Nights in Rodanthe (19 page)

No, she decided, she almost certainly hadn’t, but that was a product of Amanda’s age. Amanda could no more conceive of being
sixty than she could of being a man, and Adrienne sometimes wondered when Amanda would realize that for the most part, people
weren’t all that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: They wanted
to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, Adrienne thought,
was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed
that they lay in the past.

It was true for her as well, at least partly, but as wonderful as the past had been, she refused to allow herself to remain
lost in it the way many of her friends had. The past wasn’t merely a garden of roses and sunshine; the past held its share
of heartbreak as well. She had felt that way about Jack’s effects on her life when she’d first arrived at the Inn, and she
felt that way about Paul Flanner now.

Tonight, she would cry, but as she’d promised herself every day since he’d left Rodanthe, she would go on. She was a survivor,
as her father had told her many times, and though there was a certain satisfaction to that knowledge, it didn’t erase the
pain or regrets.

Nowadays, she tried to focus on those things that brought her joy. She loved to watch the grandchildren as they discovered
the world, she loved to visit with friends and find out what was happening in their lives, she had even come to enjoy the
days she spent working in the library.

The work wasn’t hard—she now worked in the special reference section, where books couldn’t be checked out—and because hours
might pass before she was needed for something, it offered her the opportunity to watch people who pushed through the glassed
entryway of the building. She’d developed a fondness for that over the years. As people sat at the tables or in the chairs
in the quiet rooms, she found it impossible not to try to imagine their lives. She would try to figure out if a person was
married or what she did for a living, where in town she lived, or what books might interest her, and occasionally, she would
have the chance to find out whether she’d been right. The person might come to her for help in finding a particular book,
and she’d strike up a friendly conversation. More often than not, she’d end up being fairly close in her guesses and would
wonder how she’d known.

Every now and then, someone would come in who was interested in her. Years ago, those men had usually been older than she
was; now they tended to be younger, but either way, the process was the same. Whoever he was, he would start spending time
in special reference, would ask a lot of questions, first about books, then about general topics, and finally about her. She
didn’t mind answering them, and though she never led them on, most of them eventually asked her out. She was always a bit
flattered when that happened, but at her core she knew that no matter how wonderful this suitor might be, no matter how much
she enjoyed his company, she wouldn’t be able to open her heart to him in the way she once had done.

Her time in Rodanthe had changed her in other ways as well. Being with Paul had healed her feelings of loss and betrayal over
the divorce and replaced them with something stronger and more graceful. Knowing that she was worthy of being loved made it
easier to hold her head high, and as her confidence grew, she was able to speak to Jack without hidden meanings or insinuations,
without the blame and regret that she’d been unable to hide in her tone in the past. It happened gradually; he’d call to talk
to the kids, and they’d visit for a few minutes before she handed off the phone. Later, she’d begun asking about Linda or
his job, or she’d fill him in on what she’d been doing recently. Little by little, Jack seemed to realize that she was no
longer the person she used to be. Those visits became more friendly with the passing months and years, and sometimes they
called each other just to chat. When his marriage to Linda started to unravel, they’d spent hours on the phone, sometimes
until late in the night. When Jack and Linda divorced, Adrienne had been there to help him through his grief, and she’d even
allowed him to stay in the guest bedroom when he came to see the kids. Ironically, Linda had left him for another man, and
Adrienne could remember sitting with Jack in the living room as he swirled a glass of Scotch. It was past midnight, and he’d
been rambling for a few hours about what he was going through, when he finally seemed to realize who it was that was listening
to him.

“Did it hurt this bad for you?” he asked.

“Yes,” Adrienne said.

“How long did it take to get over it?”

“Three years,” she said, “but I was lucky.”

Jack nodded. Pressing his lips together, he stared into his drink.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The dumbest thing I ever did was to walk out that door.”

Adrienne smiled and patted his knee. “I know. But thank you anyway.”

It was about a year after that when Jack called to ask her to dinner. And as she had with all the others, Adrienne politely
said no.

Adrienne rose and went to the counter to retrieve the box she’d carried from her bedroom earlier, then came back to the table.
By then, Amanda was watching her with almost wary fascination. Adrienne smiled as she reached for her daughter’s hand.

As she did, Adrienne could see that sometime during the past couple of hours, Amanda had realized that she didn’t know as
much about her mother as she thought she did. It was, Adrienne thought, a role reversal of sorts. Amanda had the same look
in her eyes that Adrienne sometimes had in the past, when the kids would get together over the holidays and joke about some
of the things they’d done when they were younger. It was only a couple of years ago that she’d learned that Matt used to sneak
out of his room to go out with friends late at night, or that Amanda had both started and quit smoking as a junior, or that
Dan had been the one who’d started the small fire in the garage that had been blamed on a faulty electrical outlet. She’d
laughed along with them, feeling naive at the same time, and she wondered if that was the way Amanda was feeling now.

