Nights in Rodanthe (2 page)

It took a few years, but Amanda had eventually found her way, settling into a life that felt strangely similar to what Adrienne
once had. She met Brent in college, and they married after graduation and had two kids in the first few years of marriage.
Like many young couples, they struggled financially, but Brent was prudent in a way that Jack never had been. As soon as their
first child was born, he bought life insurance as a precaution, though neither expected that they would need it for a long,
long time.

They were wrong.

Brent had been gone for eight months now, the victim of a virulent strain of testicular cancer. Adrienne had watched Amanda
sink into a deep depression, and yesterday afternoon, when she dropped off the grandchildren after spending some time with
them, she found the drapes at their house drawn, the porch light still on, and Amanda sitting in the living room in her bathrobe
with the same vacant expression she’d worn on the day of the funeral.

It was then, while standing in Amanda’s living room, that Adrienne knew it was time to tell her daughter about the past.

Fourteen years. That’s how long it had been.

In all those years, Adrienne had told only one person about what had happened, but her father had died with the secret, unable
to tell anyone even if he’d wanted to.

Her mother had passed away when Adrienne was thirty-five, and though they’d had a good relationship, she’d always been closest
to her father. He was, she still thought, one of two men who’d ever really understood her, and she missed him now that he
was gone. His life had been typical of so many of his generation. Having learned a trade instead of going to college, he’d
spent forty years in a furniture manufacturing plant working for an hourly wage that increased by pennies each January. He
wore fedoras even during the warm summer months, carried his lunch in a box with squeaky hinges, and left the house promptly
at six forty-five every morning to walk the mile and a half to work.

In the evenings after dinner, he wore a cardigan sweater and long-sleeved shirts. His wrinkled pants lent a disheveled air
to his appearance that grew more pronounced as the years wore on, especially after the passing of his wife. He liked to sit
in the easy chair with the yellow lamp glowing beside him, reading genre westerns and books about World War II. In the final
years before his strokes, his old-fashioned spectacles, bushy eyebrows, and deeply lined face made him look more like a retired
college professor than the blue-collar worker he had been.

There was a peacefulness about her father that she’d always yearned to emulate. He would have made a good priest or minister,
she’d often thought, and people who met him for the first time usually walked away with the impression that he was at peace
with himself and the world. He was a gifted listener; with his chin resting in his hand, he never let his gaze stray from
people’s faces as they spoke, his expression mirroring empathy and patience, humor and sadness. Adrienne wished that he were
around for Amanda right now; he, too, had lost a spouse, and she thought Amanda would listen to him, if only because he knew
how hard it really was.

A month ago, when Adrienne had gently tried to talk to Amanda about what she was going through, Amanda had stood up from the
table with an angry shake of her head.

“This isn’t like you and Dad,” she’d said. “You two couldn’t work out your problems, so you divorced. But I loved Brent. I’ll
always love Brent, and I lost him. You don’t know what it’s like to live through something like that.”

Adrienne had said nothing, but when Amanda left the room, Adrienne had lowered her head and whispered a single word.

Rodanthe.

While Adrienne sympathized with her daughter, she was concerned about Amanda’s children. Max was six, Greg was four, and in
the past eight months, Adrienne had noticed distinct changes in their personalities. Both had become unusually withdrawn and
quiet. Neither had played soccer in the fall, and though Max was doing well in kindergarten, he cried every morning before
he had to go. Greg had started to wet the bed again and would fly into tantrums at the slightest provocation. Some of these
changes stemmed from the loss of their father, Adrienne knew, but they also reflected the person that Amanda had become since
last spring.

Because of the insurance, Amanda didn’t have to work. Nonetheless, for the first couple of months after Brent had died, Adrienne
spent nearly every day at their house, keeping the bills in order and preparing meals for the children, while Amanda slept
and wept in her room. She held her daughter whenever Amanda needed it, listened when Amanda wanted to talk, and forced her
daughter to spend at least an hour or two outside each day, in the belief that fresh air would remind her daughter that she
could begin anew.

Adrienne had thought her daughter was getting better. By early summer, Amanda had begun to smile again, infrequently at first,
then a little more often. She ventured out into the town a few times, took the kids roller-skating, and Adrienne gradually
began pulling back from the duties she was shouldering. It was important, she knew, for Amanda to resume responsibility for
her own life again. Comfort could be found in the steady routines of life, Adrienne had learned; she hoped that by decreasing
her presence in her daughter’s life, Amanda would be forced to realize that, too.

