The Notebook(6)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

“You can still do it. Allie. I know you can. You have a talent that comes from inside you, from your heart, not from your fingers. What you have can’t ever go away. It’s what other people only dream about. You’re an artist, Allie.”

The words were spoken with such sincerity that she knew he wasn’t saying it just to be nice. He truly believed in her ability, and for some reason that meant more to her than she expected. She turned to face him. She reached over and touched his hand, hesitantly, gently, amazed that after all these years had somehow known exactly what she’d needed to hear. When their eyes locked, she once again realized how special he was.

And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.

THE TIMER WENT off in the kitchen, and Noah turned away, strangely affected by what had just happened between them. Her eyes had spoken to him and whispered something he longed to hear; yet he couldn’t stop the voice inside his head, her voice that had told him of her love for another man. He silently cursed the timer as he walked to the kitchen and removed the bread from the oven. He saw that the frying pan was ready. He added the vegetables and heard them begin to crackle. Then he got some butter out of the icebox, spread some on the bread and melted a hit more for the crabs.

Allie had followed him into the kitchen and cleared her throat.

“Can I get the table ready?”

Noah used the bread knife as a pointer. “Sure, plates are over there. Utensils and napkins there. Make sure you get plenty- crabs can be messy.” He couldn’t look at her as he spoke. He didn’t want to be mistaken about what had just happened between them.

Allie too, was wondering about the moment and feeling warm as she thought of it. The words he’d spoken replayed in her head as she found everything she needed for the table settings. Noah handed her the bread and their fingers touched briefly.

He turned his attention back to the frying pan and stirred the vegetables. He lifted the lid of the steamer, saw the crabs still had a minute, and let them cook some more. He was more composed now and returned to small talk, easy conversation.

“Have you ever had crab before?”

“A couple of times. But only in salads.”

He laughed. “Then you’re in for an adventure. Hold on a second.” He disappeared upstairs for a moment, then returned with a navy-blue button-down shirt. He held it out for her.

“Here, put this on. I don’t want you to stain your dress.”

Allie put it on and smelt the fragrance that lingered in the shirt-his smell, distinctive, natural.

“Don’t worry.” he said, seeing her expression, “it’s clean.”

She laughed. “I know. It just reminds me of our first real date. You gave me your jacket that night, remember?”

He nodded.

The vegetables and crabs were ready at about the same time. “Be careful, they’re hot.” he said as he handed them to her, and they sat across from each other at the small wooden table. Then realizing the tea was still on the counter, Allie stood and brought it over. After putting some vegetables and bread on their plates, Noah added a crab, and Allie sat for a moment, staring at it.

“It looks like a bug.”

“A good bug, though,” he said. “Here, let me show you how it’s done.”

He made it look easy, removing the meat and putting it on her plate. Allie crushed the legs too hard the first time and had to use her fingers to get the shells away from the meat. She felt clumsy, worrying that he saw every mistake, but then she realized her own insecurity. He didn’t care about things like that He never had. “So, tell me everything you’ve been up to since I saw you last,” she asked.

They started to talk then, making up for lost time. Noah talked about leaving New Bern, about working in the shipyard and at the scrap yard in New Jersey. He spoke fondly of Morris Goldman and touched on the war a little, and told her how much he missed his father. Allie talked about going to college, painting, and her hours spent volunteering at the hospital. She talked about her family and Mends and the charities she was involved with. Neither of them brought up anybody they had dated since they’d last seen each other. Even Lon was ignored, and though both of them noticed the omission, neither mentioned it.

Afterwards Allie tried to remember the last time she and Lon had talked this way. Although he listened well and they seldom argued, he was not the type of man to talk like this. Like her father, he wasn’t comfortable sharing feelings. She’d tried to explain that she needed to be closer to him, but it had never seemed to make a difference.

Sitting here now, she realized what she’d been missing.

The sky grew darker and the moon rose higher as the evening wore on. And without either of them being conscious of it, they began to regain the intimacy, the bond of familiarity, they had once shared.

THEY FINISHED dinner, both pleased with the meal, neither talking much now. Noah looked at his watch and saw that it was getting late. The stars were out in full, the crickets a little quieter. He had enjoyed talking to Allie and wondered what she’d thought about his life, hoping it would somehow make a difference, if it could.

He got up and refilled the kettle. They both brought the dishes to the sink and cleaned the table, and he poured two more cups of hot water, adding tea bags to both.

“How about the porch again?” he asked, handing her the cup, and she agreed, leading the way.

He grabbed a quilt for her in case she got cold, and soon they had taken their places again, the quilt over her legs, rockers moving. Noah watched her from the corner of his eye. God, she’s beautiful, he thought. And inside he ached.

For something had happened during dinner.

Quite simply, he had fallen in love again. He knew that now as they sat next to one another. Fallen in love with a new Allie, not just her memory. But then he had never really stopped, and this, he realized, was his destiny.

“It’s been quite a night.” he said, his voice softer now.

“Yes, it has.” she said, “a wonderful night.”

Noah glanced up at the stars, their twinkling lights reminding him that she would he leaving soon, and he felt almost empty inside. This was a night he wanted never to end. How should he tell her? What could he say that would make her stay’?

He didn’t know. And thus the decision was made to say nothing. And he realized then that he had failed.

The rockers moved in quiet rhythm.

“Talk to me,” she finally said, her voice sensual. Or was his mind playing tricks’?

“What should I say?”

“Talk like you did to me under the oak tree.”

And he did, reciting distant passages, toasting the night. Whitman and Thomas, because he loved the images, Tennyson and Browning, because their themes felt so familiar.

