The Best of Me(30)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

While they’d been waiting for their food, Abee had called Candy. This time, she’d answered on the first ring and they’d talked for a little while. She told him she was already at work and apologized for not returning his calls, mentioning that she’d had car trouble. On the phone, she sounded like she was glad to hear from him, flirting just the way she always had. When he hung up, he felt a lot better about the situation and even wondered if he’d been reading too much into what he’d seen the other night.

Maybe it was the food or his general recovery, but as he continued to work through his burger, he found himself thinking back on the conversation again, trying to figure out what was bothering him about it. Because something was bothering him about the call. Part of it was that Candy had said she was having car trouble, not phone trouble, and busy or not, she probably could have called him back if she’d wanted to. But he wasn’t sure that was it.

Ted got up halfway through the meal and spent some time in the bathroom before coming back. As Ted walked toward the table, Abee thought his brother could have been in the cast of some cheap horror flick, but others in the restaurant were doing their best not to notice, staring at their plates instead. He smiled. It was good to be a Cole.

Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Candy, and he sucked on his fingers between bites, pondering it.

Frank and Jared had been in an accident.

The words scrolled through her mind like some terrible ticker tape, making Amanda more frantic with every passing minute. Her grip on the wheel was white-knuckled as she flashed her lights again, then again, willing the car in front of her to allow her to pass.

They’d been taken away in an ambulance. Jared and Frank were being rushed to the hospital. Her husband and her son…

Finally, the car ahead of her changed lanes and Amanda roared past it, quickly closing the gap to the cars that were farther ahead.

She reminded herself that Jared had sounded shaken, nothing more.

But the blood…

Jared had mentioned in a panicky voice that Frank was covered in blood. Clutching the phone, she tried to call her son again. He hadn’t answered a few minutes ago, and she told herself that it was because he was in the ambulance or in the emergency room, where phones were forbidden. She reminded herself that paramedics or doctors or nurses were caring for Frank and Jared now, and that when Jared finally answered, she’d no doubt regret her needless panic. In the future, it would be a story to be told around the dinner table, about how Mom drove like a bat out of hell, for no reason at all.

But Jared didn’t answer again, and neither did Frank. When both calls went to voice mail, she felt the pit in her stomach become a wide and bottomless chasm. She was suddenly certain that the car accident was serious, far worse than Jared had let on. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but the idea wouldn’t leave her.

She dropped her phone on the passenger seat and slammed her foot down on the accelerator, racing up to within inches of the car in front of her. Whoever was driving finally made room, and she blew past without a sidelong nod.

19

In the dream, Dawson was back on the rig, just as the series of explosions began to rock the platform, but this time everything was silent and the events unfolded in slow motion. He watched the sudden rupture of the storage tank, followed by flames that leapt outward and skyward; he traced the blackened smoke as it formed into sluggish, mushroomlike shapes. He saw the shimmery ripple of shock waves move across the deck, unhurriedly felling everything in its path, tearing posts and machinery from their housings. Men were hurled overboard as other explosions followed, every twitch of their arms plainly visible. The fire began to consume the deck in a ponderous, dreamlike way. All around him, everything was slowly being destroyed.

But he remained rooted in place, immune to the shock waves and the flying debris that magically veered around him. Straight ahead, near the crane, he saw a man emerge from an oily cloud of smoke, but like Dawson, he was immune to the ongoing devastation. For an instant, the smoke seemed to cling to him before being pulled away like a curtain. Dawson gasped as he glimpsed the dark-haired man in the blue windbreaker.

The stranger stopped moving, his features indistinct through the shimmering distance. Dawson wanted to call out to him, but no sound came to his lips; he wanted to get closer, but his feet seemed glued in place. Instead, they simply stared at each other across the rig, and despite the distance Dawson thought he felt the beginnings of recognition.

Dawson woke up then, blinking at his surroundings as adrenaline surged through his system. He was in the hotel in New Bern, right on the river, and though he knew it had been only a dream, he felt a chill run through him. Sitting up, he swung his feet toward the floor.

The clock showed that he’d slept for over an hour. Outside, the sun was almost down and the colors in his hotel room were muted.

Dreamlike…

Dawson stood and glanced around, spotting his wallet and keys near the TV. Seeing them jogged his memory about something else, and striding across the room he riffled through the pockets of the suit he’d been wearing. He checked them again to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, then quickly rummaged through his bag. Finally, he grabbed his wallet and keys and hurried downstairs to the parking lot.

He searched every inch of the rental car, working methodically through the glove compartment, the trunk, between the seats, the floor. But he was already beginning to recall what had happened earlier that day.

He’d set Tuck’s letter on the workbench after reading it. Amanda’s mother had walked by and he’d turned his attention to Amanda on the porch, and he’d forgotten to retrieve the letter.

It must still be on the workbench. He could leave it, of course… except that he couldn’t imagine doing that. It was the last letter that Tuck had written to him, his final gift, and Dawson wanted to take it home.

He knew that Ted and Abee would be scouring the town to find him, but nonetheless he found himself driving across the bridge, on his way back to Oriental. He’d be there in forty minutes.

After taking a deep breath to steel himself, Alan Bonner entered the Tidewater, noting an even smaller crowd than he’d expected. There were a couple of guys at the bar and a few toward the rear playing pool; only one of the tables was occupied, by a couple that was counting out cash and appeared to be leaving any minute. Nothing like Saturday night, or even Friday night for that matter. With the jukebox playing in the back and the television near the cash register on, the place seemed almost cozy.

Candy was wiping down the bar, and she smiled at him before waving with the towel. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair in a ponytail, and though she wasn’t quite as dolled up as usual, she was still prettier than anyone else in town. The butterflies in his stomach began to flutter as he wondered whether she’d agree to have dinner with him.

