The Wedding - By Nicholas Sparks Page 0,84
way. “No. About me being Noah. About me being the same man I’ve always been.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant but knew enough to stay silent while I waited for him to explain.
“You should have seen them today. All of them. So what if I didn’t want to talk to them about it? No one believes me anyway, and I didn’t feel like trying to convince them that I know what I’m talking about. They just would have argued with me about it like they always do. And then, when I didn’t eat my lunch? Well, you would have thought that I’d tried to jump out the window. I’m upset, and I have every right to be upset. When I get upset, I don’t eat. I’ve been that way my whole life, but now, they act like my mental abilities have slipped another notch. Kate was in here trying to spoon-feed me and pretending nothing happened. Can you believe that? And then Jeff and David showed up, and they explained it away by saying that she probably went off to forage, completely ignoring the fact that I feed her twice a day. None of them seems to care what might have happened to her.”
As I struggled to understand what was going on, I suddenly realized that there was more to Noah’s sudden rage than the way his children had reacted.
“What’s really bothering you?” I asked gently. “That they acted as if it were just a swan?” I paused. “That’s what they’ve always believed, and you know that. You’ve never let it get to you before.”
“They don’t care.”
“If anything,” I countered, “they care too much.”
He turned away stubbornly.
“I just don’t understand it,” he said again. “Why would she leave?”
With that, it suddenly dawned on me that he wasn’t angry with his kids. Nor was he simply reacting to the fact that the swan had vanished. No, it was something deeper, something I wasn’t sure he would admit even to himself.
Instead of pressing it, I said nothing, and we sat together in silence. As I waited, I watched his hand fidget in his lap.
“How did it go with Jane last night?” he asked after a moment, apropos of nothing.
At his words—and despite all that we’d been discussing—I flashed on an image of him dancing with Allie in the kitchen.
“Better than I’d imagined it would,” I said.
“And she liked the album?”
“She loved it.”
“Good,” he said. For the first time since I’d come in, he smiled, but it vanished as quickly as it came.
“I’m sure she wants to talk to you,” I said. “And Kate’s still out there, too.”
“I know,” he said, looking defeated. “They can come in.”
“You sure?”
When he nodded, I reached over and put a hand on his knee. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to tell them not to talk about the swan?”
He considered my words briefly before shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Do I have to tell you to go easy on them?”
He gave me a long-suffering look. “I’m not much in the mood for teasing, but I promise that I won’t yell again. And don’t you worry—I’m not going to do anything to upset Jane. I don’t want her worrying about me when she should be thinking about tomorrow.”
I rose from the bed and rested a hand on his shoulder before turning to leave.
Noah, I knew, was angry with himself. He’d spent the last four years believing that the swan was Allie—he’d needed to believe that she would find a way to come back to him—but the swan’s inexplicable disappearance had shaken his faith profoundly.
As I left his room, I could almost hear him asking, What if the kids had been right all along?
In the hallway, I kept this information to myself. I did suggest, however, that it might be best if they simply let Noah do most of the talking and react as naturally as possible.
Both Kate and Jane nodded, and Jane led the way back inside. Noah looked toward us. Jane and Kate stopped, waiting to be invited in farther, not knowing what to expect.
“Hi, Daddy,” Jane said.
He forced a smile. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Are you doing okay?”
He glanced at Jane and me, then at the tray of food that had grown cold on the bed. “I’m getting a little hungry, but other than that, I’m fine. Kate—would you mind . . .”
“Sure, Daddy,” Kate said, stepping forward. “I’ll get you something. How about some soup? Or a ham sandwich?”
“A sandwich sounds good.” He nodded. “And