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.
She stood without moving, taking it all in, before finally exhaling and putting down her suitcase. As she did, she saw the note that Paul had written her, propped on the bureau. She reached for it and slowly sat on the edge of the bed. In the quiet of the room where they'd loved each other, she read what he had penned the morning before.
When she was finished, Adrienne lowered the note and sat without moving, thinking of him as he'd written it. Then, after folding it carefully, she put it it into her suitcase along with the conch. When Jean arrived a few hours later, Adrienne was leaning against the railing on the back porch, looking toward the sky again.
Jean was her normal, exuberant self, happy to see Adrienne, happy to be back home, and talking incessantly about the wedding and the old hotel in Savannah where she had stayed. Adrienne let Jean go on with her stories without interruption, and after dinner, she told Jean that she wanted to take a walk on the beach. Thankfully, Jean passed on the invitation to go with her.
When she got back, Jean was unpacking in her room, and Adrienne made herself a cup of hot tea and went to sit near the fireplace. As she was rocking, she heard Jean enter the kitchen.
"Where are you?" Jean called out.
"In here," Adrienne answered.
Jean rounded the corner a moment later. "Did I hear the teakettle whistle?"
"I just made a cup."
"Since when do you drink tea?"
Adrienne gave a short laugh but didn't answer.
Jean settled in the rocker beside her. Outside, the moon was rising, hard and brilliant, making the sand glow with the color of antique pots and pans.
"You've been kind of quiet tonight," Jean said.
"Sorry." Adrienne shrugged. "I'm just a little tired. I guess I'm just ready to go home."
"I'm sure. I was counting the miles as soon as I left Savannah, but at least there wasn't much traffic. Off-season, you know."
Adrienne nodded.
Jean leaned back in her chair. "Did it go okay with Paul Flanner? I hope the storm didn't ruin his stay."
Hearing his name made Adrienne's throat catch, but she tried to appear calm. "I don't think the storm bothered him at all," she said.
"Tell me about him. From his voice, I got the impression that he was kind of stuffy."
"No, not all. He was... nice."
"Was it strange being alone with him?"
"No. Not once I got used to it."
Jean waited to see if Adrienne would add anything else, but she didn't.
"Well... good," Jean continued. "And you didn't have any trouble boarding up the house?"
"No."
"I'm glad. I appreciate your doing that for me. I know you were hoping for a quiet weekend, but I guess fate wasn't on your side, huh?"
"I suppose not."
Perhaps it was the way she said it that drew Jean's glance, a curious expression on her face. Suddenly needing space, Adrienne finished her tea.
"I hate to do this to you, Jean," she said, trying her best to make her voice sound natural, "but I think I'll call it a night. I'm tired, and I've got a long drive tomorrow. I'm glad you had a good time at the wedding."
Jean's eyebrows rose slightly at her friend's abrupt ending to the evening.
"Oh... well, thank you," she said. "Good night."
"Good night."
Adrienne could feel Jean's uncertain gaze on her, even as she made her way up the stairs. After unlocking the door to the blue room, she slipped out of her clothes and crawled into the bed, naked and alone.
She could smell Paul on the pillow and on the sheets, and she absently traced her breast as she buried herself in the smell, fighting sleep until she could do so no longer. When she rose the following morning, she started a pot of coffee and took another walk on the beach.
She passed two other couples in the half hour she spent outside. A front had pushed warmer air over the island, and she knew the day would lure even more people to the water's edge.
Paul would have arrived at the clinic by now, and she wondered what it was like. She had an image i
n her mind, something she might have seen on one of the nature channels--a series of hastily assembled buildings surrounded by an encroaching jungle, ruts in a curving dirt road out front, exotic birds chirping in the background--but she doubted that she was right. She wondered if he had talked to Mark yet and how the meeting had gone, and whether Paul, like she, was still reliving the weekend in his mind.
The kitchen was empty when she got back. She could see the sugar bowl open by the coffeemaker with an empty cup beside it. Upstairs, she could hear the faint sound of someone humming.
Adrienne followed the sound, and when she reached the second floor, she could see the door to the blue room cracked open. Adrienne drew nearer, pushing the door open farther, and saw Jean bending over, tucking in the final corner of a fresh sheet. The old linens, the linen that had once wrapped her and Paul together, had been bundled and tossed on the floor.
Adrienne stared at the sheets, knowing it was ridiculous to be upset but suddenly realizing it would be at least a year until she smelled Paul Flanner again. She inhaled raggedly, trying to stifle a cry.
Jean turned in surprise at the sound, her eyes wide.
"Adrienne?" she asked. "Are you okay?"
But Adrienne couldn't answer. All she could do was bring her hands to her face, aware that from this point on, she would be marking the days on the calendar until Paul returned.
"Paul," Adrienne answered her daughter, "is in Ecuador." Her voice, she noted, was surprisingly steady.
"Ecuador," Amanda repeated. Her fingers tapped the table as she stared at her mother. "Why didn't he come back?"
"He couldn't."
"Why not?"
