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.