The Best of Me - Nicholas Sparks [93]
Frank had called earlier from the golf course. He kept the conversation short, but she could already hear the booze in his voice. Ten years had taught her to recognize the signs instantly. Although she hadn’t been inclined to talk, he hadn’t noticed. Not because he was drunk, which he obviously was, but because despite a horrible start to his game, he’d finished with four straight pars. Perhaps for the first time ever, she was actually glad he was drinking. She knew he’d be so tired by the time she got home that he’d probably fall asleep long before she went to bed. The last thing she wanted was for him to be thinking about sex. She just couldn’t handle something like that tonight.
Still, she wasn’t ready to go downstairs. Rising from the bed, she went instead to the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet, finding a bottle of Visine. She blinked a few drops into her red, swollen eyes, then ran a brush through her hair. It didn’t help much and she didn’t really care, and she knew Frank wouldn’t notice.
But Dawson would have noticed. And with Dawson, she would have cared how she looked.
She thought of him again, as she’d been doing since she’d returned to the house, trying to keep her emotions in check. Glancing toward the bags she’d packed earlier, she spotted the corner of an envelope sticking out from her purse. She pulled it out, catching sight of her name scrawled in Tuck’s shaky script. Taking a seat on the bed again, she broke the seal and lifted the letter out thinking, strangely, that Tuck had the answers she needed.
Dear Amanda,
By the time you read this, you’ll probably be facing some of the hardest choices of your life, and no doubt it will feel like your world is falling apart.
If you’re wondering how I know, let’s just say that I’ve come to know you pretty well over the last few years. I’ve always worried about you, Amanda. But that’s not what this letter is about. I can’t tell you what to do, and I doubt if there’s anything I can say that’ll make you feel any better. Instead, I want to tell you a story. It’s about me and Clara, and it’s one that you don’t know, because I could never find the right way to tell you. I was ashamed, and I think I was afraid that you’d stop coming back to see me, because you might think I’d been lying to you all along.
Clara wasn’t a ghost. Oh, I saw her all right, and I heard her, too. I’m not saying those things didn’t happen, because they did. Everything in the letter I wrote to you and Dawson was true. I saw her that day when I came back from the cottage, and the more I tended the flowers, the more plainly I could see her. Love can conjure up many things, but deep down, I knew that she wasn’t really there. I saw her because I wanted to, I heard her because I missed her. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that she was my creation, nothing more, even if I wanted to fool myself into thinking otherwise.
You might wonder why I’m telling you this now, so I might as well get to it. I married Clara at seventeen, and we spent forty-two years together, fusing our lives, ourselves, into what I thought was a whole that couldn’t ever be broken. When she died, the next twenty-eight years pained me so much that most folks—including me—thought I’d plumb lost my mind.
Amanda, you’re still young. You may not feel it, but to me, you’re just a child with a long life yet to come. Listen to me when I say this: I lived with the real Clara, and I lived with Clara’s ghost, and of the two, one filled me with joy while the other was only a dim reflection. If you turn away from Dawson now, you’ll live forever with the ghost of what might have been yours. I know that in this life, innocent people inevitably get hurt by the decisions we make. Call me a selfish old man, but I never wanted you to be one of them.
Tuck
Amanda put the letter back into her purse, knowing Tuck was