But in August, on the day that would have been her seventh wedding anniversary, Amanda opened the closet door in the master
bedroom, saw dust collecting on the shoulders of Brent’s suits, and suddenly stopped improving. She didn’t exactly regress—there
were still moments when she seemed her old self—but for the most part, she seemed to be frozen somewhere in between. She was
neither depressed nor happy, neither excited nor languid, neither interested nor bored by anything around her. To Adrienne,
it seemed as if Amanda had become convinced that moving forward would somehow tarnish her memories of Brent, and she’d made
the decision not to allow that to happen.

But it wasn’t fair to the children. They needed her guidance and her love, they needed her attention. They needed her to tell
them that everything was going to be all right. They’d already lost one parent, and that was hard enough. But lately, it seemed
to Adrienne that they’d lost their mother as well.

In the gentle hue of the soft-lit kitchen, Adrienne glanced at her watch. At her request, Dan had taken Max and Greg to the
movies, so she could spend the evening with Amanda. Like Adrienne, both of her sons were worried about Amanda’s kids. Not
only had they made extra efforts to stay active in the boys’ lives, but nearly all of their recent conversations with Adrienne
had begun or ended with the same question:
What do we do?

Today, when Dan had asked the same question again, Adrienne had reassured him that she’d talk to Amanda. Though Dan had been
skeptical—hadn’t they tried that all along?—tonight, she knew, would be different.

Adrienne had few illusions about what her children thought of her. Yes, they loved her and respected her as a mother, but
she knew they would never really
know
her. In the eyes of her children, she was kind but predictable, sweet and stable, a friendly soul from another era who’d
made her way through life with her naive view of the world intact. She looked the part, of course—veins beginning to show
on the tops of her hands, a figure more like a square than an hourglass, and glasses grown thicker over the years—but when
she saw them staring at her with expressions meant to humor her, she sometimes had to stifle a laugh.

Part of their error, she knew, stemmed from their desire to see her in a certain way, a preformed image they found acceptable
for a woman her age. It was easier—and frankly, more comfortable—to think their mom was more sedate than daring, more of a
plodder than someone with experiences that would surprise them. And in keeping with the kind, predictable, sweet, and stable
mother that she was, she’d had no desire to change their minds.

Knowing that Amanda would be arriving any minute, Adrienne went to the refrigerator and set a bottle of pinot grigio on the
table. The house had cooled since the afternoon, so she turned up the thermostat on her way to the bedroom.

Once the room she’d shared with Jack, it was hers now, redecorated twice since the divorce. Adrienne made her way to the four-poster
bed she’d wanted ever since she was young. Wedged against the wall beneath the bed was a small stationery box, and Adrienne
set it on the pillow beside her.

Inside were those things she had saved: the note he’d left at the Inn, a snapshot of him that had been taken at the clinic,
and the letter she’d received a few weeks before Christmas. Beneath those items were two bundled stacks, missives written
between them, that sandwiched a conch they’d once found at the beach.

Adrienne set the note off to the side and pulled an envelope from one of the stacks, remembering how she’d felt when she’d
first read it, then slid out the page. It had thinned and brittled, and though the ink had faded in the years since he’d first
written it, his words were still clear.

Dear Adrienne,

I’ve never been good at writing letters, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not able to make myself clear.

I arrived this morning on a donkey, believe it or not, and found out where I’d be spending my days for a while. I wish I could
tell you that it was better than I imagined it would be, but in all honesty, I can’t. The clinic is short of just about everything—medicine,
equipment, and the necessary beds—but I spoke to the director and I think I’ll be able to rectify at least part of the problem.
Though they have a generator to provide electricity, there aren’t any phones, so I won’t be able to call until I head into
Esmeraldas. It’s a couple of days’ ride from here, and the next supply run isn’t for a few weeks. I’m sorry about that, but
I think we both suspected it might be this way.

I haven’t seen Mark yet. He’s been at an outreach clinic in the mountains and won’t be back until later this evening. I’ll
let you know how that goes, but I’m not expecting much at first. Like you said, I think we need to spend some time getting
to know each other before we can work on the problems between us.

I can’t even begin to count how many patients I saw today. Over a hundred, I’d guess. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen
patients in this way with these types of problems, but the nurse was helpful, even when I seemed lost. I think she was thankful
that I was there at all.

I’ve been thinking about you constantly since I left, wondering why the journey I’m on seemed to have led through you. I know
my journey’s not over yet, and that life is a winding path, but I can only hope it somehow circles back to the place I belong.

That’s how I think of it now. I belong with you. While I was driving, and again when the plane was in the air, I imagined
that when I arrived in Quito, I’d see you in the crowds waiting for me. I knew that would be impossible, but for some reason,
it made leaving you just a little easier. It was almost as if part of you had come with me.