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.