The Longest Ride

by Nicholas Sparks

We should have gone every year,” I say. “I think it would have lost its magic if we went every year,” she responds. “Every few years was perfect—like we did. Because every time we went back, it felt new and untamed and fresh again.

I did not find this letter until after she was gone, but in many ways, it saved my life. She knew I would need it, for she knew me better than I ever knew myself.

This is why I’ve never sold a single painting. How could I? In the oils and pigments I store my memories of Ruth; in every painting I recall a chapter of our lives together. There is nothing more precious to me. They are all I have left of the wife I’ve loved more than life itself, and I will continue to stare and remember until I can do it no more.

It’s strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined. Such

a moment occurred when I first met Ruth. I wasn’t lying when I told Ruth that I knew in that instant we would one day be married.

Yet experience has taught me that fate is sometimes cruel and that even a boatload of hope is sometimes not enough. For Ruth, this became clear when Daniel entered our lives. By then, she was over forty and I was even older. It was another reason she couldn’t stop crying after Daniel left. Back then, social expectations were different, and both of us knew that we were too old to adopt a child. When Daniel disappeared fro...

A truth emerges in any long marriage, and the truth is this: Our spouses sometimes know us better than we even know ourselves.

Our separation, I now understand, has only been temporary. When I gaze into the depths of the universe, I know

the time is coming when I will hold you in my arms once more. After all, if there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.

People plan, God laughs, or something like that?

simple truth: Though the art is beautiful and valuable almost beyond measure,

I would have traded it all for just one more day with the wife I always adored.”