The Best of Me(13)

When he nodded and said nothing more, Amanda chalked it up to age and fatigue. She ended up making him eggs and bacon and tidied up the house afterward while Tuck sat in the easy chair near the fireplace with a blanket over his shoulders, listening to the radio. She couldn’t help noticing how shriveled he looked, immeasurably smaller than the man she’d known as a girl. As she prepared to leave, she adjusted the blanket, thinking that he’d fallen asleep. His breaths were heavy and labored-sounding. She bent down and kissed him on the cheek.

“I love you, Tuck,” she whispered.

He shifted slightly, probably dreaming, but when she turned to leave she heard him exhale. “I miss you, Clara,” he mumbled.

Those were the last words she would ever hear him say. There was an ache of loneliness in those words, and all at once she understood why Tuck had taken Dawson in so long ago. Tuck, she figured, had been lonely, too.



After calling Frank to let him know that she’d arrived—his voice already sounded slurry—Amanda hung up with a curt few words and thanked God that the kids were otherwise engaged this weekend.

On the workbench she found the garage clipboard and wondered what to do about the car. A quick perusal showed the Stingray was owned by a defenseman for the Carolina Hurricanes, and she made a mental note to discuss the matter with Tuck’s estate lawyer. Setting the clipboard aside, she found her thoughts drifting to Dawson. He, too, had been part of her secret. Telling Frank about Tuck would have entailed telling him about Dawson, and she hadn’t wanted to do that. Tuck had always understood that Dawson was the real reason she’d come to visit, especially in the beginning. He didn’t mind, for Tuck more than anyone understood the power of memory. Sometimes, when the sunlight slanted through the canopy, bathing Tuck’s yard in a liquid, late summer haze, she could almost sense Dawson’s presence beside her and she was reminded again that Tuck had been anything but crazy. Like Clara’s, Dawson’s ghost was everywhere.

Although she knew it was pointless to wonder how different her life might have been if she and Dawson had stayed together, lately she’d felt the need to return to this place with increasing regularity. And the more she’d visited, the more intense the memories had become, long-forgotten events and sensations resurfacing from the depths of her past. Here it was easy to remember how strong she’d felt when she was with Dawson, and how unique and beautiful he’d always made her feel. She could recall with utter clarity her certainty that Dawson was the only person in the world who really understood her. But most of all, she could remember how completely she’d loved him and the single-minded passion with which he’d loved her back.

In his own quiet way, Dawson had made her believe that anything was possible. As she drifted through the cluttered garage, with the smell of gasoline and oil still lingering in the air, she felt the weight of the hundreds of evenings she’d spent here. She trailed her fingers along the bench where she used to sit for hours, watching as Dawson leaned over the open hood of the fastback, occasionally cranking the wrench, his fingernails black with grease. Even then, his face had held none of the soft, youthful naïveté she saw in others their age, and when the ropy muscles of his forearm flexed as he reached for another tool, she saw the limbs and form of the man he was already becoming. Like everyone else in Oriental, she knew that his father had beaten him regularly, and when he worked without his shirt, she could see the scars on his back, no doubt inflicted by the buckle end of a belt. She wasn’t sure whether Dawson was even aware of them anymore, which somehow made the sight of them even worse.

He was tall and lean, with dark hair that fell over darker eyes, and she’d known even then that he would become only more handsome as he grew older. He looked nothing like the rest of the Coles, and she’d asked him once whether he resembled his mother. At the time, they were sitting in his car while raindrops splashed over the windshield. Like Tuck’s, his voice was almost always soft, his demeanor calm. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the fog from the glass. “My dad burned all her pictures.”

Toward the end of their first summer together, they’d gone down to the small dock on the creek, long after the sun went down. He’d heard there was going to be a meteor shower, and after spreading out a blanket on the planks of the dock, they watched in silence as the lights streaked across the sky. She knew her parents would be furious if they knew where she was, but at the time nothing mattered but shooting stars and the warmth of his body and the gentle way he held her close, as if he couldn’t imagine a future without her.