Nicholas Sparks: The Best of Me

There was, however, a recent twist in Jared’s thinking that Amanda wasn’t sure how to handle. A few evenings ago, while she’d been loading dishes into the dishwasher, Jared had joined her in the kitchen, stopping to lean against the counter.

“Hey, Mom? Are you going to do that charity thing for Duke this fall?”

In the past, he’d always referred to her fund-raising luncheons as things . For obvious reasons, since the accident, she hadn’t hosted the event, nor had she been volunteering at the hospital. Amanda nodded. “Yes. They asked me to take over as the chairperson again.”

“Because they botched it the last couple of years without you, right? That’s what Lauren’s mom said.”

“They didn’t botch the events. They just didn’t go as well as planned.”

“I’m glad you’re doing it again. For Bea, I mean.”

She smiled. “Me, too.”

“The hospital likes it, too, right? Because you’re raising money?”

She reached for a towel and dried her hands, studying him. “Why are you suddenly so interested?”

Jared absently scratched at his scar through his T-shirt. “I was hoping that you could use your contacts at the hospital to find something out for me,” he said. “It’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

With the cake cooling on the counter, Amanda stepped out onto the back porch and inspected the lawn. Despite the automatic sprinklers that Frank had installed last year, the grass was dying in spots as the roots withered away. Before he’d gone to work this morning, she’d seen him standing over one of the dull brown patches, his face grim. In the past couple of years, Frank had become fanatical about the lawn. Unlike most of the neighbors, Frank insisted on doing his own mowing, telling anyone who asked that it helped him relax after a day spent filling cavities and shaping crowns at the office. Though she supposed there was some truth in that, there was also something compulsive about his habits. Rain or shine, he mowed every other day, making checkerboard patterns in the lawn.

Despite her initial skepticism, Frank hadn’t had a single beer or even a sip of wine since the day of the accident. At the hospital, he’d sworn he was stopping for good, and to his credit, he’d kept his vow. After two years, she no longer expected him to slip back into his old ways at any moment, and that was a big part of the reason things between them had improved. It wasn’t a perfect relationship by any means, but it wasn’t as terrible as it once had been, either. In the days and weeks following the accident, arguments between them had been an almost nightly occurrence. Pain and guilt and anger had sharpened their words into blades, and they often lashed out at each other. Frank slept in the guest room for months, and in the mornings, eye contact between them was rare.

As difficult as those months had been, Amanda could never bring herself to take the final step of filing for divorce. Given Jared’s fragile emotional state, she couldn’t imagine traumatizing him any further. What she didn’t realize was that her resolve to keep the family intact wasn’t having the intended effect. A few months after Jared came home from the hospital, Frank was talking to Jared in the living room when Amanda walked in. As had become the pattern by then, Frank got up and left the room. Jared watched him go before turning to his mom.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Jared said to her. “I was the one driving.”

“I know.”

“Then stop blaming him,” he said.

Ironically, it was Jared’s psychologist who ultimately convinced her and Frank to seek counseling for their troubled relationship. The tension at home was affecting Jared’s recovery, she pointed out, and if they truly cared about helping their son, they should consider seeking couples counseling themselves. Without a stable home environment, Jared would have difficulty accepting and coping with his new circumstances.

Amanda and Frank drove in separate cars to their first appointment with the counselor, who Jared’s psychologist had referred them to. Their first session degenerated into the kind of argument they’d been having for months. By the second session they were actually able to talk without raising their voices. And at the counselor’s gentle but firm urging, Frank began attending AA meetings as well, much to Amanda’s relief. In the beginning, he went five nights a week, but lately it was down to one, and three months ago Frank had become a sponsor. He met regularly for breakfast with a thirty-four-year-old recently divorced banker who, unlike Frank, had been unable to achieve sobriety. Until then Amanda had not allowed herself to believe that Frank was actually going to be successful in the long term.

There was no question that Jared and the girls had benefited from the improved atmosphere at home. There had even been moments recently when Amanda considered it a new beginning for her and Frank. When they talked these days, the past was seldom front and center; now they were able to laugh occasionally in each other’s company. Every Friday, they went on a date — another recommendation of the couples counselor — and while it still felt stilted at times, both of them knew it was important. They were, in many ways, getting to know each other again, for the first time in years.

There was something satisfying in that, but Amanda knew that theirs would never be a passionate marriage. Frank wasn’t, nor ever had been, wired that way, and it didn’t bother her. After all, she had known the kind of love that was worth risking everything for, the kind of love that was as rare as a glimpse of heaven.

Two years. Two years had elapsed since her weekend with Dawson Cole; two long years since the day Morgan Tanner had called to tell her that he’d passed away.

She kept the letters, along with Tuck and Clara’s photograph and the four-leaf clover, stashed in the bottom of her pajama drawer, a place where Frank would never look. Every now and then, when the ache she felt at his loss was especially strong, she’d pull those items out. She’d reread the letters and twirl the four-leaf clover between her fingers, wondering who they’d truly been to each other that weekend. They were in love, but they hadn’t been lovers; they were friends and yet also strangers after so many years. But their passion had been real, as undeniable as the ground she stood on.

Last year, a couple of days after the anniversary of Dawson’s death, she’d made a trip to Oriental. Turning in at the town cemetery, she’d hiked out to the very edge of the property, where a small rise overlooked a copse of leafy trees. It was here that Dawson’s remains were buried, far from the Coles, and even farther from the plots of the Bennetts and the Colliers. As she stood over the simple headstone, gazing at the freshly cut lilies that someone had laid there, she imagined that if by some twist of fate she was buried in the Collier plot of this very same cemetery, their souls would eventually find each other — just as they had in life, not once but twice.

On the way out, she made a detour to pay respects on Dawson’s behalf at the grave of Dr. Bonner. And there, before his headstone, she saw an identical bouquet of lilies. Marilyn Bonner’s handiwork on both counts, she guessed, because of what Dawson had done for Alan, and the realization left her wiping her eyes as she made her way back toward her car.

Time had done nothing to diminish her memories of Dawson; if anything, her feelings for him had deepened. In a strange way, his love had given her the resolve she’d needed to make it through the hardships of the last two years.