YOUNG LOVE || 𝐉𝐄𝐍𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐀 ✔︎

thirteen

"Oh, Lisa," Irene said. "You both must have been heartbroken."

"Yes. But that was a bit of a breaking point. I think Jennie finally understood how much I was hurting. After that, I didn't fear going to see my mother as much. I knew Jennie wouldn't come around," she said. "And she didn't."

"I wonder why you two could never talk about it," Seulgi said.

"There wasn't anything to talk about," she said. "We knew the score. What good would it have done to talk about it?"

"Well, I think you did the wise thing by not giving in. She obviously wanted to be with you. Sexually, at least."

"It may seem to you that Jennie only wanted the sexual part of our relationship, but that's not true. She was honest when she told me she was miserable in her life. That tortured look in her eyes was there from the first time she told me she was getting married," Lisa said. "Like I said earlier, she was as emotionally invested as I was. But one of us had to be strong and end our affair."

"So her son? When you say gifted, is he a genius?" Irene asked.

"Oh yeah. My mother keeps me updated," she said with a smile. "You would think he was her grandson. He's about to turn fourteen and he's already graduated college with a dual degree."

"Child prodigies usually finish college as early as eleven or twelve," Seulgi said.

"Don't know about that," she said. "My mother said his IQ tested at 152."

Seulgi's eyes widened. "That's exceptional. Maybe emotionally he wasn't ready for college," she said.

Lisa took that as a dig at Jennie, but she said nothing. She'd been around the kid a couple of times. He seemed very mature to her.

"It sounds as if Jennie and your mother became close," Seulgi said.

"Yes, they did. I think Minjoon had something to do with it. My mother talked freely about Jennie whenever I did visit her. But Jennie never came around. It was almost as if she was avoiding me now."

"Did your mother retire then?"

"Not right then, no. Her cancer went into remission," she said. "Four years later, it flared up again. This time breast cancer. It was after that that we convinced her to retire. Even then, she wasn't ready."

"I imagine not having you or Bambam living in Daegu, the Kims were her family. Retiring from there must have been hard," Seulgi said.

"Yes, but my mother had maintained friendships outside of the Kims household. There were a few ladies who she saw frequently," she said.

"You saw Jennie again?" Irene asked.

"Yes. I went down to help my mother move. That was actually the last time I saw Jennie. I was thirty-two."

* * *

"It's going to be so hard," her mother said.
"This has been home for so long." She turned, taking Lisa's hand. "You were just ten when we moved here. Do you remember that day?"

Lisa nodded. "Yes. I remember thinking how big everything was. The house, the kitchen." And she remembered a young Jennie standing at the top of the stairs, watching her-a memory etched in her memory forever. "You're going to love your new place, Mom."

"Oh, I suppose I will. I'm looking forward to sitting on the patio, to tending to a flower garden again instead of admiring Hyun's handiwork," she said with a laugh. Her smile faded quickly. "What'll be hard getting used to is being alone. Here, there were always people around."