Nicholas Sparks - The Last Song

She flashed on the memory of their evenings together at her dad’s house, the smell of his cooking and Jonah’s shouts of laughter as they played liar’s poker. She felt suddenly dizzy. It was all so surreal, to see Will here on this terrible day. Part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and apologize for the way she had let him go. But another part, mute and paralyzed from the loss of her dad, wondered whether she was still the same person Will had once loved. So much had happened since the summer.

She shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “How’s Vanderbilt?” she finally asked.

“It’s what I expected.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Instead of answering, he nodded at the rental car. “I take it you’re heading home, huh?”

“I’ve got to catch a plane in a little while.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, hating how self-conscious she felt. It was as if they were strangers. “Are you finished with the semester?”

“No, I’ve got finals next week, so I’m flying back tonight. My classes are harder than I expected. I’m probably going to have to pull some all-nighters.”

“You’ll be home for break soon. A few walks on the beach and you’ll be good as new.” Ronnie summoned an encouraging smile.

“Actually, my parents are hauling me off to Europe as soon as I’m finished. We’ll spend Christmas in France. They think it’s important for me to see the world.”

“That sounds like fun.”

He shrugged. “What about you?”

She looked away, her mind flashing unbidden to her last days with her dad.

“I think I’m going to audition at Juilliard,” she said slowly. “We’ll see if they’ll still have me.”

For the first time, he smiled, and she caught a glimpse of the spontaneous joy he had shown so often during those warm summer months. How she had missed his joy, his warmth, during the long march of the fall and winter. “Yeah? Good for you. And I’m sure you’ll do great.”

She hated the way they were talking around the edges of things. It felt so… wrong, given everything they’d shared over the summer and all they’d been through together. She drew a long breath, trying to keep her emotions in check. But it was just so hard right now, and she was so tired. The next words came out almost automatically.

“I want to apologize for the things I said to you. I didn’t mean them. There was just so much going on. I shouldn’t have taken it all out on you…”

He took a step toward her and reached for her arm. “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”

At his touch, she felt all the pent-up emotion of the day burst to the surface, overwhelming her fragile composure, and she squeezed her eyes closed, trying to stop the tears. “But if you’d done what I demanded, then Scott…”

He shook his head. “Scott’s okay. Believe it or not, he even got his scholarship. And Marcus is in jail-”

“But I shouldn’t have said those awful things to you!” she interrupted. “The summer shouldn’t have ended like that. We shouldn’t have ended like that, and I’m the one who caused it. You don’t know how much it hurts to think that I drove you away…”

“You didn’t drive me away,” he said gently. “I was leaving. You knew that.”

“But we haven’t talked, we haven’t written, and it was just so hard to watch what was happening to my dad… I wanted so much to talk to you, but I knew you were mad at me-”

As she began to cry, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. His embrace somehow made everything better and worse at the same time.

“Shhh,” he murmured, “it’s okay. I was never as mad as you thought I was.”

She squeezed him harder, trying to cling to what they’d shared. “But you only called twice.”

“Because I knew your dad needed you,” he said, “and I wanted you to concentrate on him, not me. I remember how it was when Mikey died, and I remember wishing that I’d had more time with him. I couldn’t do that to you.”

She buried her face in his shoulder as he held her. All that she could think was that she needed him. She needed his arms around her, needed him to hold her and whisper that they’d find a way to be together.

She felt him lean into her and heard him murmur her name. When she pulled back, she saw him smiling down at her.

“You’re wearing the bracelet,” he whispered, touching her wrist.

“In my thoughts forever.” She gave a shaky smile.

He tilted her chin so he could stare closely into her eyes. “I’m going to call you, okay? After I get back from Europe.”

She nodded, knowing it was all they had, yet knowing it wasn’t enough. Their lives were on separate tracks, now and forever. The summer was over, and they were each moving on.

She closed her eyes, hating the truth.

“Okay,” she whispered.

