Rescue

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Rescue By Nicholas Sparks

Chapter One

Why had this happened? Why, of all the children, was Kyle the one?

Back in the car after stopping for gas, Denise hit the highwayagain, staying ahead of the storm. For the next twenty minutes rainfell steadily but not ominously, and she watched the wipers push thewater back and forth while she made her way back to Edenton, NorthCarolina. Her Diet Coke sat between the emergency brake and thedriver's seat, and though she knew it wasn't good for her, shefinished the last of it and immediately wished she'd bought another.The extra caffeine, she hoped, would keep her alert and focused onthe drive, instead of on Kyle. But Kyle was always there.

Kyle. What could she say? He'd once been part of her, she'd heardhis heart beating at twelve weeks, she'd felt his movements withinher the last five months of her pregnancy. After his birth, whilestill in the delivery room, she took one look at him and couldn'tbelieve there was anything more beautiful in the world. That feelinghadn't changed, although she wasn't in any way a perfect mother.These days she simply did the best job she could, accepting the goodwith the bad, looking for joys in the little things. With Kyle, theywere sometimes hard to find.

She'd done her best to be patient with him over the last four years,but it hadn't always been easy. Once, while he was still a toddler,she'd momentarily placed her hand over his mouth to quiet him, buthe'd been screaming for over five hours after staying awake allnight, and tired parents everywhere might find this a forgivableoffense. After that, though, she'd done her best to keep heremotions in check. When she felt her frustration rising, she slowlycounted to ten before doing anything; when that didn't work, sheleft the room to collect herself. Usually it helped, but this wasboth a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because she knew thatpatience was necessary to help him; it was a curse because it madeher question her own abilities as a parent.

Kyle had been born four years to the day after her mother had diedof a brain aneurysm, and though not usually given to believing insigns, Denise could hardly regard that as a coincidence. Kyle, shefelt sure, was a gift from God. Kyle, she knew, had been sent toreplace her family. Other than him, she was alone in the world. Herfather had died when she was four, she had no siblings, hergrandparents on both sides had passed away. Kyle immediately becamethe sole recipient of the love she had to offer. But fate isstrange, fate is unpredictable. Though she showered Kyle withattention, it somehow hadn't been enough. Now she led a life shehadn't anticipated, a life where Kyle's daily progression wascarefully logged in a notebook. Now she led a life completelydedicated to her son. Kyle, of course, didn't complain about thethings they did every day. Kyle, unlike other children, nevercomplained about anything. She glanced in the rearview mirror.

"What are you thinking about, sweetie?"

Kyle was watching the rain as it blew against the windows, his headturned sideways. His blanket was in his lap. He hadn't said anythingsince he'd been in the car, and he turned at the sound of her voice.

She waited for his response. But there was nothing.

Denise Holton lived in a house that had once been owned by hergrandparents. After their deaths it had become her mother's, theneventually it had passed on to her. It wasn't much-a smallramshackle building set on three acres, built in the 1920s. The twobedrooms and the living room weren't too bad, but the kitchen was indire need of modern appliances and the bathroom didn't have ashower. At both the front and back of the house the porches weresagging, and without the portable fan she sometimes felt as if shewould bake to death, but because she could live there rent-free, itwas exactly what she needed. It had been her home for the past threemonths.

Staying in Atlanta, the place she'd grown up, would have beenimpossible. Once Kyle was born, she'd used the money her mother hadleft her to stay at home with him. At the time, she considered it atemporary leave of absence. Once he was a little older, she hadplanned to go back to teaching. The money, she knew, would run outeventually, and she had to earn a living. Besides, teaching wassomething she'd loved. She'd missed her students and fellow teachersafter her first week away. Now, years later, she was still at homewith Kyle and the world of teaching in a school was nothing but avague and distant memory, something more akin to a dream than areality. She couldn't remember a single lesson plan or the names ofthe students she had taught. If she didn't know better, she wouldhave sworn that she'd never done it at all.

Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realitiesof grief. Her father, her mother, her grandparents-all gone beforeshe turned twenty-one. At that point in her life she'd been to fivedifferent funeral homes yet legally couldn't enter a bar to wash thesorrow away. She'd suffered more than her fair share of challenges,but God, it seemed, couldn't stop at just that. Like Job'sstruggles, hers continued to go on. "Middle-class lifestyle?" Notanymore. "Friends you've grown up with?" You must leave them behind."A job to enjoy?" It is too much to ask. And Kyle, the sweet,wonderful boy for whom all this was done-in many ways he was still amystery to her.

