Read Online A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks - Free Book Online

beauty. The draping veils
of Spanish moss only added to the feeling that this part of the world hadn’t
changed in the last thousand years.
    By the time
Jonah’s breathing had fallen into deep, regular patterns again, it was nearly
fiveA .M. and Miles knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.  Instead, after putting Jonah back in bed, he
went in the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Sitting at the table, he
rubbed his eyes and his face, getting the blood flowing again, then looked up.
Outside the window, the sky was beginning to glow silver on the horizon and
splinters of daybreak filtered through the trees.
    Miles found
himself thinking about Sarah Andrews once more.  He was attracted to her, that much was certain. He hadn’t reacted
that strongly to a woman in what seemed like forever. He’d been attracted to
Missy, of course, but that was fifteen years ago. A lifetime ago. And it wasn’t
that he wasn’t attracted to Missy during the last few years of their marriage,
because he was.  It’s just that the
attraction seemed different, somehow. The initial infatuation he’d felt when
meeting Missy the first time—the desperate adolescent desire to learn
everything he could about her—had been replaced with something deeper and more
mature over the years. With Missy, there weren’t any surprises. He knew how she
looked just after getting out of bed in the mornings, he’d seen the exhaustion
etched in every feature after giving birth to Jonah. He knew her—her feelings,
her fears, the things she liked and didn’t. But this attraction for Sarah felt
. . .new, and it made him feel new as well, as if anything were possible. He
hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that feeling.  But where would it go from here? That was the part he still
wasn’t sure about.  He couldn’t predict
what, if anything, would happen with Sarah. He didn’t know anything about her;
in the end, they might not be compatible at all. There were a thousand things
that could doom a relationship, and he wasn’t blind to them.  Still, he’d been attracted to her. . . .
    Miles shook his
head, forcing the thought away. No reason to dwell on it, except for the reason
that the attraction had once again reminded him that he wanted to start over.
He wanted to find someone again; he didn’t want to live the rest of his life
alone. Some people could do that, he knew. There were people here in town who’d
lost their spouse and never remarried, but he wasn’t wired that way and never
had been. He’d never felt as if he’d been missing out on something when he’d
been married. He didn’t look at his single friends and wish that he could lead
their life—dating, playing the field, falling in and out of love as the seasons
changed. That just wasn’t him. He loved being a husband, he loved being a
father, he loved the stability that had come with all that, and he wanted to
have that again.
    But I probably
won’t. . . .
    Miles sighed
and looked out the window again. More light in the lower sky, still black
above. He rose from the table, went down the hall to peek in on Jonah—still asleep—then
pushed open the door to his own bedroom. In the shadows, he could see the
pictures he’d had framed, sitting on top of his chest of drawers and on the
bedstand. Though he couldn’t make out the features, he didn’t need to see them
clearly to know what they were: Missy sitting on the back porch, holding a
bouquet of wildflowers; Missy and Jonah, their faces close to the lens,
grinning broadly; Missy and Miles walking down the aisle . . .  Miles entered and sat on the bed. Next to
the photo was the manila file filled with information he’d compiled himself, on
his own time. Because sheriffs didn’t have jurisdiction over traffic
accidents—nor would he have been allowed to investigate, even if the sheriffs
had—he’d followed in the footsteps of the highway patrol, interviewing the same
people, asking the same questions, and sifting