The hostility surrounding them only drew Amanda and Dawson closer together, and when Dawson began to take her hand in public, Amanda held tight, daring anyone to tell her to let go. But Dawson wasn’t naive; as much as she meant to him, he always had the sense that they were on borrowed time. Everything and everyone seemed stacked against them. When his father found out about Amanda, he would ask about her when he came by to collect Dawson’s wages. Though there was nothing overtly menacing in his tone, simply hearing him say her name left Dawson feeling sick to his stomach.
In January, she turned eighteen, but as furious as her parents were about the relationship, they stopped short of throwing her out of the house. By then Amanda didn’t care what they thought—or at least that was what she always told Dawson. Sometimes, after yet another bitter argument with her parents, she would sneak out her bedroom window in the middle of the night and strike out for the garage. Often he would be waiting for her, but sometimes he’d awaken to her nudging him as she joined him on the mat he’d unrolled on the floor of the garage office. They’d wander down to the creek and Dawson would slip his arm around her while they sat on one of the low-slung branches of an ancient live oak. In the moonlight, as the mullets were jumping, Amanda would rehash her arguments with her parents, sometimes with a quaking voice and always careful to protect his feelings. He loved her for that, but he knew exactly how her parents felt about him. One evening, while tears spilled from beneath her lids after yet another argument, he gently suggested that it might be better for her if they stopped seeing each other.
“Is that what you want?” she whispered, her voice ragged.
He pulled her closer, slipping his arms around her. “I just want you to be happy,” he whispered.
She’d leaned into him then, resting her head on his shoulder. As he held her, he’d never hated himself more for being born a Cole.
“I’m happiest when I’m with you,” she finally murmured.
Later that night they made love for the first time. And for the next two decades and beyond, he carried those words and the memories of that night inside him, knowing that she had been speaking for them both.
After landing in Charlotte, Dawson flung his duffel bag and suit over his shoulder and walked through the terminal, barely registering the activity around him as he sifted through memories of his final summer with Amanda. That spring, she’d received notice of her acceptance to Duke, a dream of hers since she’d been a little girl. The specter of her departure, coupled with the isolation from her family and friends, only intensified their desire to pass as much time together as possible. They spent hours at the beach and took long drives while the radio blasted, or they simply hung around Tuck’s garage. They swore little would change after she left; either he’d drive to Durham or she’d come back to visit. Amanda had no doubt that they’d find a way to somehow make it work.
Her parents, however, had other plans. On a Saturday morning in August, a little more than a week before she was supposed to leave for Durham, they cornered her before she was able to escape the house. Her mom did all the talking, though she knew her father stood firmly in agreement.
“This has gone on long enough,” her mother began, and in a voice that was surprisingly calm, she told Amanda that if she continued to see Dawson, she would have to move out of the house in September and start paying her own bills, and they wouldn’t pay for her to attend college, either. “Why should we waste money on college when you’re throwing your life away?”
When Amanda started to protest, her mother talked right over her.
“He’ll drag you down, Amanda, but right now you’re too young to understand that. So if you want the freedom of being an adult, you’ll also have to assume the responsibilities. Ruin your life by staying with Dawson—we’re not going to stop you. But we’re not going to help you, either.”
Amanda ran straight out of the house, her only thought to find Dawson. By the time she reached the garage, she was crying so hard she couldn’t speak. Dawson held her close, letting bits and pieces of the story trickle out as her sobs finally subsided.
“We’ll move in together,” she said, her cheeks still damp.
“Where?” he asked her. “Here? In the garage?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
Dawson remained silent, studying the floor. “You need to go to college,” he finally told her.
“I don’t care about college,” Amanda protested. “I care about you.”
He let his arms fall to his sides. “I care about you, too. And that’s why I can’t take this from you,” he said.
She shook her head, bewildered. “You’re not taking anything from me. It’s my parents. They’re treating me like I’m still a little girl.”
“It’s because of me, and we both know that.” He kicked at the dirt. “If you love someone, you’re supposed to let them go, right?”
For the first time, her eyes flashed. “And if they come back, it’s meant to be? Is that what you think this is? Some sort of cliché?” She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into him. “We’re not a cliché,” she said. “We’ll find a way to make it work. I can get a job as a waitress or whatever, and we can rent a place.”
He kept his voice calm, willing it not to break. “How? You think my dad is going to stop what he’s doing?”
“We can move somewhere else.”
“Where? With what? I have nothing. Don’t you understand that?” He let the words hang, and when she didn’t answer, he finally went on. “I’m just trying to be realistic. This is your life we’re talking about. And… I can’t be part of it anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your parents are right.”
“You don’t mean that.”
In her voice, he heard something almost like fear. Though he yearned to hold her, he took a deliberate step backward. “Go home,” he said.
She moved toward him. “Dawson—”
“No!” he snapped, taking a quick step away. “You’re not listening. It’s over, okay? We tried, it didn’t work. Life moves on.”
Her expression turned waxy, almost lifeless. “So that’s it?”
Instead of answering, he forced himself to turn away and walk toward the garage. He knew that if he so much as glanced at her he’d change his mind, and he couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t do that to her. He ducked under the open hood of the fastback, refusing to let her see his tears.
When she finally left, Dawson slid to the dusty concrete floor next to his car, remaining there for hours, until Tuck finally came out and took a seat beside him. For a long time, he was silent.
“You ended it,” Tuck finally said.
“I had to.” Dawson could barely speak.
“Yep.” He nodded. “Heard that, too.”
The sun was climbing high overhead, blanketing everything outside the garage with a stillness that felt almost like death.
“Did I do the right thing?”
Tuck reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes, buying time before he answered. He tapped out a Camel.