Instead of teaching she worked the evening shift at a diner calledEights, a busy hangout on the outskirts of Edenton. The owner there,Ray Toler, was a sixty-something black man who'd run the place forthirty years. He and his wife had raised six kids, all of whom wentto college. Copies of their diplomas hung along the back wall, andeveryone who ate there knew about them. Ray made sure of that. Healso liked to talk about Denise. She was the only one, he liked tosay, who'd ever handed him a risumi when interviewing for the job.

Ray was a man who understood poverty, a man who understood kindness,a man who understood how hard it was for single mothers. "In theback of the building, there's a small room," he'd said when he hiredher. "You can bring your son with you, as long as he doesn't get inthe way." Tears formed in her eyes when he showed it to her. Therewere two cots, a night-light, a place where Kyle would be safe. Thenext evening Kyle went to bed in that small room as soon as shestarted on her shift; hours later she loaded him in the car and tookhim back home. Since then that routine hadn't changed.

She worked four nights a week, five hours a shift, earning barelyenough to get by. She'd sold her Honda for an old but reliableDatsun two years ago, pocketing the difference. That money, alongwith everything else from her mother, had long since been spent.She'd become a master of budgeting, a master of cutting corners. Shehadn't bought new clothes for herself since the Christmas beforelast; though her furniture was decent, they were remnants fromanother life. She didn't subscribe to magazines, she didn't havecable television, her stereo was an old boom box from college. Thelast movie she'd seen on the silver screen was Schindler's List. Sheseldom made long-distance phone calls to her friends. She had $238in the bank. Her car was nineteen years old, with enough miles onthe engine to have circled the world five times.

None of those things mattered, though. Only Kyle was important.

But never once had he told her that he loved her.

On those evenings she didn't work at the diner, Denise usually satin the rocking chair on the porch out back, a book across her lap.She enjoyed reading outside, where the rise and fall of chirpingcrickets was somehow soothing in its monotony. Her home wassurrounded by oak and cypress and mockernut hickory trees, alldraped heavily in Spanish moss. Sometimes, when the moonlightslanted through them just right, shadows that looked like exoticanimals splashed across the gravel walkway.

In Atlanta she used to read for pleasure. Her tastes ran the gamutfrom Steinbeck and Hemingway to Grisham and King. Though those typesof books were available at the local library, she never checked themout anymore. Instead she used the computers near the reading room,which had free access to the Internet. She searched through clinicalstudies sponsored by major universities, printing the documentswhenever she found something relevant. The files she kept had grownto nearly three inches wide.

On the floor beside her chair she had an assortment of psychologicaltextbooks as well. Expensive, they'd made serious dents in herbudget. Yet the hope was always there, and after ordering them, shewaited anxiously for them to arrive. This time, she liked to think,she would find something that helped.

Once they came, she would sit for hours, studying the information.With the lamp a steady blaze behind her, she perused theinformation, things she'd usually read before. Still, she didn'trush. Occasionally she took notes, other times she simply folded thepage and highlighted the information. An hour would pass, maybe two,before she'd finally close the book, finished for the night. She'dstand, shaking the stiffness from her joints. After bringing thebooks to her small desk in the living room, she would check on Kyle,then head back outside.

The gravel walkway led to a path through the trees, eventually to abroken fence that lined her property. She and Kyle would wander thatway during the day, she walked it alone at night. Strange noiseswould filter from everywhere: from above came the screech of an owl;over there, a rustle through the underbrush; off to the side, askitter along a branch. Coastal breezes moved the leaves, a soundsimilar to that of the ocean; moonlight drifted in and out. But thepath was straight, she knew it well. Past the fence, the forestpressed in around her. More sounds, less light, but still she movedforward. Eventually the darkness became almost stifling. By then shecould hear the water; the Chowan River was close. Another grove oftrees, a quick turn to the right, and all of a sudden it was as ifthe world had unfolded itself before her. The river, wide and slowmoving, was finally visible. Powerful, eternal, as black as time.She would cross her arms and gaze at it, taking it in, letting thecalm it inspired wash over her. She would stay a few minutes, seldomlonger, since Kyle was still in the house.

Then she'd sigh and turn from the river, knowing it was time to go.