Nights in Rodanthe(5)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

Paul had seen people cry before, thousands of times, he would guess, but it had usually been within the sterile confines of a hospital waiting room, when he was fresh from an operation and still wearing scrubs. For him, the scrubs had served as a type of shield against the personal and emotional nature of his work. Never once had he cried with those he’d spoken with, nor could he remember any of the faces of those who had once looked to him for answers. It wasn’t something that he was proud to admit, but it was the person he had once been.

But at this moment, as he looked into the red-rimmed eyes of the woman on the porch, he felt like an intruder on unfamiliar ground. His first instinct was to throw up the old defenses. Yet there was something about the way she looked that made doing so impossible. It might have been the setting or the fact that she was alone; either way, the surge of empathy was a foreign sensation, one that caught him completely off guard.

Not having expected him to arrive until later, Adrienne tried to overcome her embarrassment at being caught in such a state. Forcing a smile, she dabbed at her tears, trying to pretend the wind had caused them to moisten.

As she turned to face him, however, she couldn’t help but stare.

It was his eyes, she thought, that did it. They were light blue, so light they seemed almost translucent, but there was an intensity in them that she’d never seen before in anyone else.

He knows me, she suddenly thought. Or could know me if I gave him a chance.

As quickly as those thoughts came, she dismissed them, thinking them ridiculous. No, she decided, there was nothing unusual about the man standing before her. He was simply the guest Jean had told her about, and since she hadn’t been at the desk, he’d come looking for her; that was all. As a result, she found herself evaluating him in the way strangers often do.

Though he wasn’t as tall as Jack had been, maybe five ten or so, he was lean and fit, like someone who exercised daily. The sweater he was wearing was expensive and didn’t match his faded jeans, but somehow he made it look as if it did. His face was angular, marked by lines in his forehead that spoke of years of forced concentration. His gray hair was trimmed short, and there were patches of white near his ears; she guessed he was in his fifties, but couldn’t pin it down any more than that.

Just then, Paul seemed to realize he was staring at her and dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He motioned over his shoulder. “I’ll wait for you inside. Take your time.”

Adrienne shook her head, trying to put him at ease. “It’s okay. I was planning on coming in anyway.”

When she looked at him, she caught his eyes a second time. They were softer now, laced with a hint of memory, as though he were thinking of something sad but trying to hide it. She reached for her coffee cup, using it as an excuse to turn away.

When Paul held open the door, she nodded for him to go ahead. As he walked ahead of her through the kitchen toward the reception area, Adrienne caught herself eyeing his athletic physique, and she flushed slightly, wondering what on earth had gotten into her. Chiding herself, she moved behind the desk. She checked the name in the reservation book and glanced up.

“Paul Flanner, right? You’re staying five nights, and checking out Tuesday morning?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Is it possible to get a room with a view of the ocean?”

Adrienne pulled out the registration form. “Sure. Actually, you could have any of the rooms upstairs. You’re the only guest scheduled this weekend.”

“Which would you recommend?”

“They’re all nice, but if I were you, I’d take the blue room.”

“The blue room?”

“It’s got the darkest curtains. If you sleep in the yellow or white rooms, you’ll be up at the crack of dawn. The shutters don’t help all that much, and the sun comes up pretty early. The windows in those rooms face east.” Adrienne slid the form toward him and set the pen beside it. “Could you sign here?”

“Sure.”

Adrienne watched as Paul scrawled his name, thinking as he signed that his hands matched his face. The bones of his knuckles were prominent, like those of an older man, but his movements were precise and measured. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, she saw—not that it mattered.

Paul set aside the pen and she reached for the form, making sure he’d filled it out correctly. His address was listed in care of an attorney in Raleigh. From the pegboard off to the side, she retrieved a room key, hesitated, then selected two more.

“Okay, we’re all set here,” she said. “You ready to see your room?”

“Please.”

Paul stepped back as she made her way around the desk, toward the stairs. He grabbed his duffel bags, then started after her. When she reached the steps, she paused, letting him catch up. She motioned toward the sitting room.

“I have coffee and some cookies right over there. I made the pot an hour ago, so it should still be fresh for a while.”

“I saw it when I came in. Thank you.”

At the top of the steps, Adrienne turned, her hand still resting on the balustrade. There were four rooms upstairs: one near the front of the house and three that faced the ocean. On the doors Paul saw nameplates, not numbers: Bodie, Hatteras, and Cape Lookout, and he recognized them as the names of lighthouses along the Outer Banks.

“You can take your pick,” Adrienne said. “I brought all three keys in case you like another one better.”

Paul looked from one room to the next. “Which one’s the blue room?”

“Oh, that’s just what I call it: Jean calls it the Bodie Suite.”

“Jean?”

“She’s the owner. I’m just watching the place while she’s gone.”

The straps of the duffel bags were pinching his neck, and Paul shifted them as Adrienne unlocked the door. She held the door open for him, feeling the duffel bag bump against her as he wedged by.

Paul glanced around. The room was just about what he’d imagined it would be: simple and clean, but with more character than a typical beachfront motel room. There was a four-poster bed centered beneath the window, with an end table beside it. On the ceiling, a fan was whirring slowly, just enough to move the air. In the far corner, near a large painting of the Bodie lighthouse, there was a doorway that Paul assumed led to the bathroom. Along the near wall stood a worn-looking chest of drawers that looked as if it had been in the room since the Inn had been built.

With the exception of the furniture, pretty much everything was tinted various shades of blue: The throw rug on the floor was the color of robin’s eggs, the comforter and curtains were navy, the lamp on the end table was somewhere in between and shiny, like the paint on a new car. Though the chest of drawers and the end table were eggshell, they’d been decorated with scenes of the ocean beneath summer skies. Even the phone was blue, which gave it the appearance of a toy.

