The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks | Page 3

even with the
benefit of hindsight.

1

Ronnie Six months earlier
Ronnie slouched in the front seat of the car, wondering why on earth her mom and dad hated
her so much. It was the only thing that co uld explain why she was here visiting her dad, in this
godforsaken southern armpit of a place, instead of spending time with her friends back home in
Manhattan. No, scratch that. She wasn’t just visiting her dad. Visiting implied a weekend or two, maybe
even a week. She supposed she could live with a visit. But to stay until late August? Pretty much
the entire summer? That was banishment, and fo r most of the nine hours it had taken them to
drive down, she’d felt like a prisoner being tr ansferred to a rural penitentiary. She couldn’t
believe her mom was actually going to make her go through with this.
Ronnie was so enveloped in misery, it took a second for her to recognize Mozart’s Sonata
no. 16 in C Major. It was one of the pieces she had performed at Carnegie Hall four years ago,
and she knew her mom had put it on while R onnie was sleeping. Too bad. Ronnie reached over
to turn it off. “Why’d you do that?” her mom said, frowning. “I like hearing you play.”
“I don’t.”
“How about if I turn the volume down?”
“Just stop, Mom. Okay? I’m not in the mood.”
Ronnie stared out the window, knowing full well that her mom’s lips had just formed a tight
seam. Her mom did that a lot these days. It was as if her lips were magnetized.
“I think I saw a pelican when we crossed the bridge to Wrightsville Beach,” her mom
commented with forced lightness. “Gee, that’s swell. Maybe you s hould call the Crocodile Hunter.”
“He died,” Jonah said, his voice floating up fr om the backseat, the sounds mingling with
those from his Game Boy. Her ten-year-old pain-i n-the-butt brother was addicted to the thing.
“Don’t you remember?” he went on. “It was really sad.” “Of course I remember.”
“You didn’t sound like you remembered.”
“Well, I did.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said what you just said.”
She didn’t bother to respond a third time. Her brot her always needed the last word. It drove
her crazy.
“Were you able to get any sleep at all?” her mom asked.
“Until you hit that pothole. Thanks for that, by the way. My head practically went through
the glass.” Her mom’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “I ’m glad to see your nap put you in a better
mood.”

Ronnie snapped her gum. Her mom hated that, which was the main reason she’d done it
pretty much nonstop as they’d driven down I-95. The interstate, in her humble opinion, was just
about the most boring stretch of roadway ever conceived. Unless someone was particularly fond
of greasy fast food, disgusting rest-stop bathrooms, and zillions of pine trees, it could lull a
person to sleep with its hypnotically ugly monotony.
She’d said those exact words to he r mother in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, but Mom
had ignored the comments every time. Aside from trying to make nice on the trip since it was the
last time they’d see each other for a while, Mom wasn’t one for conversation in the car. She
wasn’t all that comfortable driv ing, which wasn’t surprising sin ce they either rode the subways
or took cabs when they needed to ge t somewhere. In the apartment, though… that was a
different story. Mom had no qualms about getting in to things there, and the building super had
come by twice in the last couple of months to ask them to keep it down. Mom probably believed
that the louder she yelled about Ronnie’s grades, or Ronnie’s fr iends, or the fact that Ronnie
continually ignored her curfew, or the Incident—especially the Incident—the more likely it
would be that Ronnie would care. Okay, she wasn’t the worst mom. She really wasn’t. And when she was feeling generous,
Ronnie might even admit that she was pretty good as far as moms went. It was just that her mom
was stuck in some weird time warp in which kids never grew up, and Ronnie wished for the
hundredth time that she’d been born in May instead of August. That was when she’d turn
eighteen, and her mom wouldn’t be able to for ce her to do anything. Legally, she’d be old
enough