“How long will you be in town?”

“Where have you been?”

“Why weren’t you at the last reunion?”

Before she could answer one question, another presented itself.

“Give her a break, will you?” Sandy Giddings said as she entered the house. She plunked her bottle of wine and a pan of homemade brownies on the kitchen counter. Carolyn brought a huge spinach salad out of the refrigerator and tossed it, letting it wait on the table beside Susannah’s.

“I thought we’d eat outside,” she said. Carrying the cheese platter, she led the way to the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. The round table was covered with colorful place mats and the umbrella positioned to block out the setting sun.

The five women chatted and laughed nonstop through the appetizers, followed by a dinner of salads, creamy stroganoff with buttered noodles and fresh green beans. They lingered over their desserts—Sandy’s rich chocolate brownies, berry pie and warm apple crisp with ice cream. Then they cleared the table and returned outside with their glasses of wine, comfortable in the waning sun.

“This is so much fun,” Yvette said with a contented sigh. “I can’t tell you the last time I had a ladies’ night out.”

“Me, neither,” Sandy chimed in.

They pulled their chairs into a small circle as they caught up with each others’ news.

“So you’ve got two children?” Lisa asked, looking at Susannah.

She nodded.

“I love your ring,” Yvette commented. “Is it from your husband?”

Susannah’s gaze dropped to the emerald. “Joe got it for me on our twentieth anniversary.”

“Ben and I go way back, too,” Yvette said, tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder. “But I didn’t get an emerald ring on our anniversary.”

Susannah laughed and then frowned. The last she’d heard, Yvette had married Kenny Lincoln shortly after high school. “I thought you and Kenny—”

Yvette interrupted her. “We divorced two years later. Kenny got into drugs.”

“I’m sorry.” Susannah didn’t want to dredge up unpleasant memories.

Yvette raised her eyebrows. “I knew he was experimenting with the stuff when we got married, but turned a blind eye to it. The last I heard, he was doing time in Shelton.”

Susannah couldn’t imagine the athletic Kenny Lincoln behind bars.

“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.”

“That’s what I did,” Carolyn said. “I married the wrong man.”

“So is Jake Presley the path you didn’t take?” Lisa directed the question to Susannah.

Susannah leaned back in her chair and thought about her life. Despite her youthful love for Jake, she hadn’t married the wrong man. Joe was a good husband and she had a good life. She loved her family, her home, her garden. She enjoyed teaching—but then why was she counting the years until retirement? Still, that was a question for another day.

“I’m not sure,” she hedged, and then decided she should be honest with her friends. “Yes, I guess he is.” She was silent for a moment. “Recently I sometimes wonder if I should’ve married Jake.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know where he was.”

“I don’t mean after I returned from Europe, but before.” She glanced around and saw that her four friends were staring at her with wide, questioning eyes. Smiling, she sipped her wine. “The night before I left, I sneaked out of the house to meet Jake. He begged me to drive to Idaho with him so the two of us could get married.” She’d had no idea that would be the last time she’d ever see him.

Her friends squealed with shock. Everyone had heard about young lovers who’d done exactly that. There was no waiting period in Idaho, and it was possible to go to a justice of the peace and be married by morning.

“You told him no?” Yvette seemed to find that hard to believe even now.

“I think every girl in school was half in love with Jake Presley,” Lisa confided. “He was such a bad boy, and there wasn’t one of us who wouldn’t have given our eyeteeth to tame him.”

Susannah’s voice was filled with regret. “I tried to get him to wait, but it didn’t work.” All she had to do was close her eyes to remember how handsome Jake had looked in his black leather jacket. He was the epitome of cool.

“You never, ever heard from him after you came back? Not even once?” Lisa asked.

“I hoped he’d search for me, but he didn’t,” Susannah confessed. At least not that she knew of. Susannah wouldn’t put it past her father to lie about Jake. All through college she’d waited, certain Jake would find her, certain he loved her, certain that eventually they’d be together. When she reached her mid-twenties, she gave up and married Joe.

The silence nearly undid her. “I have a wonderful husband, don’t get me wrong,” she rushed to add. “My kids are great and almost grown up. This is the best time of my life.”

She didn’t quite believe her own words, even though everything she’d said should be true. Chrissie and Brian would soon leave and establish their own lives—but just as she was about to relinquish one responsibility, she faced another.

Her mother needed her, depended on her. It felt as if Susannah had gone back to the days when her children were young, only in this instance the child was her mother.

“Carolyn,” Susannah said, getting to her feet, eager now to change the subject. “Let me help you with the dishes.”

“Nonsense.”

“Remember Mr. Fogleman?” Sandy asked softly. Up until now, she’d remained suspiciously quiet. Susannah sat back down.