The Best of Me (34 page)

Still, she wasn’t ready to go downstairs. Rising from the bed, she went instead to the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet, finding a bottle of Visine. She blinked a few drops into her red, swollen eyes, then ran a brush through her hair. It didn’t help much and she didn’t really care, and she knew Frank wouldn’t notice.

But Dawson would have noticed. And with Dawson, she would have cared how she looked.

She thought of him again, as she’d been doing since she’d returned to the house, trying to keep her emotions in check. Glancing toward the bags she’d packed earlier, she spotted the corner of an envelope sticking out from her purse. She pulled it out, catching sight of her name scrawled in Tuck’s shaky script. Taking a seat on the bed again, she broke the seal and lifted the letter out thinking, strangely, that Tuck had the answers she needed.

Amanda put the letter back into her purse, knowing Tuck was right. She could feel the truth as deeply as she’d ever felt anything, and she could barely breathe.

With a feeling of desperate urgency she didn’t quite comprehend, she gathered her bags and carried them down the stairs. Normally, she would have placed them near the door until she was ready to leave. Instead, she found herself reaching for the knob and making her way directly to her car.

She tossed her bags into the trunk before moving around the car. Only then did she notice her mother standing on the front porch, watching her.

Amanda said nothing, nor did her mother. They simply stared at each other. Amanda had the uncanny feeling that her mother knew exactly where she was going, but with Tuck’s words still ringing in her ears, Amanda was beyond caring. All she knew was that she needed to find Dawson.

Dawson might still be at Tuck’s, but she doubted it. It wouldn’t have taken him long to wash the car, and with his cousins on the loose she knew that he wouldn’t stay in town.

But there was someplace else he said he might go…

The words came into her mind suddenly, without conscious thought, and she slipped behind the wheel, knowing exactly where he might be.

At the cemetery, Dawson stepped out of the car and made the short walk toward David Bonner’s headstone.

In the past, whenever he visited the cemetery, he came at odd hours and did his best to remain unnoticed and anonymous.

Today, that wouldn’t be possible. Weekends tended to be busy, and there were clusters of people walking among the headstones. No one appeared to pay any attention to him as he walked, but he kept his head bowed nonetheless.

Finally reaching the site, he noticed that the flowers he’d left on Friday morning were still there, but they’d been moved to the side. Probably by the caretaker when he’d mowed. Squatting, Dawson plucked at a few of the longer blades of grass near the headstone that had been missed.

His thoughts drifted back to Amanda, and he was gripped by a sense of intense loneliness. His life, he knew, had been cursed from the beginning, and closing his eyes, he said a final prayer for David Bonner, unaware that his shadow had just been joined by another. Unaware that someone was standing right behind him.

Reaching the main street that ran through Oriental, Amanda stopped at the intersection. A left turn would bring her past the marina and eventually to Tuck’s. A right turn would lead her out of town, eventually becoming the rural highway she’d follow on her way back home. Straight ahead, beyond a wrought-iron fence, was the cemetery. It was the largest in Oriental, the place where Dr. David Bonner had been laid to rest. Dawson, she remembered, had said he might drop by on his way out of town.

The gates to the cemetery were open. She scanned the half-dozen cars and trucks in the parking lot, searching for his rental car, and her breath caught when she spotted it. Three days ago, he’d parked it beside hers when he’d arrived at Tuck’s. Earlier that morning, she’d stood beside it as he’d kissed her one last time.

Dawson was here.

We’re still young
, he’d told her.
We still have time to make this right.

Her foot was on the brake. On the main road, a minivan rumbled past, momentarily obscuring her view, heading toward downtown. The road was otherwise deserted.

If she crossed the road and parked, she knew she’d be able to find him. She thought of Tuck’s letter, the years of grief he had endured without Clara, and Amanda knew she’d made the wrong decision. She couldn’t imagine a life without Dawson.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the scene unfold. She would surprise Dawson at Dr. Bonner’s grave and could hear herself saying that she’d been wrong to leave. She could feel her happiness as he took her in his arms once more, knowing they were meant to be together.

If she went to him again, she knew she’d follow him anywhere. Or he’d follow her. But even then, her responsibilities continued to press down on her, and ever so slowly, she removed her foot from the brake. Instead of going straight, she found herself suddenly turning the wheel, a sob catching in her chest as she headed onto the main road, the car pointing toward home.

She began to speed up, trying again to convince herself that her decision was the correct one, the only one she could realistically make. Behind her, the cemetery receded into the distance.

“Dawson, forgive me,” she whispered, wishing he could somehow hear her, wishing she’d never had to say those words at all.

A rustling behind him interrupted Dawson’s reverie, and he scrambled to his feet. Startled, he recognized her instantly but found himself speechless.

“You’re here,” Marilyn Bonner stated. “At my husband’s grave.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his gaze. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“But you did,” Marilyn said. “And you came here recently, too.” When Dawson didn’t respond, she nodded at the flowers. “I
make it a point to come by after church. They weren’t here last weekend, and they’re too fresh to have been placed here earlier in the week. I’m guessing… Friday?”

Dawson swallowed before answering. “In the morning.”

Her gaze was unflinching. “You used to do that a long time ago, too. After you got out of prison? That was you, right?”

Dawson said nothing.

“I thought so,” she said. She sighed as she took a step closer to the marker. Dawson moved aside, making room as Marilyn focused on the inscription. “A lot of people put flowers out for David after he died. And that went on for a year or two, but after that, people stopped coming by, I guess. Except for me. For a while, I was the only one bringing them, and then, about four years after he died, I started seeing other flowers again. Not all the time, but enough to make me curious. I had no idea who was responsible. I asked my parents, I asked my friends, but none of them would admit to it. For a short time, I even wondered if David had been seeing someone else. Can you believe that?” She shook her head and drew a long breath. “It wasn’t until the flowers stopped arriving that I realized it was you. I knew you’d gotten out of jail and that you were on probation here. I also learned that you left town about a year later. It made me so…
angry
to think you’d been doing that all along.” She crossed her arms, as if trying to close herself off from the memory. “And then, this morning, I saw the flowers again. I knew it meant that you’d come back. I wasn’t sure you’d come here today… but sure enough, you did.”

Dawson shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here. “I won’t visit or bring flowers again,” he muttered. “You have my word.”

She looked at him. “And you think that makes it okay that you’ve come here at all? Considering what you did in the first place? Considering that my husband is here, instead of with me? That he missed the chance to watch his children grow up?”

“No,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “Because you still feel guilty about what you did. That’s why you’ve been sending us money all these years, am I right?”

He wanted to lie to her but couldn’t.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“Since the first check,” she said. “You’d stopped by my house just a couple of weeks earlier, remember? It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together.” She hesitated. “You wanted to apologize, didn’t you? In person. When you came to the porch that day?”