Nicholas Sparks - Safe Haven

He flinched. “I love the person that you are.”

“But you’re making it conditional!”

“I’m not!”

“But you are!” she insisted. She knew she was raising her voice but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “You have this idea of what you want in life and you’re trying to make me fit into it!”

“I don’t,” Alex protested. “I simply asked you a question.”

“But you wanted a specific answer! You wanted the right answer, and if you didn’t get it, you were going to try to convince me otherwise. That I should do what you want! That I should do everything you want!”

For the first time ever, Alex narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t do this,” he said.

“Do what? Tell the truth? Tell you how I feel? Why? What are you going to do? Hit me? Go ahead.”

He physically recoiled as though she’d slapped him. She knew her words had hit their mark, but instead of getting angry, Alex set the dish towel on the counter and took a step backward. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sorry that I even brought it up. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot or try to convince you of anything. I was just trying to have a conversation.”

He paused, waiting for her to say something, but she stayed silent. Shaking his head, he started to leave the kitchen before coming to a stop. “Thank you for dinner,” he whispered.

In the living room, she heard him tell the kids it was getting late, heard the front door open with a squeak. He closed the door softly behind him and the house was suddenly quiet, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

Kevin was having trouble staying between the lines on the highway. He’d wanted to keep his mind sharp, but his head had begun to pound and he’d been sick to his stomach, so he’d stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. It numbed the pain, and as he sipped it through a straw, all he could think about was Erin and how she’d changed her name to Katie.

The interstate was a blur. Headlights, double pinpricks of white, rose in intensity as they approached from the opposite direction and then vanished when they passed him. One after another. Thousands. People going places, doing things. Kevin driving to North Carolina, heading south to find his wife. Leaving Massachusetts, driving through Rhode Island and Connecticut. New York and New Jersey. The moon rose, orange and angry before turning white, and crossed the blackened sky above him. Stars overhead.

Hot wind blew through the open window and Kevin held the wheel steady, his thoughts a jigsaw of mismatched pieces. The bitch had left him. She’d abandoned the marriage and left him to rot and believed she was smarter than he was. But he’d found her. Karen Feldman had crossed the street and he’d learned that Erin had a secret. But not anymore. He knew where Erin lived, he knew where she was hiding. Her address was scribbled on a piece of paper on the seat beside him, held in place by the Glock he’d brought from home. On the backseat was a duffel bag filled with clothes and handcuffs and duct tape. On his way out of town, he stopped at an ATM and withdrew a few hundred dollars. He wanted to smash Erin’s face with his fists as soon as he found her, bloody it to an ugly pulp. He wanted to kiss her and hold her and beg her to come home. He filled the tank near Philadelphia and remembered how he’d tracked her there.

She’d made a fool of him, carrying on a secret life he hadn’t even known about. Visiting the Feldmans, cooking and cleaning for them while she plotted and schemed and lied. What else, he wondered, had she lied about? A man? Maybe not then, but there had to be a man by now. Kissing her. Caressing her. Taking her clothes off. Laughing at him. They were probably in bed together right now. Her and the man. Both of them laughing at him behind his back. I showed him, didn’t I? she was saying as she laughed. Kevin didn’t even see it coming.

It made him crazy to think about. Furious. He’d been on the road for hours already, but Kevin kept driving. He sipped his vodka and blinked rapidly to clear his vision. He didn’t speed, didn’t want to get pulled over. Not with a gun on the seat beside him. She was afraid of guns and always asked him to lock his up when he finished his shift, which he did.

But it wasn’t enough. He could buy her a house, furniture, and pretty clothes and take her to the library and the hair salon and it still wasn’t enough. Who could understand it? Was it so hard to clean the house and cook dinner? He never wanted to hit her, only did it when he had no other choice. When she was stupid or careless or selfish. She brought it on herself.

The engine droned, the noise steady in his ears. She had a driver’s license now and she was a waitress at a restaurant called Ivan’s. Before he left, he’d spent some time on the Internet and had made some calls. It hadn’t been hard to track her down because the town was small. It took him less than twenty minutes to find out where she worked. All he had to do was dial the number and ask if Katie was there. On the fourth call, someone said yes. He hung up without a word. She thought she could hide forever, but he was a good detective and he’d found her. I’m coming , he thought to himself. I know where you live and where you work and you won’t get away again.

He passed billboards and exit ramps, and in Delaware the rain started to fall. He rolled up the window and felt the wind begin to push the car sideways. A truck ahead of him was swerving, the trailer wheels riding the lines. He turned on the wipers and the windshield cleared. But the rain began to fall even harder and he leaned over the wheel, squinting into the fuzzy orbs of oncoming headlights. His breath began to fog the glass and he turned on the defroster. He would drive all night and find Erin tomorrow. He’d bring her home and they’d start over again. Man and wife, living together, the way it was supposed to be. Happy.

They used to be happy. Used to do fun things together. Early on in the marriage, he remembered, he and Erin would visit open houses on the weekends. She was excited about buying a house and he would listen as she talked to the Realtors, her voice trilling like music in the empty homes. She liked to take her time as she walked through the rooms, and he knew she was imagining where to put furniture. When they found the house in Dorchester, he’d known she wanted it by the way her eyes were sparkling. That night, lying in bed, she traced small circles on his chest as she pleaded with him to make an offer and he could remember thinking that he would do anything she wanted because he loved her.

Except have children. She’d told him that she wanted kids, wanted to start a family. In the first year of marriage, she’d talked about it all the time. He tried to ignore her, didn’t want to tell her that he didn’t want her to get fat and puffy, that pregnant women were ugly, that he didn’t want to hear her whining about how tired she was or how her feet were swollen. He didn’t want to hear a baby fussing and crying when he got home from work, didn’t want toys scattered around the house. He didn’t want her to get frumpy and saggy or hear her ask him whether he thought her butt was getting fat. He married her because he wanted a wife, not a mother. But she kept bringing it up, kept harping day after day until he finally slapped her and told her to shut up. After that, she never talked about it again, but now he wondered whether he should have given her what she wanted. She wouldn’t have left if she had a child, wouldn’t have been able to run away in the first place. By the same token, she could never run away again.

They would have a child, he decided, and the three of them would live in Dorchester and he would work as a detective. In the evenings, he’d come home to his pretty wife and when people saw them in the grocery store, they would marvel and say, They look like the all-American family.