The Notebook (The Notebook #1)(7)

For the next eight years, he worked for Goldman. At first he was one of twelve employees, but as the years dragged on, the company grew, and he was promoted. By 1940 he had mastered the business and was running the entire operation, brokering the deals and managing a staff of thirty. The yard had become the largest scrap metal dealer on the East Coast.

During that time, he dated a few different women. He became serious with one, a waitress from the local diner with deep blue eyes and silky black hair. Although they dated for two years and had many good times together, he never came to feel the same way about her as he did about Allie.

But neither did he forget her. She was a few years older than he was, and it was she who taught him the ways to please a woman, the places to touch and kiss, where to linger, the things to whisper. They would sometimes spend an entire day in bed, holding each other and making the kind of love that fully satisfied both of them.

She had known they wouldn’t be together forever. Toward the end of their relationship she’d told him once, “I wish I could give you what you’re looking for, but I don’t know what it is. There’s a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. It’s as if I’m not the one you’re really with. Your mind is on someone else.”

He tried to deny it, but she didn’t believe him. “I’m a woman—I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you’re seeing someone else. It’s like you keep waiting for her to pop out of thin air to take you away from all this. . . .” A month later she visited him at work and told him she’d met someone else. He understood. They parted as friends, and the following year he received a postcard from her saying she was married. He hadn’t heard from her since.

While he was in New Jersey, he would visit his father once a year around Christmas. They’d spend some time fishing and talking, and once in a while they’d take a trip to the coast to go camping on the Outer Banks near Ocracoke.

In December 1941, when he was twenty-six, the war began, just as Goldman had predicted. Noah walked into his office the following month and informed Goldman of his intent to enlist, then returned to New Bern to say good-bye to his father. Five weeks later he found himself in boot camp. While there, he received a letter from Goldman thanking him for his work, together with a copy of a certificate entitling him to a small percentage of the scrap yard if it ever sold. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” the letter said. “You’re the finest young man who ever worked for me, even if you aren’t Jewish.”

He spent his next three years with Patton’s Third Army, tramping through deserts in North Africa and forests in Europe with thirty pounds on his back, his infantry unit never far from action. He watched his friends die around him; watched as some of them were buried thousands of miles from home. Once, while hiding in a foxhole near the Rhine, he imagined he saw Allie watching over him.

He remembered the war ending in Europe, then a few months later in Japan. Just before he was discharged, he received a letter from a lawyer in New Jersey representing Morris Goldman. Upon meeting the lawyer, he found out that Goldman had died a year earlier and his estate liquidated. The business had been sold, and Noah was given a check for almost seventy thousand dollars. For some reason he was oddly unexcited about it.

The following week he returned to New Bern and bought the house. He remembered bringing his father around later, showing him what he was going to do, pointing out the changes he intended to make. His father seemed weak as he walked around, coughing and wheezing. Noah was concerned, but his father told him not to worry, assuring him that he had the flu.

Less than one month later his father died of pneumonia and was buried next to his wife in the local cemetery. Noah tried to stop by regularly to leave some flowers; occasionally he left a note. And every night without fail he took a moment to remember him, then said a prayer for the man who’d taught him everything that mattered.

After reeling in the line, he put the gear away and went back to the house. His neighbor, Martha Shaw, was there to thank him, bringing three loaves of homemade bread and some biscuits in appreciation for what he’d done. Her husband had been killed in the war, leaving her with three children and a tired shack of a house to raise them in. Winter was coming, and he’d spent a few days at her place last week repairing her roof, replacing broken windows and sealing the others, and fixing her woodstove. Hopefully, it would be enough to get them through.

Once she’d left, he got in his battered Dodge truck and went to see Gus. He always stopped there when he was going to the store because Gus’s family didn’t have a car. One of the daughters hopped up and rode with him, and they did their shopping at Capers General Store. When he got home he didn’t unpack the groceries right away. Instead he showered, found a Budweiser and a book by Dylan Thomas, and went to sit on the porch.

She still had trouble believing it, even as she held the proof in her hands.

It had been in the newspaper at her parents’ house three Sundays ago. She had gone to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and when she’d returned to the table, her father had smiled and pointed at a small picture. “Remember this?”

He handed her the paper, and after an uninterested first glance, something in the picture caught her eye and she took a closer look. “It can’t be,” she whispered, and when her father looked at her curiously, she ignored him, sat down, and read the article without speaking. She vaguely remembered her mother coming to the table and sitting opposite her, and when she finally put aside the paper, her mother was staring at her with the same expression her father had just moments before.