Despite closing the shutters and drapes to keep out the morning light, Paul woke with Friday’s dawn, and he spent ten minutes stretching the ache from his body.

Swinging open the shutters, he took in the morning. There was a deep haze over the water, and the skies were gunmetal gray. Cumulous clouds raced along, rolling paral-lel with the shore. The storm, he thought, would be here before nightfall, more likely by midafternoon.

He sat on the edge of the bed as he slipped into his run-ning gear, then added a windbreaker over the top. From the drawer, he removed an extra pair of socks and slipped them on his hands. Then, after padding down the stairs, he looked around. Adrienne wasn’t up, and he felt a short stab of disappointment at not seeing her, then suddenly won-dered why it mattered. He unlocked the door, and a minute later he was trudging along, letting his body warm up be-fore he moved into a steadier pace.

From her bedroom, Adrienne heard him descend the creaking steps. Sitting up, she pushed off the covers and slipped her feet into a pair of slippers, wishing she’d at least had some coffee ready for Paul when he awoke. She wasn’t sure he would have wanted any before his run, but she could at least have made the offer.

Outside, Paul’s muscles and joints were beginning to loosen and he quickened his stride, It wasn’t anywhere near the pace he’d run in his twenties or thirties, but it was steady and refreshing.

Running had never been simply exercise for him. He’d reached the point where running wasn’t difficult at all; it seemed to take no more energy to jog five miles than it did to read the paper. Instead, he viewed it as a form of medi-tation, one of the few times he could be alone.

It was a wonderful morning to run. Though it had rained during the night and he could see drops on the windshields of cars, the shower must have passed through the area quickly, because most of the roads had already dried. Ten-drils of mist lingered in the dawn and moved in ghostly procession from one small home to the next. He would have liked to run on the beach since he didn’t often have that opportunity, but he decided to use his run to find the home of Robert Torrelson instead. He ran along the high-way, passing through downtown, then turned at the first corner, his eyes taking in the scene.

In his estimation, Rodanthe was exactly what it ap-peared to he: an old fishing village riding the water’s edge, a place where modern life had been slow in coming. Every home was made of wood, and though some were in better repair than others, with small, well-tended yards and a thin patch of dirt where bulbs would blossom in the spring, he could see evidence of the harshness of coastal life every-where he looked. Even homes that were no more than a dozen years old were decaying. Fences and mailboxes had small holes eaten away by the weather, paint had peeled, tin roofs were streaked with long, wide rows of rust. Scat-tered in the front yards were various items of everyday life in this part of the world: skiffs and broken boat engines, fishing nets used as decoration, ropes and chains used to keep strangers at bay.

Some homes were no more than shacks, and the walls seemed precariously balanced, as if the next strong wind might topple them over. In some cases, the front porches were sagging and had been propped up by an assortment of utilitarian items to keep them from giving way completely: concrete blocks or stacked bricks; two-by-fours that pro-truded from below like short chopsticks.

But there was activity here, even in the dawn, even in those homes that looked abandoned. As he ran, he saw smoke billowing from chimneys and watched men and women covering windows with plywood. The sound of hammering had begun to fill the air.

He turned at the next block, checked the street sign, and ran on. A few minutes later, he turned onto the street where Robert Torrelson lived. Robert Torrelson, he knew, lived at number thirty-four.

He passed number eighteen, then twenty, and raised his eyes, looking ahead. A couple of the neighbors stopped their work and watched him as he jogged by, their eyes wary. A moment later, he reached Robert Torrelson’s home, trying not to be obvious as he glanced toward it.

It was a home like most of the others along the street:

not exactly well tended, but not a shack, either. Rather, it was somewhere in between—a sort of stalemate between man and nature in their battle over the house. At least half a century old, the house was single storied with a tin roof; without gutters to divert runoff, the rain of a thousand storms had streaked the white paint with gray, On the porch were two weathered rockers angled toward each other. Around the windows, he could see a lone strand of Christmas lights.

Toward the back of the property was a small outbuilding with the front doors propped open. Inside were two work-benches, covered with nets and fishing rods, chests and tools. Two large grappling hooks were leaning against the wall, and he could see a yellow rain slicker hanging on a peg, just inside. From the shadows behind it, a man emerged, car-rying a bucket.

The figure caught Paul off guard, and he turned away be-fore the man could see him staring. It was too early to pay him a visit, nor did he want to do this in running clothes. Instead, he raised his chin against the breeze, turned at the next corner, and tried to find his earlier pace.

It wasn’t easy. The image of the man stayed with him, making him feel sluggish, each step more difficult than the last. Despite the cold, by the time he finished, there was a thin sheen of sweat on his face.

He walked the last fifty yards to the Inn, letting his legs cool down. From the road, he could see that the light in the kitchen had been turned on.

Knowing what it meant, he smiled.

While Paul was out, Adrienne’s children had phoned and she’d spent a few minutes talking to each of them, glad they were having a good time with their father. A little while later, at the top of the hour, she called the nursing home.

Though her father couldn’t answer the phone, she’d made arrangements to have Gail, one of the nurses, answer for him, and she’d picked up on the second ring.

“Right on time,” Gail said. “I was just telling your father that you’d be calling any minute.”

“How’s he doing today?”

“He’s a little tired, but other than that, he’s fine. Hold on while I put the phone by his ear, okay?”

A moment lat............