Nights in Rodanthe - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,26

Jack. Her favorite moments then had been when she’d been able to slip away unobserved and spend a few minutes on a secluded porch. Sometimes there would be someone else out there, someone she didn’t know, but when they saw each other, each would nod, as if making a secret pact. No questions, no small talk… agreed.

Here, on the beach, the feeling returned. The night felt refreshing, the breeze lifting her hair and burnishing her skin. Shadows spread out before her on the sand, moving and shifting, forming into almost recognizable images, then vanishing from sight. The ocean was a swirl of liquid coal. Paul, she knew, was absorbing all those things as well; he also seemed to realize that talking now would somehow ruin it all.

They walked on in companionable silence, Adrienne more certain with every step that she wanted to spend more time with him. But that wasn’t so odd, was it? He was lonely and so was she, solitary travelers enjoying a deserted stretch of sand in an oceanside village called Rodanthe.

When they reached the house, they stepped inside the kitchen and slipped off their jackets. Adrienne hung hers on the coatrack beside the door along with her scarf; Paul hung his beside it.

Adrienne brought her hands together and blew through them, seeing Paul look toward the clock, then around the kitchen, as if wondering whether he should call it a night.

“How about something warm to drink?” she offered quickly. “I can brew a fresh pot of decaf.”

“Do you have any tea?” he asked.

“I think I saw some earlier. Let me check.”

She crossed the kitchen, opened the cupboard near the sink, then moved assorted goods to the side, liking the fact that they’d have a bit more time together. A box of Earl Grey was on the second shelf, and when she turned around to show it to him, Paul nodded with a smile. She moved around him to get the kettle, then added water, conscious of how close they were standing to each other. When it whistled, she poured two cups and they went to the sitting room.

They took their places in the rockers again, though the room had changed now that the sun had dropped. If possible, it seemed quieter, more intimate in the darkness.

As they drank their tea, they talked for another hour about this and that, the easy conversation of casual friends. In time, though, as the evening was winding down, Adrienne found herself confiding in him about her father and the fears she had for the future.

Paul had heard similar scenarios before; as a doctor, he encountered such stories regularly. But until that moment, they’d been just that: stories. His parents were gone, and Martha’s parents were alive and well and living in Florida; but he could tell by Adrienne’s expression that her dilemma was something he was glad he wouldn’t have to face.

“Is there something I can do?” he offered. “I know a lot of specialists who could review his chart and see if there’s a way to help him.”

“Thank you for the offer, but no, I’ve done all that. The last stroke really set him back. Even if there was something that might help a little, I don’t think there’s any chance that he could function without round-the-clock care.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping Jack will change his mind about coming up with additional financial support for my dad, and he might. He and my father were pretty close for a while. But if not, I guess I’ll look for a full-time position so I can pay for it.”

“Can’t the state do anything?”

As soon as he said the words, he knew what her answer would be.

“He might be eligible for assistance, but the good places have long waiting lists, and most of them are a couple of hours away, so I wouldn’t be able to see him regularly. And the not-so-good places? I couldn’t do that to him.”

She paused, her thoughts flashing between the past and present. “When he retired,” she finally said, “they had a small party at the plant for him, and I remember thinking that he was going to miss going in every day. He’d started working there when he was fifteen, and in all the years he spent with them, he took only two sick days. I figured it out once—if you added up all the hours he spent working there, it would be fifteen years of his life, but when I