The Best of Me

Her mom kept her tone neutral, but there was little warmth in it. "I know you better than you think, and the fact that you didn't deny it just proves my point. I'm not upset by the fact that you'd rather not talk about what's going on between the two of you. That concerns you and Frank, and there's nothing I could ever say or do to help. We both know that. Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy. Which begs the question, of course, of what you've been sharing with Tuck all these years. If I had to guess, it wasn't just that you wanted to visit him. It was that you also felt the need to share with him."

Her mom let the comment hang, her eyebrow a questioning arch, and in the silence Amanda tried to swallow her shock. Her mother adjusted her napkin. "Now, I assume you'll be here for dinner. Would you prefer to go out or stay in?"

"So that's it?" Amanda blurted out. "You throw out your assumptions and accusations, then close the subject?"

Her mom folded her hands in her lap. "I didn't close the subject. You're the one who refuses to talk about it. But if I were you, I'd think about what you really want, because when you get back home, you're going to have to make some decisions about your marriage. In the end, it's either going to work or it isn't. And a big part of that is up to you."

There was a brutal truth to her words. It wasn't just about her and Frank, after all; it was about the children they were raising. Amanda suddenly felt drained. Setting her cup on the saucer, she felt the anger leach out of her, leaving only a sense of defeat.

"Do you remember the family of otters that used to play out near our dock?" she finally asked, not waiting for an answer. "When I was a little girl? Dad would scoop me up whenever they appeared and bring me out back. We'd sit on the grass watching them splash and chase each other around. I used to think they were the happiest animals in the world."

"I fail to understand what this has to do with anything--"

"I saw the otters again," Amanda continued, talking over her mother. "Last year, when we took our vacation at the beach, we visited the aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. I was excited to see the new otter exhibit. I must have told Annette about the otters behind our house a dozen times, and she couldn't wait to see them, but when we finally got there it wasn't the same as when I was a girl. The otters were there, of course, but they were sleeping up on a ledge. Even though we stayed at the aquarium for hours, they never moved at all. On our way out, Annette asked me why they weren't playing and I didn't really have an answer. But after we left, I felt... sad. Because I knew exactly why those otters didn't play."

She stopped to run her finger around the rim of her coffee cup before meeting her mother's gaze.

"They weren't happy. The otters knew they weren't living in a real river. They probably didn't understand how it happened, but they seemed to understand that they were in a cage and couldn't get out. It wasn't the life that they were meant to live, or even wanted to live, but there was nothing they could do to change it."

For the first time since she'd been at the table, her mom looked unsure about what to say. Amanda pushed her cup away before rising from the table. As she walked away, she heard her mom clear her throat. She turned.

"I assume you had some point with that story?" her mother asked.

Amanda gave a weary smile. "Yes," she said, her voice soft. "I did."

11

Dawson lowered the top of the Stingray and leaned against the trunk, waiting for Amanda. There was a sultry, heavy feel to the air, portending a storm later that afternoon, and he wondered idly whether Tuck had an umbrella stashed in the house somewhere. He doubted it. He could no more imagine Tuck using an umbrella than he could imagine him in a dress, but who knew? Tuck, he'd learned, was a man of surprises.

A shadow moved across the ground and Dawson watched an osprey make slow, lazy circles overhead until Amanda's car finally rolled up the drive. He could hear the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires as she pulled into the shady spot next to his.

Amanda stepped out of the car, surprised by the black pants and crisp white shirt Dawson was wearing, but the combo definitely worked. With the jacket casually slung over his shoulder, he was almost too handsome for his own good, which only made what her mother had said even more prescient. She drew a deep breath, wondering what she was going to do.

"Am I late?" she asked, starting toward him.

Dawson watched her approach. Even from a few feet away, the morning rays illuminated the clear blue depths of her eyes, like the sunlit waters of a pristine lake. She was wearing a black pantsuit, with a sleeveless silk blouse and a silver locket around her neck.

"Not at all," he said. "I got here early because I wanted to make sure the car was ready."

"And?"

"Whoever fixed it knew exactly what he was doing."

She smiled as she reached him and then, acting on impulse, kissed him on the cheek. Dawson seemed unsure what to make of it, his confusion mirroring her own as she heard again the echo of her mother's words. She motioned to the car, trying to escape them. "You took the top down?" she asked.

Her question brought him back to her. "I thought we might take it up to Vandemere."

"It's not our car."

"I know," he said. "But it needs to be driven so I can make sure everything is working right. Believe me, the owner will want to know it's in perfect working order before he decides to take it out for a night on the town."

"What if it breaks down?"

"It won't."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

A smile played on her lips. "Then why would we need to test-drive it?"

He opened his hands, caught. "Okay, maybe I just want to drive it. It's practically a sin to let a car like this sit in the garage, especially considering the owner won't know and the keys are right here."

"And let me guess--when we're done, we'll put it on blocks and run it in reverse, so the odometer goes backward, right? So the owner won't know?"

"That doesn't work."

"I know. I learned that when I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off." She smirked.

He leaned back slightly, taking in the sight of her. "You look stunning, by the way."

