The Rescue - Nicholas Sparks [125]
He felt too numb to respond. In the early morning sunlight, they stood together, simply holding each other in the soft morning sunlight.
“How?” he finally croaked out.
“You know,” she whispered, her hands on his back. “You already know.”
He left Melissa’s home in a daze. It was all he could do to stay focused on the road, not knowing where he wanted to go, his thoughts unconnected. He felt as if the remaining strength he’d had to go on had been stripped away, leaving him naked and drained.
His life, as he knew it, was over, and he had no idea what to do. As much as he wanted to deny the things that Melissa had said, he couldn’t. At the same time, he didn’t believe them, either. At least, not completely. Or did he?
Thinking along these lines exhausted him. In his life he’d tried to see things as concrete and clear, not ambiguous and steeped in hidden meanings. He didn’t search for hidden motivations, either in himself or in others, because he had never really believed that they mattered.
His father’s death had been something concrete, something horrible, but real nonetheless. He couldn’t understand why his father had died, and for a time he’d talked to God about the things he was going through, wanting to make sense of it. In time, though, he gave up. Talking about it, understanding it . . . even if the answers eventually came, would make no difference. Those things wouldn’t bring his father back.
But now, in this difficult time, Melissa’s words were making him question the meaning of everything he had once thought so clear and simple.
Had his father’s death really influenced everything in his life? Were Melissa and Denise right in their assessment of him?
No, he decided. They weren’t right. Neither one of them knew what happened the night his father had died. No one, besides his mother, knew the truth.
Taylor, driving automatically, paid little attention to where he was going. Turning now and then, slowing at intersections, stopping when he had to, he obeyed the laws but didn’t remember doing so. His mind clicked forward and backward with the shifting transmission of his truck. Melissa’s final words haunted him.
You already know. . . .
Know what? he wanted to ask. I don’t know anything right now. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just want to help the kids, like when I was a child. I know what they need. I can help them. I can help you, too, Melissa. I’ve got it all worked out. . . .
Are you trying to rescue me, too?
No, I’m not. I just want to help.
It’s the same thing.
Is it?
Taylor refused to chase the thought down to its final conclusion. Instead, really seeing the road for the first time, he realized where he was. He stopped the truck and began the short trek to his final destination.
Judy was waiting for him at his father’s grave.
“What are you doing here, Mom?” he asked.
Judy didn’t turn at the sound of his voice. Instead, kneeling down, she tended the weeds around the stone as Taylor did whenever he came.
“Melissa called me and told me you’d come,” she said quietly, hearing his footsteps close behind her. From her voice he could tell she’d been crying. “She said I should be here.”
Taylor squatted beside her. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
Her face was flushed. She swiped at her cheek, leaving a torn blade of grass on her face.
“I’m sorry,” she began. “I wasn’t a good mother. . . .”
Her voice seemed to die in her throat then, leaving Taylor too surprised to respond. With a gentle finger he removed the blade of grass from her cheek, and she finally turned to face him.
“You were a great mother,” he said firmly.
“No,” she whispered, “I wasn’t. If I were, you wouldn’t come here as much as you do.”
“Mom, what are you talking about?”
“You know,” she answered, drawing a deep breath before going on. “When you hit bad patches in your life, you don’t turn to me, you don’t turn to friends. You come here. No matter what the question or the problem, you always come to the decision that you’re better off alone, just like you are now.”
She stared at him almost as if seeing a stranger.