A Walk to Remember - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,57

was running out of time, and my heart was still telling me that there was something more I could do.

On February 14, Valentine’s Day, Jamie picked out a passage from Corinthians that meant a lot to her. She told me that if she’d ever had the chance, it was the passage she’d wanted read at her wedding. This is what it said:

Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

Jamie was the truest essence of that very description.

Three days later, when the temperature slightly warmed, I showed her something wonderful, something I doubted she’d ever seen before, something I knew she would want to see.

Eastern North Carolina is a beautiful and special part of the country, blessed with temperate weather and, for the most part, wonderful geography. Nowhere is this more evident than Bogue Banks, an island right off the coast, near the place we grew up. Twenty-four miles long and nearly a mile wide, this island is a fluke of nature, running from east to west, hugging the coastline a half mile off-shore. Those who live there can witness spectacular sunrises and sunsets every day of the year, both taking place over the expanse of the mighty Atlantic Ocean.

Jamie was bundled up heavily, standing beside me on the edge of the Iron Steamer Pier as this perfect southern evening descended. I pointed off into the distance and told her to wait. I could see our breaths, two of hers to every one of mine. I had to support Jamie as we stood there—she seemed lighter than the leaves of a tree that had fallen in autumn—but I knew that it would be worth it.

In time the glowing, cratered moon began its seeming rise from the sea, casting a prism of light across the slowly darkening water, splitting itself into a thousand different parts, each more beautiful than the last. At exactly the same moment, the sun was meeting the horizon in the opposite direction, turning the sky red and orange and yellow, as if heaven above had suddenly opened its gates and let all its beauty escape its holy confines. The ocean turned golden silver as the shifting colors reflected off it, waters rippling and sparkling with the changing light, the vision glorious, almost like the beginning of time. The sun continued to lower itself, casting its glow as far as the eye could see, before finally, slowly, vanishing beneath the waves. The moon continued its slow drift upward, shimmering as it turned a thousand different shades of yellow, each paler than the last, before finally becoming the color of the stars.

Jamie watched all this in silence, my arm tight around her, her breathing shallow and weak. As the sky was finally turning to black and the first twinkling lights began to appear in the distant southern sky, I took her in my arms. I gently kissed both her cheeks and then, finally, her lips.

“That,” I said, “is exactly how I feel about you.”

A week later Jamie’s trips to the hospital became more regular, although she insisted that she didn’t want to stay there overnight. “I want to die at home,” was all she said. Since the doctors couldn’t do anything for her, they had no choice but to accept her wishes.

At least for the time being.

“I’ve been thinking about the past few months,” I said to her.

We were sitting in the living room, holding hands as we read the Bible. Her face was growing thinner, her hair beginning to lose its luster. Yet her eyes, those soft blue eyes, were as lovely as ever.

I don’t think I’d ever seen someone as beautiful.

“I’ve been thinking about them, too,” she said.

“You knew, from the first day in Miss Garber’s class that I was going to do the play, didn’t you. When you looked at me and smiled?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And when I asked you to the homecoming dance, you made me promise that I wouldn’t fall in love, but you knew that I was going to, didn’t you?”

She had a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Yes.”

“How did you know?”

She shrugged without answering, and we sat together for a few moments, watching the rain as it blew against the windows.

“When I told