She felt the heat travel up her neck at his words and wondered if she would ever stop blushing in his presence. "Thank you," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she studied him in return, keeping a bit of distance between them. "I don't think I've ever seen you in a suit before. Is it new?"

"No, but I don't wear it much. Just special occasions."

"I think Tuck would have approved," she said. "What did you end up doing last night?"

He thought about Ted and all that had happened, including his subsequent move to the beach. "Not much. How was dinner with your mom?"

"Not worth talking about," she said. She reached into the car, running her hand over the wheel before looking up at him. "We had an interesting conversation this morning, though."

"Yeah?"

She nodded. "It got me to thinking about these last couple of days. About me, you... life. Everything. And on the drive over, I realized that I was glad that Tuck never told you about me."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because yesterday, when we were in the garage..." She hesitated, trying to find the right words. "I think I was out of line. The way I was acting, I mean. And I want to apologize."

"Why would you apologize?"

"It's hard to explain. I mean..."

When she trailed off, Dawson watched her before finally taking a step closer. "Are you all right, Amanda?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything anymore. When we were young, things were so much simpler."

He hesitated. "What are you trying to say?"

She looked up at him. "You have to understand that I'm not the girl I used to be," she said. "I'm a wife and a mother now, and like everyone else I'm not perfect. I struggle with the choices I've made and I make mistakes, and half the time I wonder who I really am or what I'm doing or whether my lif

e means anything at all. I'm not special at all, Dawson, and you need to know that. You have to understand that I'm just... ordinary."

"You're not ordinary."

Her look was pained but unflinching. "I know you believe that. But I am. And the problem is that there's nothing ordinary about any of this. I'm completely out of my element. I wish that Tuck had mentioned you, though, so that I could have been more prepared for this weekend." Without even being aware of it, she reached up to touch the silver locket. "I don't want to make a mistake."

Dawson shifted from one foot to the other, understanding exactly why she'd said what she had. It was one of the reasons he'd always loved her, even if he knew he shouldn't say those words out loud. It wasn't what she wanted to hear. Instead, he kept his voice as gentle as he could. "We talked, we ate, we reminisced," he pointed out. "That's all. You haven't done anything wrong."

"Yes, I have." She smiled but couldn't hide the sadness in it. "I haven't told my mother that you're here. Nor have I told my husband."

"Do you want to?" he asked.

That was the question, wasn't it? Without even being aware of it, her mother had asked her the same thing. She knew what she should say, but here and now the words simply wouldn't come. Instead, she found herself slowly beginning to shake her head. "No," she whispered finally.

Dawson seemed to sense the fear that seized her at her own admission, because he reached for Amanda's hand. "Let's go to Vandemere," he said. "Let's honor Tuck, okay?"

She nodded, letting herself succumb to the gentle urgency of his touch, feeling yet another part of herself slip away, beginning to accept the fact that she was no longer fully in control of whatever might happen next.

Dawson led her around to the other side of the car and opened her door. Amanda took a seat, feeling light-headed as Dawson retrieved the box holding Tuck's ashes from his rental car. He wedged it into the space behind the driver's seat, along with his jacket, before getting in. After taking out the directions, Amanda stowed her purse behind the seat as well.

Dawson pumped the pedal before turning the key, and the engine came to life with a roar. He revved the engine a few times, the car shimmying slightly. When the idle finally held, Dawson backed it out of the garage and drove slowly down to the main road, avoiding the potholes. The sound of the engine quieted only slightly as they made their way back through Oriental and onto the quiet highway.

As Amanda began to settle in, she discovered that she could see all she really needed from the corner of her eye. Dawson had one hand on the wheel, a posture achingly familiar to her from the meandering drives they used to take. That was when he'd always been most relaxed, and she sensed that feeling in him again as he shifted from one gear to the next, the muscles of his forearm bunching and relaxing.

Amanda's hair lashed around her as the car picked up speed, and she twisted it into a ponytail. It was too loud for either of them to speak, but that was fine with her. She was content to be alone with her thoughts, alone with Dawson, and as the miles began to pass she felt her earlier anxiety begin to dissipate, as if blown away by the wind itself.

Dawson kept the speed steady, despite the empty expanse of the road. He wasn't in a rush, and she wasn't, either. Amanda was in a car with a man she'd once loved, journeying to a place unknown to either of them, and she reflected that the idea would have struck her as preposterous even a few days ago. It was crazy and unimaginable, but there was something thrilling about it as well. For a little while, at least, she wasn't a wife or mother or a daughter, and for the first time in years she felt almost free.

But Dawson had always made her feel that way, and when he propped an elbow out the window, she glanced at him, trying to think of anyone who even remotely resembled him. There was pain and sadness etched in the lines around the corners of his eyes and intelligence as well, and she found herself wondering what he would have been like as a father. A good one, she suspected. It was easy to imagine him as the kind of dad who'd gamely toss a baseball back and forth for hours, or try to braid his daughter's hair, even if he had no clue how to do it. There was something strangely tantalizing and forbidden about the idea.