In the weeks since her dad’s funeral, Ronnie continued to experience some emotional upheaval, but she supposed that was to be expected. There were days when she woke with a feeling of dread, and she would spend hours reliving those last few months with her dad, too paralyzed with grief and regret to cry. After such an intense period together, it was hard for her to accept that he was suddenly gone, unreachable to her no matter how much she needed him. She felt his absence with a knife-edged sharpness she couldn’t contain, and it sometimes left her in a bitter mood.

But those mornings weren’t as common as they’d been during the first week she was home, and she sensed that they’d become less frequent over time. Staying with and caring for her dad had changed her, and she knew that she would survive. That’s what her dad would have wanted, and she could almost hear him reminding her that she was stronger than she realized. He wouldn’t want her to mourn for months; he would want her to live her life much the way he had in the final year of his own life. More than anything, he wanted her to embrace life and flourish.

Jonah, too. She knew her dad would want her to help Jonah move on, and since she’d been home, she’d spent a lot of time with him. Less than a week after they returned, Jonah was released from school for Christmas break, and she’d used the time to make special excursions with him: She’d taken him ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and brought him to the top of the Empire State Building; they’d visited the dinosaur exhibits at the Museum of Natural History, and she’d even spent most of one afternoon at FAO Schwarz. She’d always considered such things touristy and unbearably clichéd, but Jonah had enjoyed their outings, and surprisingly, so had she.

They spent quiet time together, too. She sat with him while he watched cartoons, drew pictures with him at the kitchen table, and once, at his request, she’d even camped out in his room, sleeping on the floor beside his bed. In those private moments, they sometimes reminisced about the summer and told stories about their dad, which they both found comforting.

Still, she knew Jonah was struggling in his own ten-year-old way. It seemed as though something specific was bothering him, and it came to a head one night when they’d gone for a walk after dinner one blustery night. An icy wind was blowing, and Ronnie had her hands tucked deep into her pockets when Jonah finally turned to her, peeking up from the depths of his parka hood.

“Is Mom sick?” he asked. “Like Dad was?”

The question was so surprising that it took her a moment to respond. She stopped, squatting down so she could be at eye level. “No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

“Because the two of you don’t fight anymore. Like when you stopped fighting with Dad.”

She could see the fear in his eyes and even, in a childlike way, could understand the logic of his thoughts. It was true, after all-she and her mom hadn’t argued once since she’d returned. “She’s fine. We just got tired of fighting, so we don’t do it anymore.”

He searched her face. “You promise?”

She pulled him close, holding him tight. “I promise.”

Her time with their dad had altered even her relationship with her hometown. It took some time to get accustomed to the city again. She wasn’t used to the relentless noise or the constant presence of other people; she had forgotten how the sidewalks were endlessly shadowed by the enormous buildings around her and the way people rushed everywhere, even in the narrow grocery store aisles. Nor did she feel much like socializing; when Kayla had called to see if she wanted to go out, she’d passed on the opportunity, and Kayla hadn’t called again. Though she supposed they would always share memories, it would be a different sort of friendship from this point on. But Ronnie was okay with that; between being with Jonah and practicing the piano, she had little time for anything else.

Because her dad’s piano had yet to be shipped back to the apartment, she took the subway to Juilliard and practiced there. She’d called on her first day back in New York and had spoken to the director. He’d been good friends with her dad and had apologized for missing the funeral. He sounded surprised-and yes, excited, she thought-to hear from her. When she told him that she was reconsidering applying to Juilliard, he arranged for an accelerated audition schedule and even helped expedite her application.

Only three weeks after arriving back in New York, she’d opened her audition with the song she’d composed with her dad. She was a little rusty in her classical technique-three weeks wasn’t much time to prepare for a high-level audition-but as she left the auditorium, she thought her dad would have been proud of her. Then again, she thought with a smile as she tucked his beloved score under her arm, he always had been.

Since the audition, she’d been playing three or four hours a day. The director had arranged to let her use the school’s practice rooms, and she was beginning to tinker with some fledgling compositions. She thought of her dad often while sitting in the practice rooms, the same rooms that he had once sat in. Occasionally, when the sun was setting, the rays would slice between the buildings around her, throwing long bars of light on the floor. And always when she saw the light, she would think back to his window at the church and the cascade of light she’d seen at the funeral.