He stood straighter, thinking, No excuses. He’d take a seat at the bar, just be his normal self, and gradually work the conversation to the point where he could ask her out. He reminded himself that she’d definitely been flirting with him, and while she might be a flirt by nature, he was sure there’d been more to it than that. He could tell. He knew it, and with a deep breath, he started toward the bar.

Amanda burst through the door of Duke University Hospital’s emergency room, staring wildly at the crowd of patients and families. She’d continued to call Jared and Frank over and over, but neither of them had answered. Finally, she’d phoned Lynn in frantic desperation. Her daughter was still at Lake Norman, a few hours away. Lynn had broken down at the news and promised to be there as quickly as she could.

Standing inside the doorway, Amanda scanned the room, hoping to find Jared. She prayed that her worries had been for nothing. Then, to her bewilderment, she spotted Frank at the far end of the room. He stood and began walking toward her, appearing less injured than she’d assumed he would be. She peered over his shoulder, trying to locate her son. But Jared was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Jared?” she demanded when Frank reached her side. “Are you okay? What happened? What’s going on?”

She was still barking out questions when Frank took her arm and led her back outside.

“Jared’s been admitted,” he said. Despite the hours that had passed since he’d been at the club, his words were still slurred. She could tell he was trying to sound sober, but the sour smell of booze saturated his breath and his sweat. “I don’t know what’s going on. No one seems to know anything. But the nurse said something about a cardiologist.”

His words only amplified the anxiety coursing through her. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is Jared going to be okay?”

“He seemed fine when we got here.”

“Then why is he seeing a cardiologist?”

“I don’t know.”

“He said you were covered in blood.”

Frank touched the swollen bridge of his nose, where a black-and-blue crescent surrounded a small cut. “I banged my nose pretty good, but they were able to stop the bleeding. It’s no big deal. I’ll be fine.”

“Why didn’t you answer your phone? I called a hundred times!”

“My phone is still in the car…”

But Amanda had stopped listening as the weight of everything Frank had said sank in. Jared had been admitted. Her son was the one who was hurt. Her son, not her husband. Jared. Her firstborn…

Feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach and suddenly sickened by the sight of Frank, she marched past him, heading straight for the nurse behind the admitting desk. Doing her best to control her rising hysteria, she demanded to know what was going on with her son.

The nurse had few answers, repeating only what Frank had already told her. Drunk Frank, she thought again, unable to stem the tide of rage. She slapped both hands down on the desk, startling everyone in the waiting room.

“I need to know what’s going on with my son!” she cried. “I want some answers now!”

Problems with her car, Abee thought. That’s what had been bothering him about his earlier conversation with Candy. Because if her car was having problems, then how had she gotten to work? And why hadn’t she asked him if he could drive her to work, or back home?

Had someone else driven her? Like the guy in the Tidewater?

She wouldn’t have been that stupid. Of course, he could call her to find out, but there was a better way to get to the bottom of this. Irvin’s wasn’t very far from the small house where she lived, so he might as well swing by to check if her car was there. Because if it was there, it meant that someone had driven her, and then they’d definitely have something important to talk about, wouldn’t they?

He tossed a few bills onto the table and motioned for Ted to follow. Ted hadn’t talked much during the dinner, but Abee had the sense he was doing a little better, despite his poor appetite.

“Where we going?” Ted asked.

“I want to check something out,” Abee answered.

Candy’s place was located just a few minutes away, toward the end of a sparsely inhabited street. The house was a ramshackle bungalow, fronted with aluminum siding and hemmed in by overgrown bushes. It wasn’t much, but Candy didn’t seem to care, and she hadn’t done much to make it any homier.

As Abee pulled into the drive, he saw that her car was missing. Maybe she’d got it working, he reasoned, but while he sat in the truck and stared at the house, he noticed that something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing, so to speak, and it took a few minutes before he figured out what it was.

The Buddha statue was missing, the one she kept in the front window, framed by a gap in the bushes. Her good luck charm, she’d called it, and there was no reason she should have moved it. Unless…

He opened the door of the truck and got out. When Ted glanced over at him, he shook his head. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Abee pushed past the overgrown bushes and climbed onto the porch. Peering through the front window, he saw that the statue was definitely gone. The rest of the place looked the same. Of course, that didn’t mean much, since he knew it had come furnished. But the missing Buddha bothered him.

Abee worked his way around the house, peering in the windows, though curtains blocked most of the views. He couldn’t make out much.

Finally tiring of his efforts, he simply kicked in the back door, just like Ted had done at Tuck’s house.

He stepped inside, wondering what the hell Candy might be up to.

Just as she had every fifteen minutes since she’d arrived, Amanda approached the nurses’ station to ask if they had any further information. The nurse responded patiently that she had already given Amanda all the information she had: Jared had been admitted, he was being seen by a cardiologist, and the doctor knew they were waiting. As soon as she learned anything, Amanda would be the first to know. There was compassion in her voice as she said it, and Amanda nodded her thanks before turning away.

Even with the reality of her surroundings, she still couldn’t make sense of what she was doing here or how any of this had happened. Though Frank and the nurse had tried to explain it to her, their words meant nothing in the here and now. She didn’t want Frank or the nurse to tell her what was going on, she wanted to talk to Jared. She needed to see Jared, she needed to hear his voice to know that he was okay and when Frank had tried to put a comforting hand on her back, she’d jerked away as if scalded.

Because it was his fault that Jared was here in the first place. If he hadn’t been drinking, Jared would have stayed at home, or been out with a girl, or at a friend’s house. Jared would never have been anywhere near that intersection, would never have ended up in the hospital. He’d just been trying to help. He was being the responsible one.

But Frank…