Stars were blazing like tiny sparkles on a magician’s cape, and the air was moist and cold. In the yard, she could see blackened pools, reflecting the ebony above. Lights shone from neighbors’ windows, and though she knew it was just her imagination, she could almost smell salt in the air, as if sea mist were rolling over the neighborhood yards.
Mark had come to the house on a February morning; his arm was still in a sling, but she’d barely noticed it. Instead, she found herself staring at him, unable to turn away. He looked, she thought, exactly like his father. When he offered the saddest of smiles as she opened the door, Adrienne took a small step backward, trying hard to hold back the tears.
They sat at the table, two coffee cups between them, and Mark removed the letters from the bag he’d brought with him.
“He saved them,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do with them, except to bring them to you.”
Adrienne nodded as she took them.
“Thank you for your letter,” she said. “I know how hard it must have been for you to write it.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and for a long time, he was silent. Then, of course, he told her why he’d come.
Now, on the porch, Adrienne smiled as she thought about what Paul had done for her. She remembered going to visit her father in the nursing home after Mark had left, the place her father would never have to leave. As Mark had explained as he’d sat at the table, Paul had already made arrangements for her father to be taken care of there until the end of his days—a gift he had hoped to surprise her with. When she began to protest, Mark made it clear that it would have broken his heart to know that she wouldn’t accept it.
“Please,” he finally said, “it’s what my dad wanted.”
In the years that followed, she would cherish Paul’s final gesture, just as she cherished every memory of the few days they spent together. Paul still meant everything to her, would always mean everything to her, and in the chilly air of a late winter evening, Adrienne knew she would always feel that way.
She’d already lived through more years than she had remaining, but it hadn’t seemed that long. Entire years had slipped from her memory, washed away like sandy footprints near the water’s edge. With the exception of the time she’d spent with Paul Flanner, she sometimes believed that she had passed through life with no more awareness than that of a small child on a long car ride, staring out the window as the scenery rolled past.
She had fallen in love with a stranger in the course of a weekend, and she would never fall in love again. The desire to love again had ended on a mountain pass in Ecuador. Paul had died for his son, and in that moment, part of her had died as well.
She wasn’t bitter, though. In the same situation, she knew she would have tried to save her own child as well. Yes, Paul was gone, but he had left her with so much. She’d found love and joy, she’d found a strength she never knew she had, and nothing could ever take those things away.
But all of it was over now, all except the memories, and she’d constructed those with infinite care. They were as real to her as the scene she was staring at now, and blinking back the tears that had started falling in the empty darkness of her bedroom, she raised her chin. Staring into the sky, she breathed deeply, listening to the distant and imagined echo of waves as they broke along the shore on a stormy night in Rodanthe.