“Did she say anything about me? Ask what I’m doing or where I’m—”
“We didn’t talk. I was going to try and catch her after the show, but Christine was giving me a hard time so I didn’t bother.”
“Maybe I ought to look her up and say hi for old times’ sake. Barston’s not that far; a two-hour drive from Atlanta.”
“I doubt Brenda will like the idea of you looking up an old flame, and besides, your Suzanna Duff is using a different name so lots of luck in finding her.”
Repeating the old adage, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Bobby chuckled. He thought of asking for the date of the show and where it was held, but he didn’t. He was a lawyer and quite capable of finding information that wasn’t supposed to be found. When he hung up, the thought of a child who might be his was heavy on his mind.
He turned back to the television, but the remainder of the game was little more than a blur. He barely noticed when Joe Auer scored on a 14-yard run in the fourth quarter and brought the Yellow Jackets within striking distance. When the two-point conversion failed, he snapped the television off and sat there remembering that last night with Suzanna.
She never asked for much, but that night she did. She wanted way more than he could give. Marriage was out of the question. Maybe not forever but at least until he’d finished college. What was he supposed to do, blow off a Georgia Tech football scholarship? He’d worked damn hard for it; ran practice after practice until he was so tired he could barely stand. Some games left him feeling like he’d been put through a meat grinder, but he didn’t quit and he kept his grades up. He could have skated, slacked off on the studies and still gotten a scholarship, but not to Georgia Tech. It would have been to some rinky-dink school where he’d end up in a job not worth having.
Suzanna could have at least tried to understand that he wanted something better. She could have gotten rid of the baby and waited for him to graduate. If she’d agreed to that, they might have gotten married. In time.
It had been over eight years since he’d last seen or spoken to her. He’d tried to contact her a number of times but to no avail. That last night had been ugly and they’d both said things they didn’t mean, hurtful things that were sharp and painful as salt in an open wound. When they parted Suzanna had walked away, her head ducked down, her eyes red and swollen, not once looking back to see if he was still there. He was, but she’d not bothered to look. That night he’d waited on the park bench for two hours thinking she might return, but she didn’t.
Afterward he was angry. He had every right to be. He’d tried, really tried, to talk things through, make her see the logic in his thinking, but she wouldn’t even discuss it. She said she wasn’t going to kill the baby they’d made, and that’s all there was to it.
After that night Suzanna came to school for a week or two, but they never spoke. They passed each other in the hallway without a nod or sideways glance. He believed that given enough time they’d work it out, but then she disappeared. One week turned into two, and she didn’t show up for school. That’s when he went to her house, and her daddy said she was gone.
“Where to?” Bobby asked, but he might as well have been talking to a stone. The old man slammed the door and wouldn’t open it again, not even when Bobby stood there calling out Suzanna’s name and pounding on the door.
He thought she’d come back for graduation, but she didn’t. Twice he’d driven over, parked down the street from her house, and waited, but he never saw her coming or going. That summer he left for Georgia.
Now with her name fresh in his mind, he couldn’t stop thinking of how it used to be. When they were alone, Suzanna would let down her guard and give herself to him completely. Afterward, when their passion was spent, they’d curl their bodies together and talk of things yet to come.
He thought back on how she would trace her finger along the line of his palm and say that was a sure indication that they’d have a long and happy life together. Now here she was in Georgia, only 80 miles away. Was it possible that fate had given him the second chance he’d hoped for?
Later that evening as he and Brenda sat across the dinner table from one another, he found himself comparing the two women. He’d met Brenda Garrett at Georgia Tech, and they’d hit it off right away. With her dark hair and green eyes, she was attractive; attractive enough for him to notice her sitting across the lecture hall.
They had everything in common, wanted the same things out of life, enjoyed the same people, liked the same restaurants, and she was certainly no prude when it came to sex. Brenda was like an open book. With her he knew exactly where he stood.
It didn’t hurt that her daddy was Jerome Garrett, a founding partner in Greene & Garrett. The summer they got engaged, the firm gave him a clerking internship and then fast-tracked him once he passed the bar. Bobby understood that who you knew could sometimes be more important than what you knew, and thanks to Brenda he’d been introduced to all the right people.
She’d introduced him to her daddy right off, whereas he’d seen Suzanna’s daddy a total of three times and not one of them had been under pleasant
