Nicholas Sparks - Safe Haven

She did exactly as she was told and backed the car out gingerly before he guided her out of the parking lot. For the first time, she paused. “Are you sure I should drive onto the main road?”

“If there was a lot of traffic, I’d say no. If you were sixteen, I’d say no. But I think you can handle it, and I’m right here to help. You ready? What you’re going to do is turn right, and we’ll follow that until the next turn. Then we’ll turn right again. I want you to get a feel for the car.”

They spent the next hour driving along rural roads. Like most beginners, she had trouble with oversteering, she sometimes veered onto the shoulder, and parking took a little while to get used to, but other than that, she did better than probably either of them expected. As they were getting close to finishing, Alex had her park on one of the downtown streets.

“Where are we going?”

He pointed to a small coffee shop. “I figured you might want to celebrate. You did well.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing.”

“That comes with practice,” he said. “The more you drive, the more natural it feels.”

“Can I drive tomorrow?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Can we do it in the morning, though? Now that Josh is out of school, he and Kristen are at day camp for a couple of weeks. They get home around noon.”

“Mornings are perfect,” she said. “Do you really think I did okay?”

“You could probably pass the driving portion of the exam with a couple more days of practice. Of course, you have to pass the written test, too, but all that takes is some prep time.”

She reached out and gave him a spontaneous hug. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

He hugged her back. “I’m glad to help. Even if you don’t have a car, it’s something you should probably know how to do. Why didn’t you…?”

“Learn to drive when I was younger?” She shrugged. “Growing up, we had only one car and my dad was usually using it. Even if I got my license, I wouldn’t have been able to drive, so it never struck me as all that important. After I moved out, I couldn’t afford a car, so again, I didn’t bother. And then, when I was married, Kevin didn’t want me to have one.” She turned. “And here I am. A twenty-seven-year-old bike rider.”

“You’re twenty-seven?”

“You knew that.”

“Actually, I didn’t.”

“And?”

“You don’t look a day over thirty.”

She punched him lightly in the arm. “For that, I’m going to make you buy me a croissant, too.”

“Fair enough. And since you’re in the mood for full disclosure, I’d like to hear the story of how you finally got away.”

She hesitated only briefly. “Okay,” she said.

At a small table outside, Katie related the account of her escape — the forwarded phone calls, the trip to Philadelphia, the ever-changing jobs and miserable flophouses, the eventual trip to Southport. Unlike the first time, now she was able to describe her experiences calmly, as though talking about someone else. When she finished, he shook his head.

“What?”

“I was just trying to imagine how you must have felt after hanging up on that final call from Kevin. When he still thought you were at home. I’ll bet you were relieved.”

“I was. But I was also terrified. And at that point, I still didn’t have a job and didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“But you made it.”

“Yes,” she said. “I did.” Her gaze was focused on some distant point. “It’s not the kind of life I ever imagined for myself.”

Alex’s tone was gentle. “I’m not sure anyone’s life turns out exactly the way they imagine. All we can do is to try to make the best of it. Even when it seems impossible.”

She knew he was talking as much about himself as he was about her, and for a long moment neither of them said anything.

“I love you,” he finally whispered.

She leaned forward and touched his face. “I know. And I love you, too.”

By late June, the flower gardens in Dorchester that had been ablaze with color in the spring were beginning to wilt, the blooms turning brown and curling inward. The humidity had begun to creep up and the alleys in downtown Boston began to smell of rotting food and urine and decay. Kevin told Coffey and Ramirez that he and Erin were going to spend the weekend at home, watching movies and doing a little gardening. Coffey had asked about Provincetown and Kevin had lied and told him about the bed-and-breakfast where they’d stayed and some of the restaurants they’d gone to. Coffey had said that he’d been to all of those places and asked if Kevin had ordered the crab cakes at one of them. Kevin said that he hadn’t but would the next time.

Erin was gone, but Kevin still looked for her everywhere. He couldn’t help it. As he drove the streets of Boston and saw the glint of gold brushing a woman’s shoulders, he would feel his heart catch in his throat. He would watch for the delicate nose and green eyes and the graceful way she walked. Sometimes he would stand outside the bakery, pretending that he was waiting for her.

He should have been able to find her, even if she’d gotten away in Philadelphia. People left trails. Paper left trails. In Philadelphia, she’d used a phony name and phony social security number, but that couldn’t last forever unless she was willing to keep on living in cheap hotels and changing jobs every few weeks. To this point, though, she hadn’t used her own social security number. An officer from another precinct who had connections checked for him, and that officer was the only one who knew that Erin was gone, but he’d keep his mouth shut because Kevin knew he was having an affair with his underage babysitter. Kevin felt dirty whenever he had to talk to him because the guy was a pervert and he belonged in prison, since the Bible says Let there be no sexual immorality among you . But right now, Kevin needed him so that he could find Erin and bring her home. Man and wife were supposed to stay together because they’d made their vows in front of God and family.

He’d known he would find her in March; he’d felt sure she would turn up in April. He was certain that her name would surface in May, but the house stayed empty. Now it was June and his thoughts were often scattered and sometimes it was all he could do to go through the motions. It was hard to concentrate and the vodka didn’t seem to help and he had to lie to Coffey and Ramirez and walk away while they gossiped.

This he knew: she wasn’t running any longer. She wouldn’t move from place to place or job to job forever. It wasn’t like her. She liked nice things and wanted to have them around her. Which meant she had to be using someone else’s identity. Unless she was willing to live a life continually on the run, she needed a real birth certificate and a real social security number. These days, employers required identification, but where and how would she have assumed another’s identity? He knew the most common way was to find someone of a similar age who’d recently died, and then to take on the identity of the deceased. The first part of that was conceivable, if only because of Erin’s frequent visits to the library. He could imagine her scanning the obituaries on microfiche, looking for a name to steal. She schemed and planned in the library while pretending to peruse the bookshelves, and she’d done those things after he’d taken time out of his busy day to drive her there. He showed her kindness and she repaid him with treachery, and it infuriated him to think of the way she must have laughed while she did it. It made him so angry to imagine those things, and with a hammer he smashed the set of china they’d been given for their wedding. Having let off steam, he was able to focus on what he had to do. Throughout March and April, Kevin spent hours in the library just as she must have done, trying to find her new identity. But even if she had found a name, how had she retrieved the identification? Where was she now? And why hadn’t she come home?