The Notebook - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,60

space, and I find that I’m drawn to its mystery. I watch for hours, and as I do, I see the reflection of clouds as they begin to bounce off the water. A storm is coming, and in time the sky will turn silver, like dusk again.

Lightning cuts the wild sky, and I feel my mind drift back. Who are we, Allie and I? Are we ancient ivy on a cypress tree, tendrils and branches intertwined so closely that we would both die if we were forced apart? I don’t know. Another bolt and the table beside me is lit enough to see a picture of Allie, the best one I have. I had it framed years ago in the hope that the glass would make it last forever. I reach for it and hold it inches from my face. I stare at it for a long time, I can’t help it. She was forty-one when it was taken, and she had never been more beautiful. There are so many things I want to ask her, but I know the picture won’t answer, so I put it aside.

Tonight, with Allie down the hall, I am alone. I will always be alone. This I thought as I lay in the hospital. This I’m sure of as I look out the window and watch the storm clouds appear. Despite myself I am saddened by our plight, for I realize that the last day we were together I never kissed her lips. Perhaps I never will again. It is impossible to tell with this disease. Why do I think such things?

I finally stand and walk to my desk and turn on the lamp. This takes more effort than I think it will, and I am strained, so I do not return to the window seat. I sit down and spend a few minutes looking at the pictures that sit on my desk. Family pictures, pictures of children and vacations. Pictures of Allie and me. I think back to the times we shared together, alone or with family, and once again I realize how ancient I am.

I open a drawer and find the flowers I’d once given her long ago, old and faded and tied together with ribbon. They, like me, are dry and brittle and difficult to handle without breaking. But she saved them. “I don’t understand what you want with them,” I would say, but she would just ignore me. And sometimes in the evenings I would see her holding them, almost reverently, as if they offered the secret of life itself. Women.

Since this seems to be a night of memories, I look for and find my wedding ring. It is in the top drawer, wrapped in tissue. I cannot wear it anymore because my knuckles are swollen and my fingers lack for blood. I unwrap the tissue and find it unchanged. It is powerful, a symbol, a circle, and I know, I know, there could never have been another. I knew it then, and I know it now. And in that moment I whisper aloud, “I am still yours, Allie, my queen, my timeless beauty. You are, and always have been, the best thing in my life.”

I wonder if she hears me when I say this, and I wait for a sign. But there is nothing.

It is eleven-thirty and I look for the letter she wrote me, the one I read when the mood strikes me. I find it where I last left it. I turn it over a couple of times before I open it, and when I do my hands begin to tremble. Finally I read:

Dear Noah,

I write this letter by candlelight as you lie sleeping in the bedroom we have shared since the day we were married. And though I can’t hear the soft sounds of your slumber, I know you are there, and soon I will be lying next to you again as I always have. And I will feel your warmth and your comfort, and your breaths will slowly guide me to the place where I dream of you and the wonderful man you are.

I see the flame beside me and it reminds me of another fire from decades ago, with me in your soft clothes and you in your jeans. I knew then we would always be together, even though I wavered the following day. My heart had been captured, roped by a southern poet, and I knew inside that it had always been yours.