The Best of Me (11 page)

Near the bank, an ancient oak spread its low-hanging limbs, the image reflecting on the water. The river had washed away part of the bank, making the limbs almost impossible to reach without getting wet, and they stopped. “That’s where we used to sit,” he said.

“It was our spot,” she said. “Especially after I had an argument with my parents.”

“Wait. You argued with your parents back then?” Dawson feigned amazement. “It wasn’t about me, was it?”

She nudged him with her shoulder. “Funny guy. But anyway, we used to climb up and you’d put your arm around me and I’d cry and yell and you’d just let me rant about how unfair it all was until I finally calmed down. I was pretty dramatic back then, wasn’t I?”

“Not that I noticed.”

She stifled a laugh. “Do you remember how the mullets used to jump? At times, there were so many it was like they were putting on a show.”

“I’m sure they’ll be jumping tonight.”

“I know, but it won’t be the same. When we came out here, I
needed to see them. It was like they always knew that I needed something special to make me feel better.”

“I thought I was the one who made you feel better.”

“It was definitely the mullets,” she teased.

He smiled. “Did you and Tuck ever come down here?”

She shook her head. “The slope was a little too steep for him. But I did. Or I tried, anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“I guess I wanted to know if this place would still feel the same to me, but I didn’t even get this far. It’s not like I saw or heard anything on the way down here, but I got to thinking that anyone could be out in the woods, and my imagination just… ran away with me. I realized I was all alone, and if something happened there wouldn’t be anything I could do. So I turned around and went back inside and I never came down here again.”

“Until now.”

“I’m not alone.” She studied the eddies in the water, hoping a mullet would jump, but there was nothing. “It’s hard to believe it’s been as long as it has,” she murmured. “We were so young.”

“Not too young.” His voice was quiet, yet strangely certain.

“We were kids, Dawson. It didn’t seem that way at the time, but when you become a parent, your perspective changes. I mean, Lynn is seventeen, and I can’t imagine her feeling the way I did back then. She doesn’t even have a boyfriend. And if she was sneaking out her bedroom window in the middle of the night, I’d probably act the same way my parents did.”

“If you didn’t like the boyfriend, you mean?”

“Even if I thought he was perfect for her.” She turned to face him. “What were we thinking?”

“We weren’t,” he said. “We were in love.”

She stared at him, her eyes capturing bits and pieces of the moonlight. “I’m sorry I didn’t visit or even write. After you were sent up to Caledonia, I mean.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. But I thought about it… about us. All the time.” She reached out to touch the oak tree, trying to draw strength from it before continuing. “It’s just that every time I sat down to write, I felt paralyzed. Where should I begin? Should I tell you about my classes or what my roommates were like? Or ask what your days were like? Every time I started to write something, I’d read over it and it didn’t seem right. So I’d tear it up and promise that I’d start over again the next day. But one day just kept turning into the next. And then, too much time had passed and—”

“I’m not angry,” he said. “And I wasn’t angry then, either.”

“Because you’d already forgotten me?”

“No,” he answered. “Because back then I could barely face myself. And knowing that you’d moved on meant everything to me. I wanted you to have the kind of life that I’d never have been able to give you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” he said.

“Then that’s where you’re wrong. Everyone has things in their past they wish they could change, Dawson. Even me. It’s not as though my life has been perfect, either.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Years ago, she’d been able to tell Dawson everything, and though she wasn’t ready yet, she sensed that it was only a matter of time before it happened again. The recognition scared her, even as she admitted that Dawson had awakened something inside her that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“Would you be angry if I told you I’m not ready to talk about it yet?”

“Not at all.”

She offered the ghost of a smile. “Then let’s just enjoy this for a few more minutes, okay? Like we used to? It’s so peaceful out here.”

The moon had continued its slow ascent, lending an ethereal
cast to the surroundings; farther from its glow, stars flickered faintly, like tiny prisms. As they stood beside each other, Dawson wondered how often she’d thought of him over the years. Less often than he’d thought of her, he was certain of that, but he had the sense that they were both lonely, albeit in different ways. He was a solitary figure in a vast landscape while she was a face in a nameless crowd. But hadn’t it always been so, even when they were teenagers? It had been what brought them together, and they had somehow found happiness with each other.

In the darkness, he heard Amanda sigh. “I should probably go,” she said.

“I know.”

She was relieved by his response, but also a bit disappointed. Turning from the creek, they made their way back toward the house in silence, both of them wrapped in their own thoughts. Inside, Dawson turned out the lights while she locked up, before they slowly strolled toward their cars. Dawson reached over, opening her door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at the attorney’s office,” he said.

“Eleven o’clock.”

In the moonlight, her hair was a silver cascade, and he resisted the impulse to run his fingers through it. “I had a great time tonight. Thanks for dinner.”

As she stood in front of him, she had the sudden, wild thought that he might try to kiss her, and for the first time since college she felt almost breathless under someone’s gaze. But she turned away before he could even attempt it.

“It was good to see you, Dawson.”

She slid behind the wheel, breathing a sigh of relief as Dawson closed the door for her. She started the engine and put the car in reverse.

Dawson waved while she backed up and turned around, and he watched as she headed down the gravel drive. The red taillights of her car bounced slightly until the car rounded a curve and vanished from sight.

