The Choice - Nicholas Sparks [80]
Sixteen
Hey, Travis,” said a voice from the doorway. “I thought I’d find you in here.”
Dr. Stallings was in his thirties and made rounds every morning. Over the years, he and his wife had become good friends of Gabby and Travis’s, and last summer the four of them had traveled to Orlando with kids in tow. “More flowers?”
Travis nodded, feeling the stiffness in his back.
Stallings hesitated on the threshold of the room. “I take it you haven’t seen her yet.”
“Kind of. I saw her earlier, but . . .”
When he trailed off, Stallings finished for him. “You needed some time alone?” He entered and took a seat beside Travis. “I guess that makes you normal.”
“I don’t feel normal. Nothing about this feels normal at all.”
“No, I don’t suppose it does.”
Travis reached for the flowers again, trying to keep his thoughts at bay, knowing there were some things he couldn’t talk about.
“I don’t know what to do,” he finally admitted.
Stallings put his hand on Travis’s shoulder. “I wish I knew what to tell you.”
Travis turned toward him. “What would you do?”
Stallings remained silent for a long moment. “If I were in your position?” He brought his lips together, considering the questions, looking older than his years. “In all honesty, I don’t know.”
Travis nodded. He hadn’t expected Stallings to answer. “I just want to do the right thing.”
Stallings brought his hands together. “Don’t we all.”
When Stallings left, Travis shifted in his seat, conscious of the papers in his pocket. Where once he’d kept them in his desk, he now found it impossible to go about his daily life without them nearby, even though they portended the end of everything he held dear.
The elderly attorney who drafted them seemed to find nothing unusual about their request. His small-town family law practice had been located in Morehead City, close enough to the hospital where Gabby worked to be able to see it from the windows of the paneled walls of the conference room. The meeting hadn’t lasted long; the lawyer explained the relevant statutes and offered a few anecdotal experiences; later Travis could remember only the loose, almost weak way he had grasped Travis’s hand on his way out the door.
It seemed strange that those papers could signal the official end of his marriage. They were codified words, nothing more, but the power afforded them now seemed almost malevolent. Where, he wondered, was the humanity in those phrases? Where was the emotion governed by these laws? Where was the acknowledgment of the life they’d led together, until everything went wrong? And why in God’s name had Gabby wanted them drawn up in the first place?
It shouldn’t end like this, and it was certainly not an outcome he foresaw when he’d proposed to Gabby. He remembered their autumn trip to New York; while Gabby had been at the hotel spa getting a massage and a pedicure, he’d sneaked over to West 47th Street, where he’d purchased the engagement ring. After dining at Tavern on the Green, they’d taken a carriage ride through Central Park. And beneath a cloudy, full-moon sky, he’d asked for her hand in marriage and was overcome by the passionate way she’d wrapped her arms around him while whispering her consent over and over.
And then? Life, he supposed. In between her shifts at the hospital, she planned the wedding: Despite his friends’ warnings to simply go with the flow, Travis relished being part of the process. He helped her pick out the invitations, the flowers, and the cake; he sat beside her as she flipped through albums in downtown studios, hoping to find the right photographer to memorialize the day. In the end, they invited eighty people to a small, weathered chapel on Cumberland Island in spring 1997; they honeymooned in Cancún, which ended up being an idyllic choice for both of them. Gabby wanted someplace relaxing, and they spent hours lying in the sun and eating well; he wanted a bit more adventure, so she learned to scuba