The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [125]
After a beat, he stepped out onto the porch, closing the door gently behind him. “You sure?” he asked. “You look like something’s bothering you.”
“I’m just tired.” She managed a reassuring smile. “Where’s Lauren?”
“She’ll be here in a little while. She wanted to go home and shower.”
“Did she have fun?”
“I think so. She hit the ball, at least. She was pretty excited about that.”
Amanda looked up at him, tracing the line of his shoulders, his neck, the plane of his cheek, still able to see the way he’d looked as a little boy.
He hesitated. “Anyway… I wanted to ask you if you thought you could help me. You never really answered me the other night.” He kicked at a tiny scuff mark on the porch. “I want to send a letter to the family. Just to thank them, you know? If it wasn’t for the donor, I wouldn’t be here.”
Amanda lowered her eyes, remembering Jared’s question of the other night.
“It’s natural to want to find out who the donor of your heart was,” she finally said, choosing her words with care. “But there are good reasons why the process is supposed to remain anonymous.”
There was truth in what she said, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Oh.” His shoulders slumped. “I thought that might be the case,” he said. “All they told me was that he was forty-two when he died. I just wanted… to find out more about what kind of person he was.”
I could tell you more, Amanda thought to herself. A lot more. She’d suspected the truth since Morgan Tanner had called, and she’d made some calls to confirm her suspicions. Dawson, she’d learned, had been taken off life support at CarolinaEast Regional Medical Center late Monday night. He’d been kept alive long after doctors knew he would never recover, because he was an organ donor.
Dawson, she knew, had saved Alan’s life—but in the end, he’d saved Jared’s as well. And for her that meant… everything. I gave you the best of me, he’d told her once, and with every beat of her son’s heart, she knew he’d done exactly that.
“How about a quick hug,” she said, “before we go inside?”
Jared rolled his eyes, but he opened his arms anyway. “I love you, Mom,” he mumbled, pulling her close.
Amanda closed her eyes, feeling the steady rhythm in his chest. “I love you, too.”
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Also by Nicholas Sparks
Copyright
ALSO BY NICHOLAS SPARKS
The Notebook
Message in a Bottle
A Walk to Remember
The Rescue
A Bend in the Road
Nights in Rodanthe
The Guardian
The Wedding
Three Weeks with My Brother
(with Micah Sparks)
True Believer
At First Sight
Dear John
The Choice
The Lucky One
The Last Song
Safe Haven
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Nicholas Sparks
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub.
First eBook Edition: October 2011
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
The publisher is not responsible for