The Choice - Nicholas Sparks [86]
The accident was next, and it could have been avoided had none of the other things happened. Had he brought his umbrella or walked with his friend, he wouldn’t have run to the car in the rain. His feet might have stayed dry. Had he slowed the car, he might have been able to control it. Had he respected Gabby’s wishes, they wouldn’t have argued, and she would have been watching what he intended to do and stopped him before it was too late.
Near Newport, there’s a wide, easy bend in the highway intersected by a stoplight. By that point in the drive—less than twenty minutes from home—the itch in his feet was driving him crazy. His shoes had laces, the knots made tighter by the moisture, and no matter how hard he tried to push them off his feet, the toe of one foot would slip from the heel of the other. He leaned forward, his eyes barely above the dash, and reached for one shoe with his hand. Glancing downward, he struggled with the knot and didn’t see the light turn yellow.
The knot wouldn’t come free. When it finally did, he lifted his eyes, but by then it was already too late. The light had turned red, and a silver truck was entering the intersection. Instinctively he hit the brakes, and the tail began to swerve on the rain-slicked road. Their car careened out of control. At the last instant, the wheels caught and they avoided the truck in the intersection, only to continue hurtling through the bend, off the highway, and toward the pines.
The mud was even more slippery, and there was nothing he could do. He turned the wheel and nothing happened. For an instant, the world seemed to be moving in slow motion. The last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness was the sickening sound of shattering glass and twisting metal.
Gabby didn’t even have time to scream.
Travis brushed a loose strand of hair from Gabby’s face and tucked it behind her ear, listening to his stomach as it gurgled. As hungry as he was, he couldn’t bear the idea of eating. His stomach was perpetually knotted, and in those rare moments it wasn’t, thoughts of Gabby would come rushing back to fill the void.
It was an ironic form of punishment, for during their second year of marriage, Gabby had taken it upon herself to teach Travis to eat things other than the bland food he’d long favored. He supposed it had come about because she’d grown tired of his restrictive habits. He should have realized that changes were coming when she started slipping in the occasional comment regarding the tastiness of Belgian waffles on Saturday mornings or how nothing was more satisfying on cold winter days than a plate of homemade beef stew.
Until that point, Travis had been the chef in the family, but little by little she began edging her way into the kitchen. She bought two or three cookbooks, and in the evenings, Travis would watch her as she lay on the couch, occasionally folding down the corner of a page. Now and then, she would ask him whether something sounded particularly good. She’d read aloud the ingredients of Cajun jambalaya or veal Marsala, and though Travis would say they sounded terrific, the tone of his voice made it obvious that even if she prepared these dishes, he probably wouldn’t eat them.
But Gabby was nothing if not persistent, and she started making small changes anyway. She prepared butter or cream or wine sauces and poured them over her portion of the chicken he cooked nearly every night. Her single request was that he at least smell it, and usually he had to admit the aroma was appetizing. Later, she took to leaving a small amount in the serving bowl, and after she’d poured some on her plate, she simply added some to his whether he wanted to try it or not. And little by little, to his own surprise, he did.
On their third anniversary, Gabby prepared a mozzarella-stuffed, Italian-flavored meat loaf; in lieu of a gift, she asked him to eat it with her; by their fourth anniversary, they were sometimes cooking together. Though his breakfast and lunch were as boring as