Nights in Rodanthe (18 page)

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. Another 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 wonders 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 but wished desperately that she wasn’t.

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

“Of course. If 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 forever, 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 without 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 diverging because of responsibilities to others, and it suddenly 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 distance and the noise of the engine faded away. Then, a moment 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. Nothing 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 together, 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.

Rocky Mount, 2002

A
drienne 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 recognized
it as the beginnings of arthritis. When she’d mentioned 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 inside 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 immediately. 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 carpet 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 contractor 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 estimate 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 continually
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 supposed 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 intervening years had been reversed, and though
it was a ridiculous notion, she wondered if her daughter had noticed a newfound youthfulness about her.