She trailed off before choosing her next words carefully.
“You also have to realize that you’re not the same person now that you were then. You were seventeen, Dan was only fifteen, and I didn’t know if any of you were ready to hear something like this. I mean, how would you have felt if you’d come back from your father’s and I told you that I was in love with someone I’d just met?”
“We could’ve handled it.”
Adrienne was skeptical about that, but she didn’t argue with Amanda. Instead, she shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you could have accepted something like this, but at the time, I didn’t want to take the chance. And if I had to do it all over, I’d probably do the same thing again.”
Amanda shifted in her chair. After a moment, she looked her mother in the eye. “Are you sure he loved you?” she asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Amanda’s eyes looked almost blue green in the fading light. She smiled gently, as if trying to make an obvious point without hurting her mother.
Adrienne knew what Amanda would ask next. It was, she thought, the only logical question left.
Amanda leaned forward, her face filled with concern. “Then where is he?”
In the fourteen years since she’d last seen Paul Flanner, Adrienne had traveled to Rodanthe five times. Her first trip had been during June of the same year, and though the sand seemed whiter and the ocean melted into the sky at the horizon, she made the remainder of her trips during the winter months, when the world was gray and cold, knowing that it was a more potent reminder of the past.
On the morning that Paul left, Adrienne wandered the house, unable to stay in one place. Movement seemed to be the only way she could stay ahead of her feelings. Late in the afternoon, as dusk was beginning to dress the sky in faded shades of red and orange, she went outside and looked into those colors, trying to find the plane that Paul was on. The odds of seeing it were infinitesimal, but she stayed out anyway, growing chilled as the evening deepened. Between the clouds, she saw an occasional jet trail, but logic told her they were from planes stationed at the naval base in Norfolk. By the time she went in, her hands were numb, and at the sink she ran warm tap water over them, feeling the sting. Though she understood that he was gone, she set two place settings at the dinner table just the same.
Part of her had hoped he would come back. As she ate her dinner, she imagined him coming through the front door and dropping his bags, explaining that he couldn’t leave without another night together. They would leave tomorrow or the next day, he would say, and they would follow the highway north, until she made the turn for home.
But he didn’t. The front door never swung open, the phone never rang. As much as Adrienne longed for him to stay, she knew she’d been right when she’d urged him on his way. Another day wouldn’t make it easier to leave; another night together would only mean they’d have to say good-bye again, and that had been hard enough the first time. She couldn’t imagine having to say those words a second time, nor could she imagine having to relive another day like the one she had just spent.
The following morning, she began cleaning the Inn, moving steadily, focusing on the routine. She washed the dishes and made sure everything was dried and put away. She vacuumed the area rugs, swept the sand from the kitchen and entranceway, dusted the balustrade and lamps in the sitting room, then worked on Jean’s room until she was satisfied that it looked the same as when she’d arrived.
Then, after carrying her suitcase upstairs, she unlocked the door to the blue room.
She hadn’t been in there since the previous morning. The afternoon sunlight cast prisms on the walls. He’d fixed the bed before he’d gone downstairs but seemed to have realized that he didn’t need to make it neat. There were slight bulges under the comforter where the blanket had wrinkled, and the sheet poked out in a few places, nearly grazing the floor. In the bathroom, a towel hung over the curtain rod, and two more had been lumped together near the sink.
She stood without moving, taking it all in, before finally exhaling and putting down her suitcase. As she did, she saw the note that Paul had written her, propped on the bureau. She reached for it and slowly sat on the edge of the bed. In the quiet of the room where they’d loved each other, she read what he had penned the morning before.
When she was finished, Adrienne lowered the note and sat without moving, thinking of him as he’d written it. Then, after folding it carefully, she put it it into her suitcase along with the conch. When Jean arrived a few hours later, Adrienne was leaning against the railing on the back porch, looking toward the sky again.
Jean was her normal, exuberant self, happy to see Adrienne, happy to be back home, and talking incessantly about the wedding and the old hotel in Savannah where she had stayed. Adrienne let Jean go on with her stories without interruption, and after dinner, she told Jean that she wanted to take a walk on the beach. Thankfully, Jean passed on the invitation to go with her.
When she got back, Jean was unpacking in her room, and Adrienne made herself a cup of hot tea and went to sit near the fireplace. As she was rocking, she heard Jean enter the kitchen.
“Where are you?” Jean called out.
“In here,” Adrienne answered.
Jean rounded the corner a moment later. “Did I hear the teakettle whistle?”
“I just made a cup.”
“Since when do you drink tea?”
Adrienne gave a short laugh but didn’t answer.
Jean settled in the rocker beside her. Outside, the moon was rising, hard and brilliant, making the sand glow with the color of antique pots and pans.