Nights in Rodanthe - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,50
being sixty than she could of being a man, and Adrienne sometimes wondered when Amanda would realize that for the most part, people weren’t all that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: They wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, Adrienne thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future, while most older people believed that they lay in the past.
It was true for her as well, at least partly, but as wonderful as the past had been, she refused to allow herself to remain lost in it the way many of her friends had. The past wasn’t merely a garden of roses and sunshine; the past held its share of heartbreak as well. She had felt that way about Jack’s effects on her life when she’d first arrived at the Inn, and she felt that way about Paul Flanner now.
Tonight, she would cry, but as she’d promised herself every day since he’d left Rodanthe, she would go on. She was a survivor, as her father had told her many times, and though there was a certain satisfaction to that knowledge, it didn’t erase the pain or regrets.
Nowadays, she tried to focus on those things that brought her joy. She loved to watch the grandchildren as they discovered the world, she loved to visit with friends and find out what was happening in their lives, she had even come to enjoy the days she spent working in the library.
The work wasn’t hard—she now worked in the special reference section, where books couldn’t be checked out—and because hours might pass before she was needed for something, it offered her the opportunity to watch people who pushed through the glassed entryway of the building. She’d developed a fondness for that over the years. As people sat at the tables or in the chairs in the quiet rooms, she found it impossible not to try to imagine their lives. She would try to figure out if a person was married or what she did for a living, where in town she lived, or what books might interest her, and occasionally, she would have the chance to find out whether she’d been right. The person might come to her for help in finding a particular book, and she’d strike up a friendly conversation. More often than not, she’d end up being fairly close in her guesses and would wonder how she’d known.
Every now and then, someone would come in who was interested in her. Years ago, those men had usually been older than she was; now they tended to be younger, but either way, the process was the same. Whoever he was, he would start spending time in special reference, would ask a lot of questions, first about books, then about general topics, and finally about her. She didn’t mind answering them, and though she never led them on, most of them eventually asked her out. She was always a bit flattered when that happened, but at her core she knew that no matter how wonderful this suitor might be, no matter how much she enjoyed his company, she wouldn’t be able to open her heart to him in the way she once had done.
Her time in Rodanthe had changed her in other ways as well. Being with Paul had healed her feelings of loss and betrayal over the divorce and replaced them with something stronger and more graceful. Knowing that she was worthy of being loved made it easier to hold her head high, and as her confidence grew, she was able to speak to Jack without hidden meanings or insinuations, without the blame and regret that she’d been unable to hide in her tone in the past. It happened gradually; he’d call to talk to the kids, and they’d visit for a few minutes before she handed off the phone. Later, she’d begun asking about Linda or his job, or she’d fill him in on what she’d been doing recently. Little by little, Jack seemed to realize that she was no longer the person she used to be. Those visits became more friendly with the passing months and years, and sometimes they called each other just to chat. When his marriage to Linda started to unravel, they’d spent hours on the phone, sometimes until late in the night. When Jack and