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“Coming!” a melodic voice calls from upstairs before an attractive woman rushes down the stairs. She seems unperturbed by her child yelling, so I imagine that is a common occurrence around here. She looks confused to see three strangers at the door, but quickly gives us a wide smile of perfect white teeth.
“How can I help you?” She asks as she shoos her boys away.
“Are you Susan Smith?” Will asks.
“I am, but since I go by married name now, Susan Wigby.” Susan answers, looking more confused by the second.
“I’m helping David here track down the woman he left at the altar 30 years ago. Her name was Susan Smith.” Will gestures to my dad as he explains.
“Oh! That certainly isn’t me!” Susan says with a chuckle, looking a bit flustered.
“Would you mind if we still talked to you for a bit? I’m making a vlog of our journey and would like to interview you.” Will asks, raising his video camera and equipment bag.
“Well sure. Come on in.” Susan says as she smooths down her blonde hair.
For the next two hours, we sit in her loving room that is straight out of a home decor ad as the pictures of her eight children stare down at us. Every fifteen minutes, one of the pictured children shows up to ask their mom a question. Turns out this Susan got married at 19 to her high school sweetheart, had five kids, adopted three more, and started her own business.
“I’m just your average mom.” The woman says at the conclusion of the interview, as if it is no big deal that her person, home, family, and career are picture perfect.
“I think she was a robot.” Will says as we drive away.
“She would have to be to not slap her kid over the head after the fifth time he asked her where the ketchup was.” I agree.
“I thought she was nice.” Dad defends, but even he sounds a bit suspicious of that Susan’s storybook life.
“She was nice. It is just that she was Disney princess nice.” I clarify.
“What does that mean?” Dad scrunches his eyebrows in confusion.
“It means that I was half convinced that she was going to start singing and the forest animals were going to show up to clean her house.” Honestly, the woman had seemed on the brink of bursting into song when she talked of her marital bliss and lovely children.
“You’re telling me that you don’t sing a duet with a songbird every morning as you get ready, STG? I’m disappointed.” Will teases from the passenger seat.
“No, and I’m not waiting for a prince to save me, either.” I add. I could deal with the small-town girl comments because truthfully, I was one, through and through, but I was no Disney princess. I’m a terrible singer and most of my qualities are not the ones little girls should look up to.
“Then what are you waiting for?” Will asks, looking more interested in my answer than I would have thought.
“To know what to do. How’d you know I was waiting for something?” I’ve felt like since I recovered from the grief of losing Mama that all I had done was wait for direction. It hadn’t come yet.
“You have this way about you that is hard to describe. It’s like you’re teetering on a wall and trying to decide which way to fall.” Will looks into my eyes as he speaks, and it is one of the few times I feel that he has truly seen me, and it scares me. How could someone who doesn’t listen to a word I say see something I try to hide?
“That makes no sense, writer boy.” I hide my fear behind my words, hoping he doesn’t see how his words hit me.
“Let me reword for your STG brain. It seems like you are stuck between moving onto something new and staying in the past.” Will slows his voice down mockingly slow, and I just shake my head.
“That would be accurate.” I admit, but I don’t tell him I’m considering transferring schools. He would just think I was typical if he knew I was going to go to Columbia. Small-town girl takes on the big city, pretty sure that was a hallmark movie.
“But why? Just move on, take the jump. You can always go back to the way it was if it fails.” He says it as if it really is as easy as just doing it, as if there aren’t repercussions for every choice.
“But you can’t go back. It’s not just circumstances that change, it is you. No matter if you change everything back to the way it was, you have changed, and nothing will be the same because you aren’t the same.” I hope he doesn’t hear the heartache in my words or how much I miss who I was before Mama died.
“You are already changing, though. Might as well go after what you want.” And again, Will makes it sound so simple that I almost agree. We are quiet for the rest of the drive, but the conversation sticks with me throughout the rest of the night.
That night, as I sit alone in my hotel, Will’s words spur me into action. I pull my laptop out and open the acceptance letter I received a couple of weeks ago. With no more desire to teeter on the edge of change, I make a decision and jump. I enroll for fall semester at Columbia and pray I’m not making the biggest mistake of my life.
Chapter 11
By the time we’d been on the road for a month, we had fallen into a routine. Dad drove and hummed along to his favorite rock station and occasionally commented on a cool rock formation. I lounged across the backseat and did whatever was necessary not to fall asleep, which usually entailed a lot of mindless scrolling. Will worked on the vlog for the road trip from the passenger seat or the second row if he wanted to annoy me.