“Don’t know. There’s a lot of magic between you, ain’t no denying that. And magic makes forgettin’ hard.” Tuck patted him on the back and got up to leave. It was more than he’d ever said to Dawson about Amanda. As he walked away, Dawson squinted into the sunlight and the tears started again. He knew that Amanda would always be the very best part of him, the self he would always long to know.
What he didn’t know was that he would not see or speak to her again. The following week Amanda moved into the dorms at Duke University, and a month after that Dawson was arrested.
He spent the next four years behind bars.
2
Amanda stepped out of her car and surveyed the shack on the outskirts of Oriental that Tuck called home. She’d been driving for three hours and it felt good to stretch her legs. The tension in her neck and shoulders remained, a reminder of the argument she’d had with Frank that morning. He hadn’t understood her insistence on attending the funeral, and looking back, she supposed he had a point. In the nearly twenty years that they’d been married, she’d never mentioned Tuck Hostetler; had their roles been reversed, she probably would have been upset, too.
But the argument hadn’t really been about Tuck or her secrets, or even the fact that she would be spending another long weekend away from her family. Deep down, both of them knew it was simply a continuation of the same argument they’d been having for most of the past ten years, and it had proceeded in the typical fashion. It hadn’t been loud or violent—Frank wasn’t that type, thank God—and in the end Frank had muttered a curt apology before leaving for work. As usual, she’d spent the rest of the morning and afternoon doing her best to forget the whole thing. After all, there was nothing she could do about it, and over time she’d learned to numb herself to the anger and anxiety that had come to define their relationship.
During the drive to Oriental, both Jared and Lynn, her two older children, had called, and she’d been thankful for the distraction. They were on summer break, and for the past few weeks the house had been filled with the endless noise typical of teenagers. Tuck’s funeral couldn’t have been better timed. Jared and Lynn already had plans to spend the weekend with friends, Jared with a girl named Melody and Lynn with a friend from high school, boating at Lake Norman, where her friend’s family owned a house. Annette—their “wonderful accident,” as Frank called her—was at camp for two weeks. She probably would have called as well were cell phones not prohibited. Which was a good thing, otherwise her little chatterbox would no doubt have been calling morning, noon, and night.
Thinking about the kids brought a smile to her face. Despite her volunteer work at the Pediatric Cancer Center at Duke University Hospital, her life largely revolved around the kids. Since Jared was born, she’d been a stay-at-home mom, and while she’d embraced and mostly relished that role, there’d always been a part of her that chafed at its limitations. She liked to think she was more than just a wife and mother. She’d gone to college to become a teacher and had even considered pursuing a PhD, with thoughts of teaching at one of the local universities. She’d taken a job teaching third grade after graduation… and then life had somehow intervened. Now, at forty-two, she sometimes found herself joking to people that she couldn’t wait to grow up so she could figure out what she wanted to do for a living.
Some might call it a midlife crisis, but she wasn’t sure that was exactly it. It wasn’t as though she felt the need to buy a sports car or visit a plastic surgeon or run off to some island in the Caribbean. Nor was it about being bored; Lord knows, the kids and the hospital kept her busy enough. Instead, it had more to do with the sense that somehow she’d lost sight of the person she’d once meant to be, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever have the opportunity to find that person again.
For a long time, she’d considered herself lucky, and Frank had been a big part of that. They’d met at a fraternity party during her sophomore year at Duke. Despite the chaos of the party, they’d somehow managed to find a quiet corner where they’d talked until the early hours of the morning. Two years older than her, he was serious and intelligent, and even on that first night she knew he’d end up being successful at whatever he chose to do. It was enough to get things started. He went off to dental school at Chapel Hill the following August, but they continued to date for the next two years. An engagement was a foregone conclusion, and in July 1989, only a few weeks after she’d finished her degree, they were married.
After a honeymoon in the Bahamas, she started her teaching job at a local elementary school, but when Jared came along the following summer, she took a leave of absence. Lynn followed eighteen months later, and the leave of absence became permanent. By then, Frank had managed to borrow enough money to open his own practice and buy a small starter house in Durham. Those were lean years; Frank wanted to succeed on his own and refused to accept offers of help from either family. After paying the bills, they were lucky if they had enough money left over to rent a movie on the weekend. Dinners out were rare, and when their car died, Amanda found herself stranded in the house for a month, until they could afford to get it fixed. They slept with extra blankets on the bed in order to keep the heating bills down. As stressful and exhausting as those years had sometimes been, when she thought back on her life, she also knew they’d been some of the happiest years of their marriage.
Frank’s practice grew steadily, and in many respects their lives settled into a predictable pattern. Frank worked while she took care of the house and kids, and a third child, Bea, followed just as they sold their starter house and moved into the larger one they had built in a more established area of town. After that, things got even busier. Frank’s practice began to flourish while she shuttled Jared to and from school and brought Lynn to parks and playdates, with Bea strapped in a car seat between them. It was during those years that Amanda began to revisit her plans to attend graduate school; she even took the time to look into a couple of master’s programs, thinking she might enroll when Bea started kindergarten. But when Bea died, her ambitions faltered. Quietly, she set aside her GRE exam books and stowed her application forms in a desk drawer.
Her surprise pregnancy with Annette cemented her decision not to go back to school. Instead, if anything, it awakened a renewed commitment in her to focus on rebuilding their family life, and she threw herself into the kids’ activities and routines with a single-minded passion, if only to keep the grief at bay. As the years passed and memories of their baby sister began to fade, Jared and Lynn slowly regained a sense of normalcy, and Amanda was grateful for that. Bright-spirited Annette brought a new kind of joy into their home, and every now and then Amanda could almost pretend that they were a complete and loving family, untouched by tragedy.