She rested her head against the back of the rocker, closing her eyes. It wasn’t just the poems or his voice that did it. It was all of it, the whole greater than the sum of the parts. She didn’t try to break it down, didn’t want to, because it wasn’t meant to he listened to that way. Poetry, she thought, wasn’t written to he analysed: it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

They rocked for a while, drinking tea, sitting quietly, drifting in their thoughts. The compulsion that had driven her here was gone now-she was glad of this-but she worried about the feelings that had taken its place, the stirrings that had begun to sift and swirl in her pores like gold dust in river pans. She’d tried to deny them, hide from them, but now she realized that she didn’t want them to stop.

Lon could not evoke these feelings in her. He never had and probably never would. Maybe that was why she had never been to bed with him. She had always used the excuse that she wanted to wait until marriage. He took it well, usually, and she sometimes wondered how hurt he would be if he ever found out about Noah.

But there was something else that made her want to wait, and it had to do with Lon himself. He was driven in his work, and it always came first. For him there was no time for poems and wasted evenings on porches. She knew this was why he was successful, and part of her respected him for that. But she also sensed it wasn’t enough. She wanted something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.

Noah, too, was sifting through his thoughts. As he rocked, he remembered the thousands of empty nights he had spent since they’d last seen each other. Seeing her again brought all those feelings to the surface, and he found it impossible to press them back down. He knew then he wanted to make love to her again and to have her love in return. It was what he needed most in the world.

But he also realized it could never be. Now that she was engaged.

Allie knew by his silence that he was thinking about her and found that she revelled in it. She thought about their conversation at dinner and wondered about loneliness. For some reason she couldn’t picture him reading poetry to someone else or even sharing his dreams with another woman. He didn’t seem the type. Either that, or she didn’t want to believe it.

She put down the tea, then ran her hands through her hair, closing her eyes as she did so.

“Are you tired?” he asked, finally breaking free from his thoughts.

“A little. I should really he going in a couple of minutes.”

“I know.” he said, nodding, his tone neutral.

She didn’t get up right away. Instead she picked up the cup and drank the last swallow of tea, feeling it warm her throat. She took the evening in. Moon higher now, temperature dropping.

She looked at Noah. A scar was visible on the side of his face that hadn’t been there before. She wondered if it had happened during the war. He hadn’t mentioned it and she hadn’t asked, mostly because she didn’t want to imagine him being hurt.

“I should go,” she finally said, handing the quilt back to him.

Noah nodded, then stood without a word. He carried the quilt, and the two of them walked to her car while fallen leaves crunched beneath their feet. She started to take off the shirt he’d lent her as he opened the door, but he stopped her.

“Keep it,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

She didn’t ask why, because she wanted to keep it, too. She readjusted it and crossed her arms afterwards to ward off the chill. For some reason, as she stood there, she was reminded of standing on her front porch after a high-school dance, waiting for a kiss.

“I had a great time tonight,” he said, “thank you for finding me.”

“I did, too,” she answered.

He summoned his courage. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

A simple question. She knew what the answer should be. “I don’t think we should,” was all she had to say, and it would end right here and now. But for a second the demon of choice confronted her, teased her, challenged her. Why couldn’t she say it? As she looked in his eyes to find the answer she needed, she saw the man she’d once fallen in love with, and suddenly it all came clear.

“I’d like that.”

Noah was surprised. He hadn’t expected her to answer this way. He wanted to touch her then, to take her in his arms, but he didn’t.

“Can you be here about noon?”

“Sure. What do you want to do?”

“You’ll see,” he answered. “I know just the place to go.”

“Have I ever been there before?”

“No, but it’s a special place. You’ll love it.”

She moved away before he could attempt a kiss. She didn’t know if he would try but knew for some reason that, if he did, she would have a hard time stopping him. She slid behind the wheel, breathing a sigh of relief. He shut the door for her, and she started the engine. As the car idled, she rolled down the window just a hit.

“See you tomorrow,” she said, her eyes reflecting the moonlight.

Noah waved as she turned the car around and then drove up the lane, heading hack towards town. He watched until the lights vanished behind far-off oak trees and the engine noise was gone. Clem wandered up to him and he squatted down to pet her, paying special attention to her neck, scratching the spot she couldn’t reach any more. Then they returned to the back porch side by side.

He sat in the rocker again, trying once more to fathom the evening that had just passed. Replaying it. Running it in slow motion. “She’s engaged,” he finally whispered, and then was silent for hours, his rocker making the only noise. The night was quiet, with little activity except for Clem, who checked on him occasionally as if to ask, “Are you all right?”

And some time after midnight on that clear October evening, Noah was overcome with longing. And if anyone had seen him, they would have seen what looked like an old man, someone who’d aged a lifetime in just a couple of hours. Someone bent over in his rocker with his face in his hands and tears in his eyes.

He didn’t know how to stop them.

CHAPTER FOUR: PHONE CALLS

LON HUNG up the phone. He had called at seven, then at eight thirty, and now he checked his watch again. Nine forty-five.

Where was she?

He knew she was where she had said she would he because he had spoken to the manager. Yes, she had checked in and he had last seen her around six. Going to dinner, he thought. No, he hadn’t seen her since.

Lon shook his head and leaned hack in his chair. He was the last one in the office as usual. That was normal with an ongoing trial, even if the trial was going well. Law was his passion, and the late hours alone gave him the opportunity to catch up on his work without interruption.

He knew he would win the case because he mastered the law and charmed the jury. He always did, and losses were infrequent now. Part of it came from being able to select the cases he had the expertise to win. Only a select few lawyers in the city had that kind of stature, and his earnings reflected it.