter which Sarah now opens in front of Cameron. She thinks it might be further lawsuit business from the sleazy exmanager Stan, but it is from a new landlord announcing that Sam's rent has immediately just tripled. Sam had let the lease lapse, so the new landlord had exercised his right to demand an immediate increase.
She thinks, at first, it might be Tommy, that perhaps he had bought the building. She reasons he may have made an end-run around his offer to purchase the business by merely buying the building. She phones him for clarification and finds out from him that he did not know anything about HER rent going up, but that HIS rent also has. During this conversation Tommy discloses that he and his wife Sandra are estranged, that terms of the settlement left her as owner of the building and land, that he also just has been served notice of a rent increase, and -- most significantly -- that Sandra's romantic interest is a lowlife character named Stan.
Sarah, Tommy, Cameron, and Richard combine forces and plan an immediate relocation by both Sarah and Tommy to new buildings on the five acres where Cameron already is. During the course of the move Sarah finds Sam had kept an old business card from a seedy motel used for illicit affairs across from Koochies with Sandra's phone number penciled on it. She breaks down at this hidden betrayal and Cameron comforts her, disclosing his love. In the midst of her breakdown Sarah realizes she has likewise fallen in love with Cameron.
Sandra and Stan had been expecting a huge revenue increase via monthly rents from both Tommy and Sarah and now suddenly have zero rent income and heavy debts, but they are saved by an accident.
Sarah has completed her move and Tommy is in the middle of his when Tommy is accidentally killed. Sandra and Stan are now in an even better financial position from Tommy's triple indemnity life insurance. Moreover, Sandra stands to inherit Tommy's equipment, now half moved to the new location.
Sandra and Stan squander the inheritance within a few months and Stan begins his pattern of theft again, this time against Sandra. He knows she will be broke in a matter of a few months and he conspires with Dobie to set up a theft ring.