Николас Спаркс - The Longest Ride

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What was there to say? You were as obsessed as your dad. You broke your arm when you were five riding on a calf. But you didn’t care. You were just mad because you couldn’t ride for a few months. What could I do?” She didn’t expect an answer, and she sighed. “For a long time, I hoped you’d grow out of it. I was probably the only mother in the world who prayed that her teenager would get interested in cars or girls or music, but you never did.”

“I liked those things, too.”

“Maybe. But riding was your life. It was all you ever really wanted to do. It was all you really dreamed about, and…” She closed her eyes, an extended blink. “You had the makings of a star. As much as I hated it, I knew you had the ability and the desire and the motivation to be the best in the world. And I was proud of you. But even then, it broke my heart. Not because I didn’t think you’d make it, but because I knew you’d risk everything to reach your dream. And I watched you get hurt over and over and try again and again.” She shifted her stance. “What you have to remember is that to me, you’ll always be my child, the one I held in my arms right after you were born.”

Luke stayed silent, overcome by a familiar shame.

“Tell me,” his mother said, searching his face. “Is it something you feel like you couldn’t live without? Do you still burn with the desire to be the best?”

He stared at his boots before reluctantly lifting his head.

“No,” he admitted.

“I didn’t think so,” she said.

“Mom —”

“I know why you’re doing this. Just like you know why I don’t want you to. You’re my son, but I can’t stop you and I know that, too.”

He drew a long breath, noting her weariness. Resignation hung on her like a tattered shroud.

“Why did you come out here, Mom?” he asked. “It wasn’t to tell me all that.”

She gave a melancholy smile. “No. Actually, I came out here to check on you, to make sure you were okay. And to find out how your trip went.”

There was more and he knew it, but he answered anyway.

“The trip was good. Short, though. I feel like I spent more time in the truck than I did with Sophia.”

“That’s probably right,” she agreed. “And her family?”

“Nice people. Close family. There was a lot of laughing at the table.”

She nodded. “Good.” She crossed her arms, rubbing her sleeves. “And Sophia?”

“She’s great.”

“I see the way you look at her.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s pretty clear how you feel about her,” his mom stated.

“Yeah?” he asked again.

“It’s good,” she said. “Sophia’s special. I’ve enjoyed getting to know her. Do you think there’s a future there?”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I hope so.”

His mom looked at him seriously. “Then you should probably tell her.”

“I already have.”

“No,” his mom said, shaking her head. “You should tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“What the doctor told us,” she said, not bothering to mince her words. “You should tell her that if you keep riding, you’ll most likely be dead in less than a year.”

20

Ira

“When you wander the house at night,” Ruth suddenly interjects, “you do not do as you say.”

“What do you mean?” I am startled to hear her voice again after this long silence.

“They are not like the diary you made for me. I could read all my letters, but you do not see all the paintings. Many of them are stacked together in overcrowded rooms and you haven’t seen them for years. And the ones you store in the oak boxes you do not look at either. It is impossible for you to even open the boxes these days.”

This is true. “Perhaps I should call someone,” I say. “I could hang different ones on the walls. Like you used to do.”

“Yes, but when I did it, I knew how to arrange them to their best effect. Your taste is not so good. You simply had workers hang them in every open spot.”

“I like the eclectic feel.”

“It is not eclectic. It is tacky and cluttered and it is a fire hazard.”

I smirk. “It’s a good thing no one comes to visit, then.”

“No,” she says. “This is not good. You might have been shy, but you always drew strength from people.”

“I drew strength from you,” I say.

Though it’s dark in the car, I see her roll her eyes.

“I am talking about your customers. You always had a special way with them. This is why they remained customers. And it is why the shop failed after you sold it. Because the new owners were more interested in money than in providing service.”

Ruth might be right about this, but I sometimes wonder if the changing marketplace had more to do with it. Even before I retired, the shop had been drawing fewer customers for years. There were larger stores, with more selection, opening in other areas of Greensboro, while people began to flee the city for the suburbs and businesses downtown began to struggle. I warned the new owner about this, but he was intent on moving ahead, and I walked away knowing I had given him a fair deal. Even though the shop was no longer mine, I felt a strong pang of regret when I realized it was going out of business after more than ninety years. The old haberdasheries, the kind I ran for decades, have gone the way of covered wagons, buggy whips, and rotary-dial phones.

“My job was never like yours, though,” I finally say. “I didn’t love it the way you loved yours.”

“I could take whole summers off.”

I shake my head. Or rather, I imagine that I do. “It was because of the children,” I say. “You may have inspired them, but they also inspired you. As memorable as our summers were, by the end, you were always excited at the thought of being back in the classroom. Because you missed the children. You missed their laughter and their curiosity and the innocent way they saw the world.”

She looks at me, her eyebrow raised. “And how would you know this?”

“Because,” I say, “you told me.”

Ruth was a third-grade teacher, and to her, it was one of the key educational periods in a student’s life. Most of the students were eight or nine years old, an age she always considered an educational turning point. At that age, students are old enough to understand concepts that would have been foreign to them only a year earlier, but they are still young enough to accept guidance from adults with a near-unquestioning trust.

It was also, in Ruth’s opinion, the first year in which students really began to differentiate academically. Some students began to excel while others fell behind; although there were countless reasons for this, in that particular school, in that era, many of her students – and their parents – simply didn’t care. The students would attend school until the eighth or ninth grade, then drop out to work on the farm full-time. Even for Ruth, this was a challenge that was difficult to overcome. These were the kids that kept Ruth awake at night, the ones she worried endlessly about, and she tinkered with her lesson plan for years, searching for ways to get through to them and their parents. She would have them plant seeds in Dixie cups and label them in an effort to encourage them to read; she would have the students catch bugs and name those as well, hoping to spark intellectual curiosity about the natural world. Tests in mathematics always included something about the farm or money: If Joe gathered four baskets of peaches from each tree, and there were five trees in each of the six rows, how many baskets of peaches will Joe be able to sell? Or: If you have $200 and you buy seed that costs $120, how much money do you have left? This was a world the students understood to be important – and more often than not, she got through to them. While some still ended up dropping out, they would sometimes come to visit her in later years, to thank her for teaching them how to read and write and perform the basic math necessary to figure out their purchases at the store.