Nights in Rodanthe
Read Nights in Rodanthe Online
Authors: Nicholas Sparks
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #FIC027000
Nights in Rodanthe
AND #1
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
NICHOLAS SPARKS
“Extremely hard to put down… a love story and a good love story at that.”
—
Boston Herald
“The master of the love story genre… vivid characters… He’s also adept at bringing a background to life.”
—
Amarillo Globe-News
“Worth spending a night with.”
—
People
“A page-turner.”
—
Connecticut Post
“With immeasurable intensity and precision… Sparks is once again exploring the mysterious ways of the heart.”
—
Writer’s Digest
A Bend in the Road
“Sweet, accessible, uplifting… expect instant bestsellerdom.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A powerful tale of true love.”
—
Booklist
“A charming and thoughtful love story… Don’t miss it; this is a book that’s light on the surface but with subtle depths.”
—BookLoons.com
“A moving story. Nicholas Sparks fans will love it.”
—TheBookHaven.net
The Rescue
“A modern master of fateful love stories.”
—
BookPage
“A romantic page-turner… Sparks’s fans won’t be disappointed.”
—
Glamour
magazine
“All of Sparks’s trademark elements—love, loss, and small-town life—are present in this terrific read.”
—
Booklist
A Walk to Remember
“An extraordinary book… touching, at times riveting… a book you won’t soon forget.”
—
Sunday New York Post
“A sweet tale of young but everlasting love.”
—
Chicago Sun-Times
“Bittersweet… a tragic yet spiritual love story.”
—
Variety
“Sparks proves once again that he is a master at pulling heartstrings… it will enthrall Sparks’s numerous fans.”
—
Booklist
Message in a Bottle
“The novel’s unabashed emotion—and an unexpected turn—will put tears in your eyes.”
—
People
“Glows with moments of tenderness… has the potential to delve deeply into the mysteries of eternal love.”
—
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Deeply moving, beautifully written, and extremely romantic.”
—
Booklist
“Brew the tea or pour a glass of wine—whatever is your pleasure. And settle in… you’re in for another treat.”
—
Oakland Press
The Notebook
“Nicholas Sparks… will not let you go. His novel shines.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“Proves that good things come in small packages… a classic tale of love.”
—
Christian Science Monitor
“The lyrical beauty of this touching love story… will captivate the heart of every reader… and establish Nicholas Sparks as
a gifted novelist.”
—
Denver Rocky Mountain News
The Notebook
Message in a Bottle
A Walk to Remember
The Rescue
A Bend in the Road
The Guardian
The Wedding
Three Weeks with My Brother
(with Micah Sparks)
True Believer
At First Sight
Dear John
The Choice
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Nicholas Sparks
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
Originally published in hardcover by Hachette Book Group USA.
First eBook Edition: September 2002
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2728-7
Contents
For Landon, Lexie, and Savannah
Nights in Rodanthe,
as with all my novels, couldn’t have been written without the patience, love, and support of my wife, Cathy. She only gets
more beautiful every year.
Since the dedication is to my other three children, I have to acknowledge both Miles and Ryan (who got a dedication in
Message in a Bottle
). I love you guys!
I’d also like to thank Theresa Park and Jamie Raab, my agent and editor respectively. Not only do they both have wonderful
instincts, but they never let me slide when it comes to my writing. Though I sometimes grumble about the challenges this presents,
the final product is what it is because of those two. If they like the story, odds are that you will, too.
Larry Kirshbaum and Maureen Egen at Warner Books also deserve my thanks. When I go to New York, spending time with them is
like visiting with my family. They’ve made Warner Books a wonderful home for me.
Denise Di Novi, the producer of both
Message in a Bottle
and
A Walk to Remember,
is not only skilled at what she does, but someone I trust and respect. She’s a good friend, and she deserves my thanks for
all she has done—and still does—for me.
Richard Green and Howie Sanders, my agents in Hollywood, are great friends, great people, and great at what they do. Thanks,
guys.
Scott Schwimer, my attorney and friend, always watches out for me. Thank you.
In publicity, I have to thank Jennifer Romanello, Emi Battaglia, and Edna Farley; Flag and the rest of the cover design people;
Courtenay Valenti and Lorenzo De Bonaventura of Warner Bros.; Hunt Lowry and Ed Gaylord II, of Gaylord Films; Mark Johnson
and Lynn Harris of New Line Cinema; they have all been great to work with. Thanks, everyone.
Mandy Moore and Shane West were both wonderful in
A Walk to Remember,
and I appreciate their enthusiasm for the project.
Then there is family (who might get a kick out of seeing their names here): Micah, Christine, Alli, and Peyton; Bob, Debbie,
Cody, and Cole; Mike and Parnell; Henrietta, Charles, and Glenara; Duke and Marge; Dianne and John; Monte and Gail; Dan and
Sandy; Jack, Carlin, Joe, Elaine, and Mark; Michelle and Lemont; Paul, John, and Caroline; Tim, Joannie, and Papa Paul.
