第 14 页

“You were the last person she ever talked to, the last per-son she saw in her life. She was the best lady in the world, and you didn’t even know who you were seeing.” He paused, letting that sink in. “But now you do.”

With that, he stood from the couch, and a moment later he was gone.

After hearing what Robert Torrelson had said, Adrienne touched Paul’s face, dabbing away his tears.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m kind of numb right now.”

“That’s not surprising. It was a lot to absorb.”

“Yes,” Paul said, “it was.”

“Are you glad you came? And that he told you those things?”

“Yes and no. It was important to him that I know who she was, so I’m glad for that. But it makes me sad, too. They loved each other so much, and now she’s gone.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

She offered a wistful smile. “It isn’t. The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it’s over. Those two ele-ments always go together.”

“Even for you and me?”

“For everyone,” she said. “The best we can hope for in life is that it doesn’t happen for a long, long time.”

He pulled her onto his lap. He kissed her lips, then put his arms around her, holding her close, letting her hold him, and for a long time, they stayed in that position.

But as they were making love later that evening, Adri-enne’s words came back to her, It was their last night to-gether in Rodanthe, their last night together for at least a year. And as much as she tried to fight them, she couldn’t stop the tears as they slipped silently down her cheeks.

Fifteen

Adrienne wasn’t in the bed when Paul woke on Tues-day morning. He’d seen her crying during the night but had said nothing, knowing that speaking would bring him to tears as well. But the denial left him ragged and unable to sleep for hours. Instead, he lay awake as she fell asleep in his arms, nuzzling against her, not wanting to let go, as if trying to make up for the year they wouldn’t be together.

She’d folded his clothes for him, the ones that had been in the dryer, and Paul pulled out what he needed for the day before packing the rest in his duffel bags. After he showered and dressed, he sat on the side of the bed, pen in hand, scribbling his thoughts on paper. Leaving the note in his room, he brought his things downstairs and left them near the front door. Adrienne was in the kitchen, standing over the stove and stirring a pan of scrambled eggs, a cup of Coffee on the counter beside her. When she turned, he could see that her eyes were rimmed in red.

“Hi,” he ventured.

“Hi,” she said, turning away. She began stirring the eggs more quickly, keeping her eyes on the pan. “I figured you might want some breakfast before you go.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“I brought a Thermos from Home when I came, and if you want some Coffee for the trip, you can take it with you.”

“Thank you, but that’s okay. I’ll he fine.”

She kept stirring the eggs. “If you want a couple of sand-wiches, I can throw those together, too.”

Paul moved toward her. “You don’t have to do that. I can get something later. And to be honest, I doubt if I’ll he hungry anyway.”

She didn’t seem to be listening, and he put his hand on her back. He heard her exhale shakily, as if trying to keep from crying.

“Hey.

“I’m okay,” she whispered.

“You sure?”

She nodded and sniffed as she removed the pan from the burner. Dabbing at her eyes, she still refused to look at him. Seeing her this way reminded him of their first encounter on the porch, and he felt his throat constrict. He couldn’t believe that less than a week had passed since then.

“Adrienne. . . don’t..

She looked up at him then.

“Don’t what? Be sad? You’re going to Ecuador and I have to go back to Rocky Mount. Can I help it if I don’t want this to end just yet?”

“I don’t either.”

“And that’s why I’m sad. Because I know that, too.” She hesitated, trying to stay in control of her feelings. “You know, when I got up this morning, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry again. I told myself that I’d be strong and happy, so that you would remember me that way. But when I heard the shower come on, it just hit me that when I wake up tomorrow, you’re not going to be here, and I couldn’t help it. But I’ll be okay. I really will. I’m tough.”

She said it as though she were trying to convince herself. Paul reached for her hand.

“Adrienne . . . last night, after you went to sleep, I got to thinking that maybe I could stay a little while longer. An-other month or two isn’t going to make much difference, and that way we could be together—”

She shook her head, cutting him off.

“No,” she said, “You can’t do that to Mark. Not after all that you two have been through. And you need this, Paul. It’s been eating you up; if you don’t go now, part of me won-ders if you ever will. Spending more time with me isn’t going to make it any easier to say good-bye when the time comes, and I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I was the one who kept you and your son apart. Even if we planned for your leaving the next time, I’d still cry then, too.”

