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The Last Song(62)

By:Nicholas Sparks


“Was she mad?”

She already knew the answer, but she couldn’t help asking.

“A little,” he admitted.

“Just a little?”

“I’m pretty sure she Godzilla’d the kitchen while we were talking.”

Ronnie closed her eyes, imagining the scene. “Did you tell her what really happened?”

“Of course I did. And I made sure to tell her that I was certain you were telling the truth.” He put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug. “She’ll get over it. She always does.”

Ronnie nodded. In the silence, she could feel her dad studying her.

“I’m sorry you can’t go home today,” he said. His tone was soft and apologetic. “I know how much you hate it here.”

“I don’t hate it here,” she said automatically. Surprising herself, she realized that as much as she’d been trying to convince herself otherwise, she was telling the truth. “It’s just that I don’t belong here.”

He gave her a melancholy smile. “If it’s any consolation, when I was growing up, I didn’t feel like I belonged here, either. I dreamed about going to New York. But it’s strange, because when I finally escaped this place, I ended up missing it more than I thought I would. There’s something about the ocean that just calls to me.”

She turned toward him. “What’s going to happen to me? Did Officer Pete say anything more?”

“No. Just that the owner feels like she has to press charges, since the items were valuable and she’s had a lot of problems with shoplifting lately.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Ronnie cried.

“I know,” he said, “and we’ll work it out. We’ll find a good lawyer and take it from there.”

“Are lawyers expensive?”

“Good ones are,” he said.

“Can you afford that?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.” He paused. “Can I ask you something? What did you do that made Blaze so mad? You never told me.”

Had her mom asked, she probably wouldn’t have answered. Nor would she have answered her dad even a couple of days earlier. Now, she couldn’t see any reason not to. “She has this weird, scary boyfriend, and she thinks I was trying to steal him away from her. Or something like that.”

“What do you mean by weird and scary?”

She paused. At the water’s edge, the first of the families were arriving, loaded with towels and beach toys. “I saw him last night,” she said in a low voice. She pointed down the beach. “He was standing over there while I was talking to Will.”

Her dad didn’t try to hide his concern. “But he didn’t come any closer.”

She shook her head. “No. But there’s something… off about him. Marcus…”

“Maybe you should keep your distance from those two. Blaze and Marcus, I mean.”

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to talk to either one of them again.”

“Do you want me to call Pete? I know you haven’t had a good experience with him…”

Ronnie shook her head. “Not yet. And believe it or not, I’m not mad at Pete at all. He was just doing his job, and actually, he was pretty understanding about the whole thing. I think he felt sorry for me.”

“He told me he believes you. Which is why he talked to the owner.”

She smiled, thinking how nice it was to talk to her dad like this. For an instant, she wondered how different her life would have been had he never moved away. She hesitated, scooping up a handful of sand and letting it sift through her fingers.

“Why did you leave us, Dad?” she asked. “I’m old enough for the truth, okay?”

Her dad stretched his legs out, obviously buying time. He seemed to be wrestling with something, trying to figure out how much to tell her and where to begin, before he started with the obvious. “After I stopped teaching at Juilliard, I did every show that I could. It was my dream, you know? Be a famous concert pianist? Anyway… I guess I should have thought more about the reality of the situation before I made the decision. But I didn’t. I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be on your mom.” He fixed her with a serious gaze. “In the end, we just sort of… drifted apart.”

She watched her dad as he answered, trying to read between the lines.

“There was someone else, wasn’t there,” she said. Her voice held no inflection.

Her dad didn’t answer, and his gaze fell away. Ronnie felt something plummet inside her.

When he finally answered, he sounded tired. “I know I should have tried harder to save the marriage, and I’m sorry about that. More sorry than you’ll ever know. But I want you to know something, okay? I never once stopped believing in your mom, I never once stopped believing in the endurance of our love. Even though it didn’t work out in the end the way you or I wanted it to, I see you and Jonah and I think how lucky I am to have you as children. In a lifetime of mistakes, you two are the greatest things that have ever happened to me.”