And that wasn’t right.
Robert had lived a life with different values, values that had been honored by his father and grandfather and their grandfather before that. He could trace his family’s roots in the Outer Banks back nearly two hundred years. Generation after generation, they’d fished the waters of Pamlico Sound since the times when the fish were so plentiful that a person could cast a single net and pull in enough fish to fill the bow. But all that had changed. Now there were quotas and regulations and licenses and big companies, all chasing fewer fish than there’d ever been. These days, when Robert went down to the boat, half the time he considered himself lucky if he caught enough to pay for the gas he’d needed.
Robert Torrelson was sixty-seven but looked ten years older. His face was weathered and stained, and his body was slowly losing the battle with time. There was a long scar that ran from his left eye to his ear. His hands ached with arthritis, and the ring finger on his right hand was missing from the time he’d got it caught in a winch while dragging in the nets.
But Jill hadn’t cared about any of those things. And now Jill was gone.
On the desk was a picture of her, and Robert still found himself staring at it whenever he was alone in the room. He missed everything about her; he missed the way she rubbed his shoulders after he came in on cold winter evenings, he missed the way they used to sit together and listen to music on the radio while they sat on the porch out back, he missed the way she smelled after dabbing her chest with powder, an odor that was simple and clean, fresh like a newborn.
Paul Flanner had taken all that away from him. Jill, he knew, would still have been with him had she never gone to the hospital that day.
His son had had his turn. And now the time had come for his.
Adrienne made the short drive to town and pulled into the small gravel parking lot of the general store, breathing a sigh of relief to find that it was still open.
There were three cars out front parked haphazardly, each coated with a thin layer of salt. A couple of older men wearing baseball hats were standing out front, smoking and drinking coffee. They watched Adrienne as she got out of the car, and they stopped speaking; as she passed them on her way into the store, they nodded a greeting.
The store was typical of those in rural areas: a scuffed wooden floor, ceiling fans, shelves with thousands of various items packed close together. Near the register was a small barrel offering dill pickles for sale; next to that was another barrel containing roasted peanuts. In the rear was a small grill offering fresh cooked burgers and fish sandwiches, and though no one was behind the counter, the odor of fried food lingered in the air.
The ice machine was in the far rear corner, next to the refrigerated compartments containing beer and soda, and Adrienne headed that way. As she reached for the handle of the ice machine door, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored door panel. She stopped for a moment, as if seeing herself through different eyes.
How long had it been, she wondered, since someone had found her attractive? Or someone she’d just met had wanted to kiss her? If someone had asked her those questions before she’d come here, she would have answered that neither of those things had happened since the day Jack had moved out. But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Not like this, anyway. Jack had been her husband, not a stranger, and since they’d dated for two years before they walked down the aisle, it was closer to twenty-three years since she’d encountered something like this.
Of course, had Jack not left, she could have lived with that knowledge and never thought twice about it; but here and now, she found that impossible. More than half her life had passed without the interest of an attractive man, and no matter how much she wanted to convince herself that her reasons for turning away had been based on common sense, she couldn’t help but think that being out of practice for twenty-three years had something to do with it as well.
She was drawn to Paul, she couldn’t deny that. It wasn’t just that he was handsome and interesting, or even charming in his own quiet way. Nor was it just the fact that he’d made her feel desirable. No, it was his genuine desire to change—to be a better person than he had been—that she found most compelling. She’d known people like him before in her life—like physicians, attorneys were often notorious workaholics—but she had yet to come across someone who’d not only made the decision to change the rules that he’d always lived by, but was doing so in a way that most people would be terrified to contemplate.
There was, she decided, something noble in that. He wanted to fix the flaws he recognized in himself, he wanted to forge a relationship with his estranged son, he had come here because a stranger seeking redress from him had sent a note requesting it.
What kind of person did those things? What kind of strength would that take? Or courage? More than she had, she thought. More than anyone she knew, and as much as she wanted to deny it, she was gratified that someone like him had found her attractive.
As she reflected on these things, Adrienne grabbed the last two bags of ice and a Styrofoam cooler and carried it all to the register. After paying, she left the store and headed for the car. One of the elderly men was still sitting on the porch as she left, and as she nodded to him, she wore the odd expression of someone who had attended a wedding and a funeral on exactly the same day.
In her brief absence the sky had grown darker, and the wind cut past her as she stepped out of the car. It had begun to whistle as it moved around the Inn, sounding almost ghostlike, a spectral flute playing a single note. Clouds swirled and banded together, shifting in clumps as they passed overhead. The ocean was a sea of white tips, and the waves were rolling heavily past the high-water mark from the day before.