Nights in Rodanthe (21 page)

She also scanned the microfiched pages of newspapers and medical journals, looking for information on Paul’s life in Raleigh.
She never wrote or mentioned that she was doing this—as he often said in his letters, that was a person he never wanted to
be again—but she was curious. She found the piece that had run in
The Wall Street
Journal, with a drawing of him at the top of the article. The article said he was thirty-eight, and when she stared at the
face, she saw for the first time what he’d looked like when he was younger. Though she recognized his picture immediately,
there were some differences that caught her eye—the darker hair parted at the side, the unlined face, the too serious, almost
hard expression—that felt unfamiliar. She remembered wondering what he would think of the article now or whether he would
care about it at all.

She also found some photos of him in old copies of the
Raleigh News and Observer,
meeting the governor or attending the opening of the new hospital wing at Duke Medical Center. She noted that in every picture
she saw, he never seemed to smile. It was, she thought, a Paul she couldn’t imagine.

In March, for no special reason, Paul arranged to have roses sent to her house and then began having them sent every month.
She would place the bouquets in her room, assuming that her children would eventually notice and mention something about them;
but they were lost in their own worlds and never did.

In June, she went back to Rodanthe for a long weekend with Jean. Jean seemed edgy when she arrived, as if still trying to
figure out what had upset Adrienne the last time she was there, but after an hour of easy conversation, Jean was back to normal.
Adrienne walked the beach a few times that weekend, looking for another conch, but she never found one that hadn’t been broken
in the waves.

When she arrived back home, there was a letter from Paul with a photograph that Mark had taken. In the background was the
clinic, and though Paul was thinner than he’d been six months earlier, he looked healthy. She propped the photograph against
the salt and pepper shakers as she wrote him a letter in response. In his letter, he’d asked for a photograph of her, and
she sorted through her photo albums until she found one that she was willing to offer him.

Summer was hot and sticky; most of July was spent indoors with the air-conditioning running; in August, Matt headed off to
college, while Amanda and Dan went back to high school. As the leaves on the trees turned to amber in the softer autumn sunlight,
she began thinking of things that Paul and she might do together when he returned. She imagined going to the Biltmore Estate
in Asheville to see the holiday decorations; she wondered what the children would think of him when he came over for Christmas
dinner or what Jean would do when she booked a room at the Inn in both their names right after the New Year. No doubt, Adrienne
thought with a smile, Jean would raise an eyebrow at that. Knowing her, she would say nothing at first, preferring to walk
around with a smug expression that said she’d known all along and had been expecting their visit.

Now, sitting with her daughter, Adrienne recalled those plans, musing that in the past, there had been moments when she’d
almost believed they’d really happened. She used to imagine the scenarios in vibrant detail, but lately she’d forced herself
to stop. The regret that always followed the pleasure of those fantasies left her feeling empty, and she knew her time was
better spent on those around her, who were still part of her life. She didn’t want to feel the sorrow brought on by such dreams
ever again. But sometimes, despite her best intentions, she simply couldn’t help it.

“Wow,” Amanda murmured as she lowered the note and handed it back to her mother.

Adrienne folded it along its original crease, put it aside, then pulled out the photograph of Paul that Mark had taken.

“This is Paul,” she said.

Amanda took the photo. Despite his age, he was more handsome than she had imagined. She stared at the eyes that had seemed
to so captivate her mother. After a moment, she smiled.

“I can see why you fell for him. Do you have any more?”

“No,” she said, “that’s it.”

Amanda nodded, studying the photo again.

“You described him well.” She hesitated. “Did he ever send a picture of Mark?”

“No, but they look alike,” Adrienne said.

“You met him?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Where?”

“Here.”

Amanda’s eyebrows rose. “At the house?”

“He sat where you’re sitting now.”

“Where were we?”

“In school.”

Amanda shook her head, trying to process this new information. “Your story’s getting confusing,” she said.

Adrienne looked away, then slowly rose from the table. As she left the kitchen, she whispered, “It was to me, too.”

By October, Adrienne’s father had recovered somewhat from his earlier strokes, though not enough to allow him to leave the
nursing home. Adrienne had been spending time with him as always throughout the year, keeping him company and doing her best
to make him more comfortable.

By budgeting carefully, she’d managed to save enough to keep him in the home until April, but after that, she would be at
a loss as to what to do. Like the swallows to Capistrano, she always came back to this worry, though she did her best to hide
her fears from him.

