Nights in Rodanthe Read Online Free PDF

leaving Paul at home. Paul found time to go to some of the major events in his son’s life, those things that happened
     once or twice a year, but he missed most everything else.
    He convinced himself that he was working for the family. Or for Martha, who’d struggled with him in the early years. Or for
     the memory of his father. Or for Mark’s future. But deep down, he knew he was doing it for himself.
    If he could list his major regret about those years now, it would be about his son; yet despite Paul’s absence from his life,
     Mark surprised him by deciding to become a doctor. After Mark had been accepted to medical school, Paul spread the word around
     the hospital corridors, pleased by the thought that his son would join him in the profession. Now, he thought, they would
     have more time together, and he remembered taking Mark to lunch in the hopes of convincing him to become a surgeon. Mark simply
     shook his head.
    “That’s your life,” Mark told him, “and it’s not a life that interests me at all. To be honest, I feel sorry for you.”
    The words stung. They had an argument. Mark made bitter accusations, Paul grew furious, and Mark ended up storming out of
     the restaurant. Paul refused to talk to him for the next couple of weeks, and Mark made no attempt to make amends. Weeks turned
     into months, then into years. Though Mark continued the warm relationship he had with his mother, he avoided coming home when
     he knew his father was around.
    Paul handled the estrangement with his son in the only way he knew. His workload stayed the same, he ran his usual five miles
     a day; in the mornings, he studied the financial pages in the newspaper. But he could see the sadness in Martha’s eyes, and
     there were moments, usually late at night, when he wondered how to repair the rift with his son. Part of him wanted to pick
     up the phone and call, but he never found the will to do so. Mark, he knew from Martha, was doing fine without him. Instead
     of becoming a surgeon, Mark became a family practitioner, and after taking several months to develop the skills he needed,
     he left the country to volunteer his services to an international relief organization. Though it was noble, Paul couldn’t
     help but think he’d done it to be as far away from his father as possible.
    Two weeks after Mark had gone, Martha filed for divorce.
    If Mark’s words had once made him angry, Martha’s words left him stunned. He started to try to talk her out of it, but Martha
     gently cut him off.
    “Will you really miss me?” she said. “We hardly know each other anymore.”
    “I can change,” he said.
    Martha smiled. “I know you can. And you should. But you should do it because you want to, not because you think I want you
     to.”
    Paul spent the next couple of weeks in a daze, and a month after that, after he had completed a routine operation, sixty-two-year-old
     Jill Torrelson of Rodanthe, North Carolina, died in the recovery room.
    It was that terrible event, following on the heels of the others, he knew, that had led him to this road now.

    After finishing his coffee, Paul got back in the car and made his way to the highway again. In forty-five minutes, he’d reached
     Morehead City. He crossed over the bridge to Beaufort, followed the turns, then headed down east, toward Cedar Point.
    There was a peaceful beauty to the coastal lowlands, and he slowed the car, taking it all in. Life, he knew, was different
     here. As he drove, he marveled at the people driving in the opposite direction who waved at him, and the group of older men,
     sitting on a bench outside a gas station, who seemed to have nothing better to do than watch the cars pass by.
    In midafternoon, he caught the ferry to Ocracoke, a village at the southern end of the Outer Banks. There were only four other
     cars on the ferry, and on the two-hour ride, he visited with a few of the other passengers. He spent the night at a motel
     in Ocracoke, woke when the