On the wall, the clock was ticking, the sound regular and even. The heat pump clicked on with a thump. In time, Amanda sighed.

“That was quite a story,” she said.

As she spoke, Amanda fingered her wineglass with her free hand, rotating the glass in circles. The wine caught the light,
making it shimmer.

“Do Matt and Dan know? I mean, have you told them about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure they need to know.” Adrienne smiled. “And besides, I don’t know if they would understand, no matter what I told
them. They’re men, for one thing, and a little on the protective side—I don’t want them to think that Paul was simply preying
on a lonely woman. Men are like that sometimes—if they meet someone and fall in love, it’s real, no matter how fast it happened.
But if someone falls for a woman they happen to care about, all they do is question the man’s intentions. To be honest, I
don’t know if I’ll ever tell them.”

Amanda nodded before asking, “Why me, then?”

“Because I thought you needed to hear it.”

Absently, Amanda began to twirl a strand of hair. Adrienne wondered if that habit was genetic or learned by watching her mother.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about him? I mean, you never mentioned anything about it.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

Adrienne leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. “In the beginning, I guess I was afraid it wasn’t real. I know we
loved each other, but distance can do strange things to people, and before I was willing to tell you about it, I wanted to
be certain that it would last. Then later, when I started getting letters from him and knew it would… I don’t know… it just
seemed such a long time until you could meet him that I didn’t see the point in it….”

She trailed off before choosing her next words carefully.

“You also have to realize that you’re not the same person now that you were then. You were seventeen, Dan was only fifteen,
and I didn’t know if any of you were ready to hear something like this. I mean, how would you have felt if you’d come back
from your father’s and I told you that I was in love with someone I’d just met?”

“We could’ve handled it.”

Adrienne was skeptical about that, but she didn’t argue with Amanda. Instead, she shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe you’re right.
Maybe you could have accepted something like this, but at the time, I didn’t want to take the chance. And if I had to do it
all over, I’d probably do the same thing again.”

Amanda shifted in her chair. After a moment, she looked her mother in the eye. “Are you sure he loved you?” she asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Amanda’s eyes looked almost blue green in the fading light. She smiled gently, as if trying to make an obvious point without
hurting her mother.

Adrienne knew what Amanda would ask next. It was, she thought, the only logical question left.

Amanda leaned forward, her face filled with concern. “Then where is he?”

In the fourteen years since she’d last seen Paul Flanner, Adrienne had traveled to Rodanthe five times. Her first trip had
been during June of the same year, and though the sand seemed whiter and the ocean melted into the sky at the horizon, she
made the remainder of her trips during the winter months, when the world was gray and cold, knowing that it was a more potent
reminder of the past.

On the morning that Paul left, Adrienne wandered the house, unable to stay in one place. Movement seemed to be the only way
she could stay ahead of her feelings. Late in the afternoon, as dusk was beginning to dress the sky in faded shades of red
and orange, she went outside and looked into those colors, trying to find the plane that Paul was on. The odds of seeing it
were infinitesimal, but she stayed out anyway, growing chilled as the evening deepened. Between the clouds, she saw an occasional
jet trail, but logic told her they were from planes stationed at the naval base in Norfolk. By the time she went in, her hands
were numb, and at the sink she ran warm tap water over them, feeling the sting. Though she understood that he was gone, she
set two place settings at the dinner table just the same.

Part of her had hoped he would come back. As she ate her dinner, she imagined him coming through the front door and dropping
his bags, explaining that he couldn’t leave without another night together. They would leave tomorrow or the next day, he
would say, and they would follow the highway north, until she made the turn for home.

But he didn’t. The front door never swung open, the phone never rang. As much as Adrienne longed for him to stay, she knew
she’d been right when she’d urged him on his way. Another day wouldn’t make it easier to leave; another night together would
only mean they’d have to say good-bye again, and that had been hard enough the first time. She couldn’t imagine having to
say those words a second time, nor could she imagine having to relive another day like the one she had just spent.

The following morning, she began cleaning the Inn, moving steadily, focusing on the routine. She washed the dishes and made
sure everything was dried and put away. She vacuumed the area rugs, swept the sand from the kitchen and entranceway, dusted
the balustrade and lamps in the sitting room, then worked on Jean’s room until she was satisfied that it looked the same as
when she’d arrived.

Then, after carrying her suitcase upstairs, she unlocked the door to the blue room.

She hadn’t been in there since the previous morning. The afternoon sunlight cast prisms on the walls. He’d fixed the bed before
he’d gone downstairs but seemed to have realized that he didn’t need to make it neat. There were slight bulges under the comforter
where the blanket had wrinkled, and the sheet poked out in a few places, nearly grazing the floor. In the bathroom, a towel
hung over the curtain rod, and two more had been lumped together near the sink.