On most days when she arrived, the television would be blaring, as if the morning nurses believed that noise would somehow
clear the fogginess in his mind. The first thing Adrienne did was turn it off. She was her father’s only regular visitor besides
the nurses. While she understood her children’s reluctance to come, she wished they would do so anyway. Not only for her father,
who wanted to see them, but for their own good as well. She had always believed it important to spend time with family in
good times and in difficult ones, for the lessons it could teach.

Her father had lost the ability to speak, but she knew he could understand those who talked to him. With the right side of
his face paralyzed, his smile had a crooked shape that she found endearing. It took maturity and patience to look past the
exterior and see the man they had once known; though her kids had sometimes surprised her by demonstrating those qualities,
they were usually uncomfortable when she’d made them visit. It was as if they looked at their grandfather and saw a future
they couldn’t imagine facing and were frightened by the thought that they, too, might end up that way.

She would plump his pillows before sitting beside the bed, then take his hand and talk. Most of the time she filled him in
on recent events, or family, or how the children were doing, and he would stare at her, his eyes never leaving her face, silently
communicating in the only way he could. Sitting beside him, she would inevitably remember her childhood—the smell of Aqua
Velva on his face, pitching hay in the horse stall, the brush of stubble as he’d kissed her good night, the tender words he’d
always spoken since she was a little girl.

On the day before Halloween, she went to visit him, knowing what she had to do, thinking it was time he finally knew.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she began. Then, as simply as possible, she told him about Paul and how much he meant
to her.

When she finished, she remembered wondering what he thought about what she’d just said. His hair was white and thinning: His
eyebrows reminded her of puffs of cotton.

He smiled then, his crooked smile, and though he made no sound, when he moved his lips, she knew what he was trying to say.

The back of her throat tightened, and she leaned across the bed, resting her head on his chest. His good hand went to her
back, moving weakly, soft and light. Beneath her, she could feel his ribs, brittle and frail now, and the gentle beating of
his heart.

“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered, “I’m proud of you, too.”

In the living room, Adrienne went to the window and pushed aside the curtains. The street was empty, and the streetlights
were circled with glowing halos. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked a warning to a real or imagined intruder.

Amanda was still in the kitchen, though Adrienne knew she would eventually come to find her. It had been a long night for
both of them, and Adrienne brought her finger to the glass.

What had they been to each other, she and Paul? Even now, she still wasn’t sure. There wasn’t an easy definition. He hadn’t
been her husband or fiancé; calling him a boyfriend made it sound as if he were a teenage infatuation; lover captured only
a small part of what they had shared. He was the only person in her life, she thought, who seemed to defy description, and
she wondered how many others could say the same thing about someone in their life.

Above her, a ringed moon was surrounded by indigo clouds, rolling east in the breeze. By tomorrow morning, it would be raining
at the coast, and Adrienne knew she’d been right to hold back the other letters from Amanda.

What could Amanda have learned by reading them? The details of Paul’s life at the clinic and how he spent his days, perhaps?
Or his relationship with Mark and how it had progressed? All of that was clearly spelled out in the letters, as were his thoughts
and hopes and fears, but none of that was necessary for what she hoped to impart to Amanda. The items she had set aside would
be enough.

Yet once Amanda was gone, she knew she would read all of the letters again, if only because of what she’d done tonight. In
the yellow light of her bedside lamp, she would run her finger over the words, savoring each one, knowing they meant more
to her than anything else she owned.

Tonight, despite the presence of her daughter, Adrienne was alone. She would always be alone. She knew this as she’d told
her story in the kitchen earlier, she knew this as she stood at the window now. Sometimes she wondered who she would have
been had Paul never come into her life. Perhaps she would have married again, and though she suspected she would have been
a good wife, she often wondered whether she would have picked a good husband.

It wouldn’t have been easy. Some of her widowed or divorced friends had remarried. Most of these gentlemen they married seemed
nice enough, but they were nothing like Paul. Jack, maybe, but not Paul. She believed that romance and passion were possible
at any age, but she’d listened to enough of her friends to know that many relationships ended up being more trouble than they
were worth. Adrienne didn’t want to settle for a husband like the ones her friends had, not when she had letters reminding
her of what she was missing. Would a new husband, for instance, ever whisper the words that Paul had written in his third
letter, words she’d memorized the first day she’d read them?

When I sleep, I dream of you, and when I wake, I long to hold you in my arms. If anything, our time apart has only made me
more certain that I want to spend my nights by your side, and my days with your heart.

Or these, from the next letter?

When I write to you, I feel your breath; when you read them, I imagine you feel mine. Is it that way with you, too? These
letters are part of us now, part of our history, a reminder forever that we made it through this time. Thank you for helping
me survive this year, but more than that, thank you in advance for all the years to come.