She flashed a brave smile before going on. “You can’t stay. We both knew you were leaving before the we part of us even began. Even though it’s hard, both of us also know it’s the right thing to do—that’s the way it is when you’re a parent. Sometimes there are sacrifices you have to make, and this is one of them.”

He nodded, his lips pressed together. He knew she was right hut wished desperately that she wasn’t.

“Will you promise that you’ll wait for me?” he asked fi-nally, his voice ragged.

“Of course. I thought you were leaving forever, I’d be crying so hard, we’d have to eat breakfast in a rowboat,”

Despite everything he laughed, and Adrienne leaned into him. She kissed him before letting him hold her. He could feel the warmth of her body, smell the faintest trace of perfume. She felt so good in his arms. So perfect.

“I don’t know how or why it happened, but I think I was meant to come here,” he said. “To meet you. For so many years, I’ve been missing something in my life, but I didn’t know what it was. And now I do.”

She closed her eyes. “Me too,” she whispered.

He kissed her hair, then rested his cheek against her.

“Will you miss me?”

Adrienne forced herself to smile. “Every single minute.”

They had breakfast together. Adrienne wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat, forced herself to smile now and then. Paul picked at his food, taking longer than usual to clean his plate, and when they were finished, they brought the dishes to the sink.

It was almost nine o’clock, and Paul led her past the front desk toward the door. He lifted one duffel bag at a time to sling over his shoulders; Adrienne held the leather pouch with his tickets and passport, which she handed to him.

“I guess this is it,” he said.

Adrienne pressed her lips together. Like hers, Paul’s eyes were red around the edges, and he kept them downcast, as if trying to hide them.

“You know how to reach me at the clinic. I don’t know how good the mail service is, but letters should reach me. Mark’s always gotten everything Martha has sent him.”

“Thanks.”

He shook the pouch. “I have your address, too, in here. I’ll write to you when I get there. And call, too, when I get the chance.”

“Okay.”

He reached out to touch her cheek, and she leaned into his hand. They both knew there wasn’t anything more to say.

She followed him out the door and down the steps, watching as he loaded the duffel bags into the backseat of the car. After closing the door, he stared at her a long time, unwilling to break the connection, wishing again that he didn’t have to go. Finally he moved toward her, kissed her on both cheeks and on her lips. He took her in his arms.

Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut. He wasn’t leaving for-ever, she told herself. They were meant for each other; they would have all the time in the world when he got back. They would grow old together. She’d lived this long with-out him already—what was one more year, right?

But it wasn’t that easy. She knew that if her children were older, she would join him in Ecuador. If his son didn’t need him, he could stay here, with her. Their lives were di-verging because of responsibilities to others, and it sud-denly seemed cruelly unfair to Adrienne. How could their chance at Happiness come down to this?

Paul took a deep breath and finally moved away. He glanced to the side for a moment, then back at her, dabbing at his eyes.

She followed him around to the driver’s side and watched as he got in. With a weak smile, he put the key in the ignition and turned it, revving the engine to life. She stepped back from the open door and he closed it, then rolled down the window.

“One year,” he said, “and I’ll be back. You have my word on that.”

“One year,” she whispered in response.

He gave her a sad smile, then put the car in reverse, and with that, the car began backing out. She turned to watch him, aching inside as he stared back at her.

The car turned as it reached the highway, and he pressed his hand to the glass one last time. Adrienne raised her hand, watching the car roll forward, away from Rodanthe, away from her.

She stood in the drive as the car grew smaller in the dis-tance and the noise of the engine faded away. Then, a mo-ment later, he was gone, as if he’d never been there at all.

The morning was crisp, blue skies with puffs of white. A flock of terns flew overhead. Purple and yellow pansies had opened their petals to the sun. Adrienne turned and made her way toward the door.

Inside, it looked the same as the day she’d arrived. Noth-ing was out of place. He’d cleaned the fireplace yesterday and stacked new cords of wood beside it; the rockers had been put back into their original position. The front desk looked orderly, with every key back in its place.

