They sat at dinner and chatted about their past. She told him about when she was a kid growing up in southern Pennsylvania. “I lived in a town where basically the only things to do were drink, have sex, or get high. I never did any of those things, so I basically didn’t do anything all through high school except read books and stuff like that. My teachers and my classmates kept saying I was destined for college. That my life would really begin in college.

“And it did.” ...