Slowly, he walked back to the garage. He flipped the switch, and as the single overhead bulb came on, he took a seat on a pile of tires. It was quiet now, nothing moving except for a single moth that fluttered toward the light. As it batted against the bulb, Dawson reflected on the fact that Amanda had moved on. Whatever sorrows or troubles she was hiding—and he knew that they were there—she’d still managed to construct the kind of life that she’d always wanted. She had a husband and children and a house in the city, and her memories now were about all those things, which was exactly the way it should be.

As he sat alone in Tuck’s garage, he knew he’d been lying to himself in thinking that he’d moved on as well. He hadn’t. He always assumed she’d left him behind, but it was confirmed now. Somewhere deep inside, he felt something shift and break loose. He’d said good-bye a long time ago, and since then he’d wanted to believe that he had done the right thing. Here and now, though, in the quiet yellow light of an abandoned garage, he wasn’t so sure. He’d loved Amanda once and he’d never stopped loving her, and spending time with her tonight hadn’t changed that simple truth. But as he reached for his keys, he was conscious of something else as well, something he hadn’t quite expected.

He rose and turned out the light, then headed for his car, feeling strangely depleted. It was one thing, after all, to know his feelings for Amanda hadn’t changed; it was another thing entirely to face the future with the certainty that they never would.

T
he curtains in the bed-and-breakfast were thin, and sunlight woke Dawson only a few minutes after dawn. He rolled over, hoping to go back to sleep, but he found it impossible. Instead, he stood and spent the next few minutes stretching. In the mornings, everything ached, especially his back and shoulders. He wondered how many more years he could continue working on the rig; there was a lot of accumulated wear and tear in his body, and every passing year seemed to compound his injuries.

Reaching into his duffel bag, he grabbed his running gear, dressed, and quietly descended the stairs. The bed-and-breakfast was about what he’d expected: four bedrooms upstairs, with a kitchen, dining room, and seating area downstairs. The owners, unsurprisingly, favored a sailing theme; miniature wooden sailboats adorned the end tables, and paintings of schooners hung on the walls. Above the fireplace was an ancient boat wheel, and tacked to the door was a map of the river, marking the channels.

The owners weren’t yet awake. When he’d checked in the night before, they’d informed him that they’d left the delivery of flowers in his room, and that breakfast was at eight. That gave him plenty of time before his meeting to do what he needed to do.

Outside, the morning was already bright. A thin layer of haze on the river hovered like a low-level cloud, but the sky above was
a brilliant blue and clear in every direction. The air was already warm, foretelling hotter weather to come. He rolled his shoulders a few times and was jogging before he hit the road. It took a few minutes before his body began to feel limber and he settled into an easy pace.

The road was quiet as he entered Oriental’s small downtown. He passed two antiques stores, a hardware store, and a few real estate offices; on the opposite side of the street, Irvin’s Diner was already open for business, with a handful of cars parked out front. Over his shoulder, the fog on the river had begun to lift, and breathing deeply, he caught the living scent of salt and pine. Near the marina, he passed a bustling coffee shop, and a few minutes later, with the stiffness almost completely gone, he was able to pick up his pace. At the marina, gulls circled and sounded their calls as people carried coolers to their sailboats, and he jogged past a rustic bait shop.

He passed the First Baptist Church, marveling at the stained-glass windows and trying to recall whether he’d even noticed them as a child, before searching for Morgan Tanner’s office. He knew the address and finally spotted the placard on a small brick building wedged between a drugstore and a coin dealer. Another attorney was listed as well, though they didn’t seem to share the same practice. He wondered how Tuck had chosen Tanner. Until the call, he’d never heard of the man.

As downtown Oriental came to an end, Dawson turned off the main road, branching out onto neighborhood streets, running without any particular destination in mind.

He hadn’t slept well. Instead, his mind had cycled endlessly between Amanda and the Bonners. In prison, aside from Amanda, Marilyn Bonner was all he could think about. She had testified at the sentencing hearing, and her testimony underscored the fact that he’d not only robbed her of the man she loved and the father of her children, but also destroyed her entire way of life. In a breaking voice, she’d admitted that she had no
idea how she was going to provide for her family, or what would become of them. Dr. Bonner, it turned out, had neglected to buy life insurance.

Eventually, Marilyn Bonner lost the house. She moved back in with her parents at the orchard, but her life continued to be a struggle. Her father had already retired and had early-stage emphysema. Her mom suffered from diabetes, and the loan payments on the property ate up almost every dollar the orchard brought in. Because her parents needed almost full-time care between them, Marilyn was able to work only part-time. Even when she combined her small salary with her parents’ social security, there was barely enough to cover the basics, and sometimes not even that. The old farmhouse they lived in was beginning to fall apart, and the loan payments on the orchard eventually fell into arrears.

By the time Dawson got out of prison, things had become desperate for the Bonner family. Dawson didn’t learn of that until he went to the farmhouse to apologize almost six months later. When Marilyn answered the door, Dawson barely recognized her; her hair had turned gray and her skin looked sallow. She, on the other hand, knew exactly who he was, and before he could say a word, she began screaming at him to leave, shrieking that he’d ruined her life, that he’d killed her husband, that she didn’t even have enough money to fix the leaking roof or hire the workers she needed. She screamed that the bankers were threatening to foreclose on the orchard, and then that she was going to call the police. She warned him never to come back. Dawson left, but later that night he returned to the farmhouse and studied the decaying structure; he walked the rows of peach and apple trees. The following week, after receiving his paycheck from Tuck, he went to the bank and had a cashier’s check sent to Marilyn Bonner for almost the entire amount, along with everything he’d saved since he’d gotten out of prison, with no note attached.