“What do you think?”

“It’s definitely blue,” he said.

“Do you want to see the other rooms?”

Paul set the duffel bags on the floor as he looked out the window.

“No, this will be fine. Is it okay if I open the window, though? It’s kind of stuffy in here.”

“Go ahead.”

Paul crossed the room, flipped the latch, and lifted the pane. Because the home had been painted so many times over the years, the window caught after about an inch. As Paul struggled to raise it further, Adrienne could see the wiry muscles of his forearms knot and flex.

She cleared her throat.

“I guess you should know it’s my first time watching the Inn,” she said. “I’ve been here lots of times, but always when Jean was here, so if something’s not right, don’t think twice about telling me.”

Paul turned around. With his back to the glass, his features were lost in shadows.

“I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m not too picky these days.”

Adrienne smiled as she pulled the key from the door. “Okay, things you should know. Jean told me to go over these. There’s a wall heater beneath the window, and all you have to do is turn it on. There’s only two settings, and in the beginning it’ll make a clicking noise, but it’ll stop after a few minutes. There are fresh towels in the bathroom; if you need more, just let me know. And even though it seems to take forever, the hot water does eventually come out of the nozzle. I promise.”

Adrienne caught a glimpse of Paul’s smile as she went on.

“And unless we get someone else this weekend—and I’m not expecting anyone else with the storm unless they get stranded,” she said, “we can eat whenever you’d like. Normally, Jean serves breakfast at eight and dinner is at seven, but if you’re busy then, just let me know and we can eat whenever. Or I can make you something that you could take with you.”

“Thanks.”

She paused, her mind searching for anything else to say.

“Oh, one more thing. Before you use the phone, you should know it’s only set up to make local calls. If you want to dial long distance, you’ll have to use a calling card or call collect, and you’ll have to go through the operator.”

“Okay.”

She hesitated in the doorway. “Anything else you need to know?”

“I think that just about covers it. Except, of course, for the obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“You haven’t told me your name yet.”

She set the key on the chest of drawers beside the door and smiled. “I’m Adrienne. Adrienne Willis.”

Paul crossed the room, and surprising her, he offered his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Adrienne.”

Six

Paul had come to Rodanthe at the request of Robert Torrelson, and as he unpacked a few items from the duffel bag and placed them in the drawers, he wondered again what Robert wanted to say to him or if he expected Paul to do most of the talking.

Jill Torrelson had come to him because she had a meningioma. A benign cyst, it wasn’t a life-threatening ailment, but it was unsightly, to say the least. The meningioma was on the right side of her face, extending from the bridge of her nose and over the cheek, forming a bulbous purple mass, punctuated by scars where it had ulcerated over the years. Paul had operated on dozens of patients with meningiomas, and he’d received many letters from those who had undergone the operation, expressing how thankful they were for what he’d done.

He’d gone over it a thousand times, and he still didn’t know why she’d died. Nor, it seemed, could science provide the answer. The autopsy on Jill was inconclusive, and the cause of death had not been determined. At first, they assumed she’d had an embolism of some sort, but they could find no evidence of it. After that, they focused on the idea that she’d had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia or postsurgical medication, but those were eventually ruled out as well. So was negligence on Paul’s part; the surgery had gone off without a hitch, and a close examination by the coroner had found nothing out of the ordinary with the procedure or anything that might have been even tangentially responsible for her death.

The videotape had confirmed it. Because the meningioma was considered typical, the procedure had been videotaped by the hospital for potential use in instruction by the faculty. Afterward, it had been reviewed by the surgical board of the hospital and three additional surgeons from out of state. Again, nothing was found to be amiss.

There were some medical conditions mentioned in the report. Jill Torrelson was overweight and her arteries had thickened; in time, she may have needed a coronary bypass. She had diabetes and, as a lifelong smoker, the beginnings of emphysema, though again, neither of these conditions seemed life-threatening at present, and neither adequately explained what had happened.

Jill Torrelson, it seemed, had died for no reason at all, as if God had simply called her home.

Like so many others in his situation, Robert Torrelson had filed a wrongful-death suit. The lawsuit named Paul, the hospital, and the anesthesiologist as defendants. Paul, like most surgeons, was covered by malpractice insurance. As was customary, he was instructed not to speak to Robert Torrelson without an attorney present and even then only if he was being deposed and Robert Torrelson happened to be in the room.

The case had gone nowhere for a year. Once Robert Torrelson’s attorney received the autopsy report, had another surgeon review the videotape, and the attorneys from the insurance company and hospital started the process of filing motions to drag out the process and run up the costs, he’d painted a bleak picture of what his client was up against. Though they didn’t say so directly, the attorneys for the insurance company expected Robert Torrelson to eventually drop the suit.

It was like the few other cases that had been filed against Paul Flanner over the years, except for the fact that Paul had received a personal note from Robert Torrelson two months ago.

He didn’t need to bring it with him to recall what had been written.

Dear Dr. Flanner,

I would like to talk to you in person. This is very important to me.

Please.

Robert Torrelson

At the bottom of the letter, he’d left his address.

After reading it, Paul had showed it to the attorneys, and they’d urged him to ignore it. So had his former colleagues at the hospital. Just let it go, they’d said. Once this is over, we can set up a meeting with him if he still wants to talk.

But there was something in the simple plea above Robert Torrelson’s neatly scrawled signature that had gotten to Paul, and he’d decided not to listen to them.

To his mind, he’d ignored too many things already.

Paul put on his jacket, walked down the steps, and went out the front door, heading toward the car. From the front seat, he grabbed the leather pouch containing his passport and tickets, but instead of going back inside, he made his way around the side of the house.