Nights in Rodanthe (13 page)

She smiled, forcing herself to keep her voice steady.

“Are you still up for helping me with the house? Before the weather sets in, I mean?”

“Sure.” Paul nodded. “Just let me throw on some work clothes.”

“You’ve got time. I’ve got to run up to the store first, anyway. I forgot to get ice and a cooler so I can keep some food
handy in case the power goes out.”

“Okay.”

She paused. “You gonna be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

She waited as if to make sure she believed him, then turned away. Yes, she told herself, she’d done the right thing. She was
right to have turned away, she was right to have let go of his hand.

Yet as she slipped out the door, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she’d turned away from the chance to find a piece of
happiness she’d been missing for far too long.

Paul was upstairs when he heard Adrienne’s car start up. Turning toward the window, he watched the waves crashing in, trying
to make sense of what had just happened. A few minutes ago, when he’d looked at her, he’d felt a flash of something special,
but just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and the look on her face told him why.

He could understand Adrienne’s reservations—they all lived in a world defined by limits, after all, and those didn’t always
allow for spontaneity, for impulsive attempts to live in the moment. He knew that was what allowed order to prevail in the
course of one’s life, yet his actions in recent months had been an attempt to defy those limits, to reject the order that
he had embraced for so long.

It wasn’t fair of him to expect the same thing of her. She was in a different place; her life had responsibilities, and as
she’d made clear to him yesterday, those responsibilities required stability and predictability. He’d been the same way once,
and though he was now in the position to live by different rules, Adrienne, he realized, wasn’t.

Nonetheless, something had changed in the short time he’d been here. He wasn’t sure when it had happened. It might have been
yesterday when they were walking on the beach, or when she’d first told him about her father, or even this morning when they
had eaten together in the soft light of the kitchen. Or maybe it happened when he found himself holding her hand and standing
close, wanting nothing more than to gently press his lips against hers.

It didn’t matter. All he knew for sure was that he was beginning to fall for a woman named Adrienne, who was watching the
Inn for a friend in a tiny coastal town in North Carolina.

R
obert Torrelson sat at the aging rolltop desk in his living room, listening as his son boarded up the windows at the back
of the house. In his hand was the note from Paul Flanner, and he was absently folding and unfolding it, still wondering at
the fact that he had come.

He hadn’t expected it. Though he’d written the request, he’d been sure that Paul Flanner would ignore it. Flanner was a high-powered
doctor in the city, represented by attorneys who wore flashy ties and fancy belts, and none of them had seemed to give a damn
about him or his family for over a year now. Rich city folk were like that; as for him, he was glad that he’d never had to
live near people who pushed paper for a living and weren’t comfortable if the temperature at work wasn’t exactly seventy-two
degrees. Nor did he like dealing with people who thought they were better than others because they had better schooling or
more money or a bigger house. Paul Flanner, when he’d met him after the surgery, had struck him as that type of person. He
was stiff and distant, and though he’d explained himself, the clipped way he’d spoken the words had left Robert with the feeling
that he wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep because of what had happened.

And that wasn’t right.

Robert had lived a life with different values, values that had been honored by his father and grandfather and their grandfather
before that. He could trace his family’s roots in the Outer Banks back nearly two hundred years. Generation after generation,
they’d fished the waters of Pamlico Sound since the times when the fish were so plentiful that a person could cast a single
net and pull in enough fish to fill the bow. But all that had changed. Now there were quotas and regulations and licenses
and big companies, all chasing fewer fish than there’d ever been. These days, when Robert went down to the boat, half the
time he considered himself lucky if he caught enough to pay for the gas he’d needed.

Robert Torrelson was sixty-seven but looked ten years older. His face was weathered and stained, and his body was slowly losing
the battle with time. There was a long scar that ran from his left eye to his ear. His hands ached with arthritis, and the
ring finger on his right hand was missing from the time he’d got it caught in a winch while dragging in the nets.

But Jill hadn’t cared about any of those things. And now Jill was gone.

