The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [45]
“She made it pretty obvious.”
He shrugged as he unscrewed the cap of his bottle. “I didn’t really notice.”
“How could you not notice?”
“I was thinking about something else.”
By the way he said it, she knew there was more, and she waited. He squinted out at the line of boats bobbing in the marina.
“I saw Abee this morning,” he finally said. “When I was out for my run.”
Amanda stiffened at the sound of his name. “Are you sure it was him?”
“He’s my cousin, remember?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s good, right?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Amanda tensed. “What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he took a sip of water, and she could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind. “I guess it means I stay out of sight as much as possible. Other than that, I guess I’ll play things as they come.”
“Maybe they won’t do anything.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “So far, so good, right?” He screwed the cap back on the bottle, changing the subject. “What do you think Mr. Tanner’s going to tell us? He was pretty mysterious when we talked on the phone. He wouldn’t tell me anything about the funeral.”
“He didn’t say much to me, either. My mom and I were talking about the very same thing this morning.”
“Yeah? How’s your mom doing?”
“She was a bit upset that she missed her bridge game last night. But to make up for it, she was nice enough to coerce me into having dinner at a friend’s house tonight.”
He smiled. “So… that means you’re free until dinner?”
“Why? What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out what Mr. Tanner has to say first. Which reminds me that we should probably get going. His office is just down the block.”
After Amanda secured the lid on her coffee, they started down the sidewalk, moving from one patch of shade to the next.
“Do you remember when you asked if you could buy me an ice cream?” she asked. “That first time?”
“I remember wondering why you said yes.”
She ignored his comment. “You took me to the drugstore, the one with the old-fashioned fountain and the long counter, and we both had hot fudge sundaes. They made the ice cream there, and it’s still the best I’ve ever had. I can’t believe they ended up tearing the place down.”
“When was that, by the way?”
“I don’t know. Maybe six or seven years ago? One day, on one of my visits, I noticed it was just gone. Kind of made me sad. I used to take my kids there when they were little, and they always had a good time.”
He tried to picture her children sitting next to her at the old drugstore but couldn’t quite conjure up their faces. Did they resemble her, he wondered, or take after their father? Did they have her fire, her generous heart?
“Do you think your kids would have liked growing up here?” he asked.
“When were little, they would have. It’s a beautiful town, with a lot of places to play and explore. But once they got older, they probably would have found it confining.”
“Like you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like me. I couldn’t wait to leave. I don’t know if you recall, but I applied to NYU and Boston College, just so I could experience a real city.”
“How could I forget? They all sounded so far away,” Dawson said.
“Yes, well… my dad went to Duke, I grew up hearing about Duke, I watched Duke basketball on television. I guess it was pretty much etched in stone that if I got in, that’s where I’d go. And it ended up being the right choice, because the school was great and I made a lot of friends and I grew up while I was there. Besides, I don’t know that I would have liked living in New York or Boston. I’m still a small-town girl at heart. I like to hear the crickets when I go to sleep.”
“You’d enjoy Louisiana then. It’s the bug capital of the world.”
She smiled before taking a sip of her coffee. “Do you remember when we drove down to the coast when Hurricane Diana was coming? How I kept begging you to take me, and how you kept trying to talk me out of it?”
“I thought you were crazy.”
“But you took me anyway. Because I wanted you to. We could barely get out of your car, the winds were so strong, and the ocean was just… wild. It