Nicholas Sparks - The Best of Me

“She’s wrong.”

“I thought so, too,” she said. “At first anyway. But now I’m not so sure.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’m not exactly acting like a married woman, am I?”

Watching her, he held his silence, giving her time to consider what she was saying. “Do you want me to bring you back?” he finally asked.

She hesitated before shaking her head. “No,” she said. “That’s the thing. I want to be here, with you. Even though I know it’s wrong.” Her eyes were downcast, lashes dark against her cheekbones. “Does that make any sense?”

He traced a finger along the back of her hand. “Do you really want me to answer?”

“No,” she answered. “Not really. But it’s… complicated. Marriage, I mean.” She could feel him weave delicate patterns across her skin.

“Do you like being married?” Dawson asked, his voice tentative.

Instead of answering right away, Amanda took a sip of her wine, collecting herself. “Frank is a good man. Most of the time, anyway. But marriage isn’t what people think it is. People want to believe that every marriage is this perfect balance, but it isn’t. One person always loves more deeply than the other. I know Frank loves me, and I love him, too… just not as much. And I never have.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you know?” She looked at him. “It’s because of you. Even when we were standing in the church and I was getting ready to take my vows, I can remember wishing that you were standing there, instead of him. Because I not only still loved you, but loved you beyond measure, and I suspected even then that I would never feel the same way about Frank.”

Dawson’s mouth felt dry. “Then why did you marry him?”

“Because I thought it was good enough. And I hoped I could change. That over time, maybe I would come to feel the same way about him as I did about you. But I didn’t, and as the years went on, I think he came to see that, too. And it hurt him, and I knew it hurt him, but the harder he tried to show me how important I was to him, the more suffocated I felt. And I resented that. I resented him.” She winced at her own words. “I know that makes me sound like an awful person.”

“You’re not awful,” Dawson said. “You’re being honest.”

“Let me finish, okay?” she said. “I need you to understand this. You need to know that I do love him, and I cherish the family we’ve created. Frank adores our children. They’re the center of his life, and I think that’s why losing Bea was so hard on us. You have no idea how terrible it is to watch your child get sicker and sicker and know that there’s nothing you can do to help her. You end up riding this roller-coaster of emotions, feeling everything from anger at God to betrayal to a sense of utter failure and devastation. In the end, though, I was able to survive the pain. Frank never really recovered. Because underlying all those other things is this bottomless despair and it just… hollows you out. There’s a gaping hole where all this joy used to be. Because that’s what Bea was. She was joy in living form. We used to joke that she came out of the womb smiling. Even as a baby, she hardly ever cried. And that never changed. She laughed all the time; to her, everything new was a thrilling discovery. Jared and Lynn used to compete for her attention. Can you imagine that?”

She paused, her voice becoming more ragged. “And then, of course, the headaches started and she began bumping into things as she toddled around. So we visited a host of specialists, and each of them told us there was nothing he could do for her.” She swallowed hard. “After that… it just started getting worse. But she was who she was, you know? Just happy. Even toward the end, when she was barely able to sit up on her own, she still laughed. Every time I heard that laugh, I’d feel my heart break just a little bit more.” Amanda was quiet then, absently staring toward the darkened window. Dawson waited.

“At the end, I used to lie in bed with her for hours, just holding her as she slept, and when she’d wake up we’d lie there facing each other. I couldn’t turn away, because I wanted to memorize everything about the way she looked: her nose, her chin, her little curls. And when she’d finally fall asleep again, I’d hold her close and just weep at the unfairness of it all.”

When Amanda finished she blinked, seemingly unaware of the tears spilling down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them away, and neither did Dawson. Instead, he sat perfectly still, attuned to every word.

“After she died, part of me died, too. And for a long time, Frank and I could barely look at each other. Not because we were angry, but because it hurt. I could see Bea in Frank, and Frank could see her in me, and it was… unbearable. We barely held ourselves together, even though Jared and Lynn needed us more than ever. I started to drink two or three glasses of wine every night, trying to numb myself, but Frank would drink even more. Finally, though, I recognized that it wasn’t helping. So I stopped. But for Frank, it wasn’t so easy.” She stopped to pinch the bridge of her nose, the memory awakening the familiar traces of a headache. “He couldn’t stop. I thought that having another child might heal him, but it didn’t, really. He’s an alcoholic, and for the last ten years he’s lived half a life. And I’ve reached the point where I don’t know how to give him back that other half.”

Dawson swallowed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t, either. I like to tell myself that if Bea hadn’t died, this wouldn’t have happened to Frank. But then I wonder whether his decline was partly my fault, too. Because I’d been hurting him for years, even before Bea. Because he knew that I didn’t love him in the same way he loved me.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said. Even to him, the words sounded inadequate.

She shook her head. “That’s kind of you to say, and on the surface I know you’re right. But if he’s drinking to escape these days, it’s probably to escape from me. Because he knows I’m angry and disappointed and he knows there’s no way he can erase ten years of regret, no matter what he does. And who wouldn’t want to escape from that? Especially when it comes from someone you love? When all you really want is for that person to love you as much as you love them?”

“Don’t do that,” he said, capturing her gaze with his own. “You can’t take the blame for his problems and make them yours.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never been married.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Let me just say that the longer I’ve been married, the more I’ve come to realize that few things are ever black and white. And I’m not saying that the problems in our marriage are entirely my fault. I’m just saying that there might be a few shades of gray somewhere in there. Neither one of us is perfect.”

“That sounds like something a therapist would say.”

“It probably is. A few months after Bea died, I started seeing a therapist twice a week. I don’t know how I would have survived without her. Jared and Lynn saw her, too, but not as long. Kids are more resilient, I guess.”

“I’ll take your word on that.”

She rested her chin on her knees, her expression reflecting her turmoil. “I never really told Frank about us.”

“No?”

“He knew I’d had a boyfriend in high school, but I didn’t tell him how serious it was. I don’t think I’ve ever even told him your name. And my mom and dad, obviously, tried their best to pretend it had never happened at all. They treated it like this deep, dark family secret. Naturally, my mother breathed a sigh of relief when I told her I was engaged. She wasn’t thrilled, mind you. My mom doesn’t get thrilled about anything. She probably considers it beneath her. But if it makes you feel better, I had to remind her of Frank’s name. Twice. Your name, on the other hand…”