Instead of answering, Adrienne lifted the lid of the stationery box. From inside, she pulled out a piece of paper that looked to Amanda as if it had been torn from a student's notebook. Folded over, it had yellowed with age. Amanda saw her mother's name written across the front.
"Before I tell you," Adrienne went on, "I want to answer your other question."
"What other question?"
Adrienne smiled. "You asked whether I was sure that Paul loved me." She slid the piece of paper across the table to her daughter. "This is the note he wrote to me on the day that he left."
Amanda hesitated before taking it, then slowly unfolded the paper. With her mother sitting across from her, she began to read.
Dear Adrienne,
You weren't beside me when I woke this morning, and though I know why you left, I wish you hadn't. I know that's selfish of me, but I suppose that's one of the traits that's stayed with me, the one constant in my life.
If you're reading this, it means I've left. When I'm finished writing, I'm going to go downstairs and ask to stay with you longer, but I'm under no illusions as to what you're going to say to me.
This isn't a good-bye, and I don't want you to think for a moment that it's the reason for this letter. Rather, I'm going to look at the year ahead as a chance to get to know you even better than I do. I've heard of people falling in love through letters, and though we're already there, it doesn't mean our love can't grow deeper, does it? I'd like to think it's possible, and if you want to know the truth, that conviction is the only thing I expect to help me make it through the next year without you.
If I close my eyes, I can see you walking along the beach on our first night together. With lightning flickering on your face, you were absolutely beautiful, and I think that's part of the reason I was able to open up to you in a way I never had with anyone else. But it wasn't just your beauty that moved me. It was everything you are--your courage and your passion, the commonsense wisdom with which you view the world. I think I sensed these things about you the first time we had coffee, and if anything, the more I got to know you, the more I realized how much I'd missed these qualities in my own life. You are a rare find, Adrienne, and I'm a lucky man for having had the chance to come to know you.
I hope that you're doing okay. As I write this letter, I know that I'm not. Saying good-bye to you today is the hardest thing I'll ever have to do, and when I get back, I can honestly swear that I'll never do it again. I love you now for what we've already shared, and I love you now in anticipation of all that's to come. You are the best thing that's ever happened to me. I miss you already, but I'm sure in my heart that you'll be with me always. In the few days I spent with you, you became my dream.
Paul
The year following Paul's departure was unlike any year in Adrienne's life. On the surface, things went on as usual. She was active in her children's lives, she visited with her father once a day, she worked at the library as she always had. But she carried with her a new zest, fueled by the secret she kept inside, and the change in her attitude wasn't lost on people around her. She smiled more, they sometimes commented, and even her children occasionally noticed that she took walks after dinner or spent an hour now and then lingering in the tub, ignoring the mayhem around her.
She thought of Paul always in those moments, but his image was most real whenever she saw the mail truck coming up the road, stopping and starting with each delivery on the route.
The mail usually arrived between ten and eleven in the morning, and Adrienne would stand by the window, watching as the truck paused in front of her house. Once it was gone, she would walk to the box and sort through the bundle, looking for the telltale signs of his letters: the beige airmail envelopes he favored, postage stamps that depicted a world she knew nothing about, his name scrawled in the upper-left-hand corner.
When his first letter arrived, she read it on the back porch. As soon as she was finished, she started from the beginning and read it a second time more slowly, pausing and lingering over his words. She did the same with each subsequent letter, and as they began to arrive regularly, she realized that the message in Paul's note had been true. Though it wasn't as gratifying as seeing him or feeling his arms around her, the passion in his words somehow made the distance between them seem that much less.
She loved to imagine how he looked as he wrote the letters. She pictured him at a battered desk, a single bulb illuminating the weary expression on his face. She wondered if he wrote quickly, the words flowing uninterrupted, or whether he would stop now and then to stare into space, collecting his thoughts. Sometimes her images took one form; with the next letter they might take another, depending on what he'd written, and Adrienne would close her eyes as she held it, trying to divine his spirit.
She wrote to him as well, answering questions that he'd asked and telling him what was going on in her life. On those days, she could almost see him beside her; if the breeze moved her hair, it was as if Paul were gently running a finger over her skin; if she heard the faint ticking of a clock, it was the sound of Paul's heart as she rested her head on his chest. But when she set the pen down, her thoughts always returned to their final moments together, holding each other on the graveled drive, the soft brush of his lips, the promise of a single year apart, then a lifetime together.
Paul also called every so often, when he had an opportunity to head into the city, and hearing the tenderness in his voice always made her throat constrict. So did the sound of his laughter or the ache in his tone as he told her how much he missed her. He called during the day, when the kids were at school, and whenever she heard the phone ringing, she found herself pausing before she answered it, hoping it was Paul. The conversations didn't last long, usually less than twenty minutes, but coupled with the letters, it was enough to get her through the next few months.
At the library, she began photocopying pages from a variety of books on Ecuador, everything from geography to history, anything that caught her eye. Once, when one of the travel magazines did a piece on the culture there, she bought the magazine and sat for hours studying the pictures and practically memorizing the article, trying to learn as much as she could about the people he was working with. Sometimes, despite herself, she wondered whether any of the women there ever looked at him with the same desire she had.
S
he 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.