REUNION

Summary

Neither Noah nor Allie can speak. It makes her feel guilty for just showing up without warning and everything that comes into her head seems somehow inappropriate, somehow lacking. She looks him over and sees how good he looks and then, she is finally able to say hello. Noah responds by saying, It's really you, isn't it? I can't believe it . . . When she hears the shock in his voice, she feels something twitch inside, something deep and old, something that makes her dizzy for just second. She feels as if she has finally come home. The two embrace, and amid her tears, she tells Noah how she had seen the article about his house in the newspaper. She also says she has come to tell him something, but for the moment, she is unable to do so. She changes the subject when Clementine comes out from under the porch. She notices that the dog is crippled and she asks how and why Noah ended up with her. He recognizes that she is making small talk for a reason - she is holding back, and he must be patient. That's when she realizes that in a great sense they now are strangers to each other and fourteen years apart may be too long.

The two of them then go for walk, and Allie walks just far enough ahead so that they do not touch. He looks at her and thinks about all the traits he most desires in a woman - intelligence, confidence, strength of spirit, passion, traits that inspire others to greatness. Allie, he thinks, has all of these traits. She is a living poem. Finally, Allie has the courage to tell Noah that she is engaged to Lon Hamilton, Jr., a member of one of the most powerful and influential families in the state. Noah asks her if he treats her well, and she considers the question as if for the first time. Then, she says that Lon is a good man and that Noah would like him. Their walk then takes them toward the oak tree and Noah reminds her of the good memories they had shared there. He reveals that it stands on his property now, because he couldn't stand for it to be turned into kitchen cabinets. She notes that he is still a poet.

Noah is surprised to learn that Allie lied to Lon about why she left for a few days. So he asks her if she loves him. She tells him yes, but he hears something in her tone as if she is trying to convince herself of something. As a result, he reminds her that if she really loves him, marrying him is fine, but if she has doubts, she shouldn't do it. She insists that she does love Lon, so Noah then asks if they can start over just as friends and kind of get to know each other again for a few days. He promises her to cook her a crab dinner from his own traps. She agrees and follows him to the dock while he pulls up the traps. He still looks so good to her. She steps onto the dock which squeezes like a rusty squeeze-box. Then, as she walks to the other side of the dock, she feels a sense of closure. She had felt compelled to come here and tell Noah she was engaged, and she is now sure he has accepted the news. However, she looks down and paces around until she finds the carving - a heart with the words Noah loves Allie inside it - carved the night before she left at the end of the summer. It makes her shiver and not just from the cold.

Once inside the house, Allie asks Noah if she can look around, and when she has toured some of the rooms, she expresses how wondrous the restoration is. She asks Noah why he worked so hard on it, and he thinks to himself, Ghosts. However, he doesn't voice his thoughts, just turns to the preparation of the dinner with Allie by his side. None of what is happening makes sense to him, but then Allie has always been surprising. He thinks about the painting above his fireplace which she had painted for him. He thinks of the desire in each color and can almost imagine what she had been thinking as she added each stroke.

While they wait for the crabs to soak, they sit on the porch and tell each other what had happened over the years they had been apart. Noah explains how he came into the money to restore the house, while Allie explains how her parents became concerned when they learned she was serious about Noah. She says that her mother told her, It's just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, as opposed to what we want. Her mother and father liked him, but they didn't think he deserved her. She understands his sadness at learning this, but she insists that this was also a terrible thing for a girl like her to learn - that status is more important than feelings. Noah also soon learns that Allison has no idea he had ever written to her. This makes it obvious that her mother had removed the letters without her daughter's knowledge. This makes her defend her mother as believing that once she left New Bern, a complete severing of any ties to Noah was the best way. However, she also tells him after he asks that she does believe they would have made it had they been allowed to be together. Noah continues his inquiries by asking what Lon is like. Allie tells him that all her friends are insanely jealous, because he is so handsome, sweet, and successful, but there's always going to be something missing in their relationship. When Noah asks why, she answers that she will always be looking for the kind of love she and Noah had had that summer.

Noah goes indoors to finish dinner, thinking, of course, about what is missing from both their lives, while Allie, at first, wishes she weren't engaged. She quickly curses herself, because she believes it isn't Noah she loves, but rather what they had once been. He was her first real love, so how could she expect to forget him? When Noah returns to the porch, he tells her he's glad she came and then asks her if she still paints. She admits she stopped, because her mother and father thought it wasn't fitting for a woman of her station to paint for a living. He then shows her the painting he has hung above his fireplace and she is shocked to see it is the one she had painted the summer they were together. He tells her that it makes him feel alive, and that he can stare at it for hours. She admits that she remembers working on it every day that summer, adding to it and changing it as their relationship changed. When she tells him that she doesn't think she can paint again, because it has been so long, he tells her with great fervor that she is so talented that being an artist could never disappear from her character. This is the moment when the chasm Allie has erected in her life begins to close, and she is amazed after all these years that he's somehow known exactly what she needs to hear. She wonders if she is falling in love with him again.

The timer in the kitchen goes off, breaking the emotional tension that is growing between them. Noah curses its timing, but together they prepare their dinner. He gives her one of his shirts to protect her clothes from the mess of the crabs, and she smells his distinctive, natural odor which brings back memories of their first date. They reminisce about Fin who died in the war, and Noah admits that he thinks of him often. This is all followed by conversation that makes up for their lost time. Afterwards, Allie tries to remember the last time she and Lon had talked this way. Lon was never comfortable sharing his thoughts and feelings. Now, Allie realizes what she has been missing, and so, without either of them being conscious of it, they begin to regain the intimacy, the bond of familiarity, they had once shared.

Once dinner is ended, Noah suggests the porch again and brings a quilt in case Allie is cold. He is still awed by her beauty and knows that something special happened at dinner - quite simply they have fallen in love again. He has fallen in love with the new Allie, not her memory, but then he had never really stopped, and this he realizes, is his destiny. He wonders what he can say to make her stay, but without the ability to come up with the right words, he says nothing, and knows, as a result, that he has failed. Then, Allie begs him to talk to her just like he did under the oak tree, and so he begins to recite passages from Whitman and Thomas, Tennyson and Browning. It warms her to hear him - to her, poetry wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding. Now she wants to wait as far as Lon is concerned, because he has no time for rocking chairs on porches or poetry read aloud. She wants something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversation in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second. As for Noah, his thoughts roll around all the nights he's sat on the porch looking at stars, never expecting to see her again. He wants to make love to her and to make her love him in return, but it seems impossible now that she's engaged.

Finally, Allie gets up to return to the inn where she's staying and when she starts to take off his shirt, he tells her to keep it. She's happy that he's offered, because she wants it as much as he wants her to have it. He summons his courage and asks if he can see her the next day. He figures she'll say that she doesn't think they should, but she surprises him by saying she'd like that, too. He tells her to meet him at his house at noon, that he knows just the place they can go. She drives away, and Noah returns to his rocking chair where he runs the evening through his head over and over only to remind himself in the end that she's engaged. Around midnight, he becomes overcome with longing and puts his face in his hands and weeps.

Notes

This chapter is more than just a reunion as it's entitled. It is in fact the new Noah and the new Allie falling once again into the love they had first experienced fourteen years before. It is also a description of guilt as felt by Allie, because of Lon, while at the same time reconnecting to her first love. Finally, it is a presentation of terrible longing that is so great that it makes Noah weep for all he has lost and may never have again.