And, of course, how can I forget Paul and Adrienne?
T
hree years earlier, on a warm November morning in 1999, Adrienne Willis had returned to the Inn and at first glance had thought
it unchanged, as if the small Inn were impervious to sun and sand and salted mist. The porch had been freshly painted, and
shiny black shutters sandwiched rectangular white-curtained windows on both floors like offset piano keys. The cedar siding
was the color of dusty snow. On either side of the building, sea oats waved a greeting, and sand formed a curving dune that
changed imperceptibly with each passing day as individual grains shifted from one spot to the next.
With the sun hovering among the clouds, the air had a luminescent quality, as though particles of light were suspended in
the haze, and for a moment Adrienne felt she’d traveled back in time. But looking closer, she gradually began to notice changes
that cosmetic work couldn’t hide: decay at the corners of the windows, lines of rust along the roof, water stains near the
gutters. The Inn seemed to be winding down, and though she knew there was nothing she could do to change it, Adrienne remembered
closing her eyes, as if to magically blink it back to what it had once been.
Now, standing in the kitchen of her own home a few months into her sixtieth year, Adrienne hung up the phone after speaking
with her daughter. She sat at the table, reflecting on that last visit to the Inn, remembering the long weekend she’d once
spent there. Despite all that had happened in the years that had passed since then, Adrienne still held tight to the belief
that love was the essence of a full and wonderful life.
Outside, rain was falling. Listening to the gentle tapping against the glass, she was thankful for its steady sense of familiarity.
Remembering those days always aroused a mixture of emotions in her—something akin to, but not quite, nostalgia. Nostalgia
was often romanticized; with these memories, there was no reason to make them any more romantic than they already were. Nor
did she share these memories with others. They were hers, and over the years, she’d come to view them as a sort of museum
exhibit, one in which she was both the curator and the only patron. And in an odd way, Adrienne had come to believe that she’d
learned more in those five days than she had in all the years before or after.
She was alone in the house. Her children were grown, her father had passed away in 1996, and she’d been divorced from Jack
for seventeen years now. Though her sons sometimes urged her to find someone to spend her remaining years with, Adrienne had
no desire to do so. It wasn’t that she was wary of men; on the contrary, even now she occasionally found her eyes drawn to
younger men in the supermarket. Since they were sometimes only a few years older than her own children, she was curious about
what they would think if they noticed her staring at them. Would they dismiss her out of hand? Or would they smile back at
her, finding her interest charming? She wasn’t sure. Nor did she know if it was possible for them to look past the graying
hair and wrinkles and see the woman she used to be.
Not that she regretted being older. People nowadays talked incessantly about the glories of youth, but Adrienne had no desire
to be young again. Middle-aged, maybe, but not young. True, she missed some things—bounding up the stairs, carrying more than
one bag of groceries at a time, or having the energy to keep up with the grandchildren as they raced around the yard—but she’d
gladly exchange them for the experiences she’d had, and those came only with age. It was the fact that she could look back
on life and realize she wouldn’t have changed much at all that made sleep come easy these days.
Besides, youth had its problems. Not only did she remember them from her own life, but she’d watched her children as they’d
struggled through the angst of adolescence and the uncertainty and chaos of their early twenties. Even though two of them
were now in their thirties and one was almost there, she sometimes wondered when motherhood would become less than a full-time
job.
Matt was thirty-two, Amanda was thirty-one, and Dan had just turned twenty-nine. They’d all gone to college, and she was proud
of that, since there’d been a time when she wasn’t sure any of them would. They were honest, kind, and self-sufficient, and
for the most part, that was all she’d ever wanted for them. Matt worked as an accountant, Dan was the sportscaster on the
evening news out in Greenville, and both were married with families of their own. When they’d come over for Thanksgiving,
she remembered sitting off to the side and watching them scurry after their children, feeling strangely satisfied at the way
everything had turned out for her sons.
As always, things were a little more complicated for her daughter.
The kids were fourteen, thirteen, and eleven when Jack moved out of the house, and each child had dealt with the divorce in
a different way. Matt and Dan took out their aggression on the athletic fields and by occasionally acting up in school, but
Amanda had been the most affected. As the middle child sandwiched between brothers, she’d always been the most sensitive,
and as a teenager, she’d needed her father in the house, if only to distract from the worried stares of her mother. She began
dressing in what Adrienne considered rags, hung with a crowd that stayed out late, and swore she was deeply in love with at
least a dozen different boys over the next couple of years. After school, she spent hours in her room listening to music that
made the walls vibrate, ignoring her mother’s calls for dinner. There were periods when she would barely speak to her mother
or brothers for days.