Susannah's Garden (Blossom Street #3)(34)

“Thankfully I was smart enough to get out of the marriage before we had kids. Then I married Ben in 1978.”

They paused and sipped their wine.

“Jake Presley was your high school sweetheart, wasn’t he?” Sandy asked Susannah.

Funny that Jake’s name would come up so easily. The truth was, she didn’t want to think about him. Not right now. Not when he’d been with her for weeks, taking over her dreams and her thoughts. “Yes,” she said simply.

“Didn’t he go out with Sharon Nance?” Lisa asked.

“They broke up,” Yvette reminded her.

“Right.” Lisa nodded at the memory. “As I recall, she wasn’t too pleased about it, either.”

Sandy glanced at Susannah, her expression puzzled. “So what happened to Jake? Where is he now?”

Susannah shrugged casually. “I don’t really know. He moved the year I was in France.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Yvette said, clearly taken aback by the news. “Didn’t he write?”

“In the beginning, but it didn’t last long.”

“But I thought—”

Before she’d left for France, Susannah had told her friends that when she returned she’d be marrying Jake. It had sounded wildly romantic and she’d meant it. Except that when she came home, Jake was gone.

“I tried to find him,” Susannah admitted.

“What about his dad?” Lisa asked. “He must’ve known where Jake was. Or did he leave, too?”

“As far as I can tell, they both moved out of town.” She raised her wineglass to her lips. Feeling warm and relaxed, she murmured, “I wish I knew where he went and why he never answered my letters.” She sighed. “When I was seventeen, I was so sure that Jake and I were meant to be.”

“The path not taken,” Lisa said. “I think about that sometimes, you know.”

“Okay.” Susannah pointed at Lisa with her wineglass. “What’s yours?”

“My untraveled path?” Lisa looked away in embarrassment. Slowly she shook her head, as if she regretted bringing up the subject.

“Come on,” Susannah urged. “You’ve got one. We all do.”

“What about you?” Sandy asked Carolyn.

Carolyn hesitated, then said, “Yeah, me, too.”

“I’ll tell if you do.”

Everyone turned to stare at Carolyn, who didn’t seem especially confident. “You tell first and then maybe I will.”

Susannah reached for the half-filled bottle of white zinfandel and replenished Carolyn’s glass. “Oh, you’ll talk.”

They giggled as if they were sixteen again.

“Go on,” Susannah said. “Lisa, you start, okay?”

Lisa’s face reddened. “You’ll think I’m an idiot.”

“We won’t,” they all insisted.

Again Lisa looked away, then picked up her wineglass and drank the last two swallows. When she’d finished she set the glass down. “You probably all think it’s some dark secret and it isn’t. I just wish I’d gone to college, but I didn’t have the marks to qualify for a scholarship.”

She stared out into the distance, but Susannah was convinced that she wasn’t watching the deer that wandered timidly down into the grassy meadow.

“My dad said if anyone in our family went to college, it would be my little brother. He was the one who’d be supporting a family, not me.”

“Don’t you just cringe every time you hear someone talk like that?” Susannah muttered. “I mean, it’s such a dated idea but I’m sure it still exists.”

“The thing is, I could’ve gone. In my heart of hearts I know that Mom would’ve fought to get me into a community college if I’d asked. Instead, I got a job with the telephone company, where I still work.”

“What did you want to be?”

“That’s just it,” Lisa explained. “I don’t know, but I wanted the chance to learn and discover who I am. All I needed to do was tell my mother how badly I wanted to continue my education, and yet I didn’t say a word.”

“Why not?” Carolyn asked. “Did you ever figure out what held you back?”

Lisa nodded. “I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Mainly it’s because I was eager to get out on my own and be independent. If I took the job with the phone company, I’d have the freedom to make my own decisions about life. I wanted out of the family home and I didn’t want to be under my parents’ control anymore. I realize now that I wasn’t gaining nearly as much as I was giving up.”

“What about your brother?” Susannah asked. She vaguely remembered Lisa’s little brother. “Did he go on to college?”

Lisa nodded. “He attended the University of Washington for one year and flunked out.”

Susannah groaned.

“The irony is that I’m the sole support of my family. Bill died of cancer five years ago, and now it’s just me and the kids. In another year it’ll be me alone.”

They were quiet as they all took this in.

“Your turn,” Lisa said, turning to Yvette.

“You already know the path I took. More of a detour, really. I wish I hadn’t married Ken. When I think back, I knew it was a mistake, but I was so young and naive that I went ahead with the wedding, anyway.”