The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [18]
Dr. Bonner loved the outdoors. He surfed and swam; he bicycled and ran. It was common for people to see him jogging briskly up Broad Street after work, eventually heading past the curve on the outskirts of town. People would honk or wave, and Dr. Bonner would nod without breaking stride. Sometimes, after a particularly long day, he wouldn’t start until just before dark, and on September 18, 1985, that was exactly what happened. He left the house just as dusk was settling over the town. Though Dr. Bonner didn’t know it, the roads were slick. It had rained earlier that afternoon, steadily enough to raise the oil from the macadam but not hard enough to wash it away.
He started out on his usual route, which took about thirty minutes, but that night he never made it home. By the time the moon had risen, Marilyn started to get anxious, and after asking a neighbor to watch the kids, she hopped in the car to search for him. Just beyond the curve at the edge of town, near a copse of trees, she found an ambulance, along with the sheriff and a slowly growing crowd of people. It was there, she learned, that her husband had been killed when the driver of a truck lost control and skidded into him.
The truck, Marilyn was told, was owned by Tuck Hostetler. The driver, who would soon be charged with felony death by motor vehicle and involuntary manslaughter, was eighteen years old and already in handcuffs.
His name was Dawson Cole.
Two miles from the outskirts of Oriental—and the curve he’d never forget—Dawson spotted the old gravel turnoff that led to the family land and automatically found himself thinking about his father. When Dawson was in the county jail awaiting trial, a guard had appeared suddenly and informed him that he had a visitor. A minute later, his father was standing before him, chewing on a toothpick.
“Runnin’ off, seeing that rich girl, making plans. And where do you end up? In jail.” He saw the malicious glee in his father’s expression. “You thought you was better than me, but you ain’t. You’re just like me.”
Dawson said nothing, feeling something close to hatred as he glared at his father from the corner of his cell. He vowed then and there that whatever happened, he would never speak to his father again.
There was no trial. Against the advice of the public defender, Dawson pleaded guilty, and against the advice of the prosecutor, he was given the maximum sentence. At Caledonia Correctional in Halifax, North Carolina, he worked on the prison farm, helping to grow corn, wheat, cotton, and soybeans, sweating beneath a blistering dog-day sun as he harvested or freezing in icy northern winds as he tilled. Though he corresponded with Tuck through the mail, in four years he never had a single visitor.
After his release, Dawson was placed on parole and returned to Oriental. He worked for Tuck and heard the townsfolk’s whispers on his occasional supply runs to the automotive store. He knew he was a pariah, a no-good Cole who’d killed not only the Bennetts’ son-in-law but the town’s only doctor, and the guilt he felt was overwhelming. In those moments, he would pay a visit to a florist in New Bern, then later to the cemetery in Oriental where Dr. Bonner had been buried. He would place the flowers on the grave, either early in the morning or late at night, when few people were around. Sometimes he stayed for an hour or more, thinking about the wife and children Dr. Bonner had left behind. Other than that, he spent that year largely in the shadows, trying his best to stay out of sight.
His family wasn’t through with him, though. When his father came to the garage to start collecting Dawson’s money again, he brought Ted with him. His father had a shotgun, Ted had a baseball bat, but it was a mistake to have come without Abee. When Dawson told them to get off the property, Ted moved quickly