But the smell remained. The smell of their breakfast to-gether, the smell of aftershave, the smell of him, lingering on her hands and on her face and on her clothes.

It was too much for Adrienne, and the noises of the Inn at Rodanthe were no longer what they had once been. No longer were there echoes of quiet conversations, or the sound of water rushing through the pipes, or the rhythm of footfalls as he moved about in his room. Gone was the roar of waves and the persistent drumming of the storm, the crackling of the fire. Instead, the Inn was filled with the sounds of a woman who wanted only to be comforted by the man she loved, a woman who could do nothing else but cry.

Sixteen

Rocky Mount, 2002

Adrienne had finished her story, and her throat was dry. Despite the breezy effects of a single glass of wine, she could feel the ache in her back from sitting in one position too long. She shifted in her chair, felt a tinge of pain, and rec-ognized it as the beginnings of arthritis. When she’d men-tioned it to her physician, he’d made her sit on the table in a room that smelled of ammonia. He’d raised her arms and asked her to bend her knees, then gave her a prescription that she’d never bothered to fill. It wasn’t that serious yet, she told herself; besides, she had a theory that once she started taking pills for one ailment, more pills would soon follow for everything else that doomed people of her age. Soon, they’d be coming in the color of rainbows, some taken in the morning, others at night, some with food and some without, and she’d need to tape up a chart on the in-side of her Medicine cabinet to keep them straight. It was more bother than it was worth.

Amanda was sitting with her head bowed. Adrienne watched her, knowing the questions would come. They were inevitable, but she hoped they wouldn’t come imme-diately. She needed time to collect her thoughts, so she could finish what she’d started.

She was glad Amanda had agreed to meet her here, at the house. She’d lived here for over thirty years, and it was Home to her, even more than the place she’d lived as a child. Granted, some of the doors hung crookedly, the car-pet was worn paper thin in the hallway, and the colors of the bathroom tiles had been out of style for years, but there was something reassuring about knowing that she could find camping gear in the far left corner of the attic or that the heat pump would trip the fuse the first time it was used in the winter. This place had habits; so did she, and over the years, she supposed they’d meshed in such a way as to make her life more predictable and oddly comforting.

It was the same in the kitchen. Both Matt and Dan had been offering to have it remodeled for the last couple of years, and for her birthday they’d arranged to have a con-tractor come through to look the place over. He’d tapped on doors, jabbed his screwdriver in the corners of the cracking counters, turned the switches on and off, and whistled under his breath when he saw the ancient range she still used to cook with. In the end, he’d recommended she replace just about everything, then dropped off an esti-mate and a list of references. Though Adrienne knew her sons had meant well, she told them that they’d be better off saving the money for something they needed for their own families.

Besides, she liked the old kitchen as it was. Updating it would change its character, and she liked the memories forged here. It was here, after all, that they’d spent most of their time together as a family, both before and after Jack had moved out. The kids had done their homework at the table where she now sat; for years, the only phone in the house hung on the wall, and she could still remember those times when she’d seen the cord wedged between the back door and the frame as one of the kids tried his or her best for a bit of privacy by standing on the porch. On the shelf supports in the pantry were the penciled markings that showed how fast and tall the children had grown over the years, and she couldn’t imagine wanting to get rid of that for something new and improved, no matter how fancy it was. Unlike the living room, where the television contin-ually blared, or the bedrooms where everyone retreated to be alone, this was the one place everyone had come to talk and to listen, to learn and to teach, to laugh and to cry. This was the place where their Home was what it was sup-posed to be; this was the place where Adrienne had always felt most content.

And this was the place where Amanda would learn who her mother really was.

Adrienne drank the last of her wine and pushed the glass aside. The rain had stopped now, but the drops remaining on the window seemed to bend the light in such a way as to make the world outside into something different, a place she couldn’t quite recognize. This didn’t surprise her; as she’d grown older, she’d found that as her thoughts drifted to the past, everything around her always seemed to change. Tonight, as she told her story, she felt as if the in-tervening years had been reversed, and though it was a ridiculous notion, she wondered if her daughter had no-ticed a newfound youthfulness about her.