The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [123]
As difficult as those months had been, Amanda could never bring herself to take the final step of filing for divorce. Given Jared’s fragile emotional state, she couldn’t imagine traumatizing him any further. What she didn’t realize was that her resolve to keep the family intact wasn’t having the intended effect. A few months after Jared came home from the hospital, Frank was talking to Jared in the living room when Amanda walked in. As had become the pattern by then, Frank got up and left the room. Jared watched him go before turning to his mom.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Jared said to her. “I was the one driving.”
“I know.”
“Then stop blaming him,” he said.
Ironically, it was Jared’s psychologist who ultimately convinced her and Frank to seek counseling for their troubled relationship. The tension at home was affecting Jared’s recovery, she pointed out, and if they truly cared about helping their son, they should consider seeking couples counseling themselves. Without a stable home environment, Jared would have difficulty accepting and coping with his new circumstances.
Amanda and Frank drove in separate cars to their first appointment with the counselor, who Jared’s psychologist had referred them to. Their first session degenerated into the kind of argument they’d been having for months. By the second session they were actually able to talk without raising their voices. And at the counselor’s gentle but firm urging, Frank began attending AA meetings as well, much to Amanda’s relief. In the beginning, he went five nights a week, but lately it was down to one, and three months ago Frank had become a sponsor. He met regularly for breakfast with a thirty-four-year-old recently divorced banker who, unlike Frank, had been unable to achieve sobriety. Until then Amanda had not allowed herself to believe that Frank was actually going to be successful in the long term.
There was no question that Jared and the girls had benefited from the improved atmosphere at home. There had even been moments recently when Amanda considered it a new beginning for her and Frank. When they talked these days, the past was seldom front and center; now they were able to laugh occasionally in each other’s company. Every Friday, they went on a date—another recommendation of the couples counselor—and while it still felt stilted at times, both of them knew it was important. They were, in many ways, getting to know each other again, for the first time in years.
There was something satisfying in that, but Amanda knew that theirs would never be a passionate marriage. Frank wasn’t, nor ever had been, wired that way, and it didn’t bother her. After all, she had known the kind of love that was worth risking everything for, the kind of love that was as rare as a glimpse of heaven.
Two years. Two years had elapsed since her weekend with Dawson Cole; two long years since the day Morgan Tanner had called to tell her that he’d passed away.
She kept the letters, along with Tuck and Clara’s photograph and the four-leaf clover, stashed in the bottom of her pajama drawer, a place where Frank would never look. Every now and then, when the ache she felt at his loss was especially strong, she’d pull those items out. She’d reread the letters and twirl the four-leaf clover between her fingers, wondering who they’d truly been to each other that weekend. They were in love, but they hadn’t been lovers; they were friends and yet also strangers after so many years. But their passion