On the desk was a picture of her, and Robert still found himself staring at it whenever he was alone in the room. He missed
everything about her; he missed the way she rubbed his shoulders after he came in on cold winter evenings, he missed the way
they used to sit together and listen to music on the radio while they sat on the porch out back, he missed the way she smelled
after dabbing her chest with powder, an odor that was simple and clean, fresh like a newborn.

Paul Flanner had taken all that away from him. Jill, he knew, would still have been with him had she never gone to the hospital
that day.

His son had had his turn. And now the time had come for his.

Adrienne made the short drive to town and pulled into the small gravel parking lot of the general store, breathing a sigh
of relief to find that it was still open.

There were three cars out front parked haphazardly, each coated with a thin layer of salt. A couple of older men wearing baseball
hats were standing out front, smoking and drinking coffee. They watched Adrienne as she got out of the car, and they stopped
speaking; as she passed them on her way into the store, they nodded a greeting.

The store was typical of those in rural areas: a scuffed wooden floor, ceiling fans, shelves with thousands of various items
packed close together. Near the register was a small barrel offering dill pickles for sale; next to that was another barrel
containing roasted peanuts. In the rear was a small grill offering fresh cooked burgers and fish sandwiches, and though no
one was behind the counter, the odor of fried food lingered in the air.

The ice machine was in the far rear corner, next to the refrigerated compartments containing beer and soda, and Adrienne headed
that way. As she reached for the handle of the ice machine door, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored door panel.
She stopped for a moment, as if seeing herself through different eyes.

How long had it been, she wondered, since someone had found her attractive? Or someone she’d just met had wanted to kiss her?
If someone had asked her those questions before she’d come here, she would have answered that neither of those things had
happened since the day Jack had moved out. But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Not like this, anyway. Jack had been her
husband, not a stranger, and since they’d dated for two years before they walked down the aisle, it was closer to twenty-three
years since she’d encountered something like this.

Of course, had Jack not left, she could have lived with that knowledge and never thought twice about it; but here and now,
she found that impossible. More than half her life had passed without the interest of an attractive man, and no matter how
much she wanted to convince herself that her reasons for turning away had been based on common sense, she couldn’t help but
think that being out of practice for twenty-three years had something to do with it as well.

She was drawn to Paul, she couldn’t deny that. It wasn’t just that he was handsome and interesting, or even charming in his
own quiet way. Nor was it just the fact that he’d made her feel desirable. No, it was his genuine desire to change—to be a
better person than he had been—that she found most compelling. She’d known people like him before in her life—like physicians,
attorneys were often notorious workaholics—but she had yet to come across someone who’d not only made the decision to change
the rules that he’d always lived by, but was doing so in a way that most people would be terrified to contemplate.

There was, she decided, something noble in that. He wanted to fix the flaws he recognized in himself, he wanted to forge a
relationship with his estranged son, he had come here because a stranger seeking redress from him had sent a note requesting
it.

What kind of person did those things? What kind of strength would that take? Or courage? More than she had, she thought. More
than anyone she knew, and as much as she wanted to deny it, she was gratified that someone like him had found her attractive.

As she reflected on these things, Adrienne grabbed the last two bags of ice and a Styrofoam cooler and carried it all to the
register. After paying, she left the store and headed for the car. One of the elderly men was still sitting on the porch as
she left, and as she nodded to him, she wore the odd expression of someone who had attended a wedding and a funeral on exactly
the same day.

In her brief absence the sky had grown darker, and the wind cut past her as she stepped out of the car. It had begun to whistle
as it moved around the Inn, sounding almost ghostlike, a spectral flute playing a single note. Clouds swirled and banded together,
shifting in clumps as they passed overhead. The ocean was a sea of white tips, and the waves were rolling heavily past the
high-water mark from the day before.

As she was reaching for the ice, Adrienne saw Paul come out from behind the gate.

“Did you get started without me?” she called out.

“No, not really. I was just making sure I could find everything.” He motioned to the load. “Do you need a hand with that?”

Adrienne shook her head. “I’ve got it. It’s not that heavy.” She nodded toward the door. “But let me get started in there.
Would you mind if I went into your room to close up the shutters?”