When Dawson looked over at her then, she knew he was thinking about her, and she wondered how many nights on the oil rig he'd done the same thing. Dawson, like Tuck, was one of those rare people who could love only once, and if anything, separation had only made his feelings grow stronger. Two days ago, that realization had been disconcerting, but she now understood that, for Dawson, there had been no other choice. Love, after all, always said more about those who felt it than it did about the ones they loved.

A southerly breeze settled in, bringing with it the scent of open water, and Amanda closed her eyes, giving herself over to the moment. When they finally reached the outskirts of Vandemere, Dawson unfolded the directions Amanda had given him and scanned them quickly before nodding to himself.

Vandemere was less a town than a hamlet, home to only a few hundred people. She saw a scattering of houses set back from the road and a small country store with a single gas pump out front. A minute later, Dawson made a turn onto a rutted dirt drive just off the highway. She had no idea how he'd even seen it--the overgrowth made it nearly invisible from the highway--and they began to roll forward, cautiously rounding one curve and then another, skirting the decaying trunks of storm-toppled trees and following the gently rising contours of the landscape. The engine, so loud on the highway, seemed almost muted now, absorbed by a lush landscape that pressed in on them from all sides. The drive narrowed even more as they went on, and low-hanging branches draped with Spanish moss grazed the car as they passed. Azaleas, their withering blossoms lush and untamed, competed with the kudzu for sunlight, obscuring the view on either side.

Dawson leaned closer to the wheel, making slight adjustments as he inched forward, careful not to scratch the car's paint. Above them, the sun dipped behind another cloud, deepening the verdant world around them.

The drive widened slightly once they rounded one curve and then another. "This is crazy," she said. "Are you sure we're going the right way?"

"According to the map, this is the place."

"Why so far off the main road?"

Dawson shrugged, as puzzled as she was, but after edging around the last curve, he instinctively braked the car to a stop, both of them suddenly knowing the answer.

12

The final stretch of the drive ended at a small cottage nestled in a grove of ancient live oaks. The weathered structure, with chipping paint and shutters that had begun to blacken at the edges, was fronted by a small stone porch framed by white columns. Over the years, one of the columns had become enshrouded in vines, which climbed toward the roof. A metal chair sat near the edge, and at one corner of the porch, adding color to the world of green, was a small pot of blooming geraniums.

But their eyes were drawn inevitably to the wildflowers. Thousands of them, a meadow of fireworks stretching nearly to the steps of the cottage, a sea of red and orange and purple and blue and yellow nearly waist deep, rippling in the gentle breeze. Hundreds of butterflies flitted above the meadow, tides of moving color undulating in the sun. Bounding the field was a small, slatted wooden fence, barely visible through the lilies and gladiolas.

Amanda stared at Dawson in wonder, then at the field of flowers again. It seemed like a fantasy, one person's imagined vision of heaven. She wondered how and when Tuck had first planted it, but even then, in that moment, she'd known that Tuck had planted the wildflowers for Clara. He'd planted them to express what she meant to him.

"It's incredible," she breathed.

"Did you know about this?" His voice mirrored her own sense of wonder.

"No," she answered. "This was something that was meant for just the two of them."

As she said it, she had a clear picture of Clara sitting on the porch while Tuck leaned against a column, reveling in the heady beauty of the wildflower garden. Dawson finally removed his foot from the brake and t

he car rolled forward toward the house, the colors blurring like droplets of living paint stretching for the sun.

After parking near the house, they climbed out and continued to take in the scene. A small, winding pathway was visible through the flowers. Mesmerized, they waded into the sea of color beneath a patchy sky. The sun reemerged from behind a cloud, and Amanda could feel its warmth dispersing the perfumed scent that surrounded her. All her senses felt amplified, like the day had been created specifically for her.

Walking beside her, she felt Dawson reach for her hand. She let him take it, thinking how natural it felt, and she imagined she could trace the years of labor etched into his calluses. Tiny wounds had scarred his palms but his touch was improbably gentle, and she knew then, with sudden certainty, that Dawson would have created a garden like this for her as well if he'd known she wanted it.

Forever. He'd carved the word into Tuck's workbench. A teenage promise, nothing more, yet somehow he'd been able to keep it alive. She could feel the strength of that promise now, filling the distance between them as they drifted through the flowers. From somewhere far away, she heard the distant rumble of thunder and she had the strange sense that it was calling to her, urging her to listen.

Her shoulder brushed against his, making her pulse quicken. "I wonder if these flowers grow back, or if he had to sow seed every year," he mused.

The sound of his voice brought her out of her reverie. "Both," she answered, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. "I recognize some of them."

"So he came up earlier this year? To plant more seeds?"

"He must have. I see some Queen Anne's lace. My mom has it at the house and it dies out when winter settles in."

They spent the next few minutes wandering along the path while she pointed out the annuals she knew: black-eyed Susans, blazing stars, morning glories, and prairie asters, intermingled with perennials like forget-me-nots, Mexican hats, and Oriental poppies. There seemed to be no formal organization to the garden; it was as if God and nature intended to have their way, no matter what Tuck's plans might have been. Somehow, though, the wildness only enhanced the beauty of the garden, and as they walked through the chaotic display of color, all she could think was that she was glad Dawson was with her so they could share this together.