The Longest Ride

by Nicholas Sparks

  Instead, he kept his word to both Sophia and his mom. The mechanical bull in the barn stayed covered, and another rider went on to the big tour in his place, no doubt dreaming of winning it all.

  "Any regrets?" Sophia asked him. "About not riding this weekend?"

  On a whim, they'd driven to Atlantic Beach beneath a blue and cloudless sky. At the shore, the breeze was cool but not biting, and the beach was peppered with people walking or flying kites; a few intrepid surfers were riding the long, rolling waves to shore.

  "None," he said without hesitation.

  They walked a few steps, Luke's feet slipping in the sand.

  "I'll bet you would have done okay."

  "Probably."

  "Do you think you could have won?"

  Luke thought for a moment before answering, his eyes fixed on a pair of porpoises gliding through the water.

  "Maybe," he said. "But probably not. There are some pretty talented riders on the circuit."

  Sophia came to a stop and looked up at Luke. "I just realized something."

  "What's that?"

  "When you were riding in South Carolina? You said you'd drawn Big Ugly Critter in the finals."

  He nodded.

  "You never told me what happened."

  "No," he said, still watching the porpoises. "I guess I didn't, did I?"

  A week later, the three men who'd toured the ranch returned, then spent half an hour in his mom's kitchen. Luke suspected they were presenting an offer of some sort, but he didn't have the heart to go over and find out. Instead, he waited until they were gone. He found his mom still sitting at the kitchen table when he entered.

  She looked up at him without saying anything.

  Then she simply shook her head.

  "What are you doing next Friday?" Sophia asked. "Not tomorrow, but the one after that?" It was a Thursday night, just a month shy of graduation, the first - and probably last - time Luke would find himself at a club surrounded by a gaggle of sorority girls. Marcia was there, too, and though she'd greeted Luke, she was far more interested in the dark-haired boy who'd met them there. He and Sophia practically had to shout to be heard over the relentless bass of the music.

  "I don't know. Working, I guess," he said. "Why?"

  "Because the department chair, who also happens to be my adviser, snagged me invitations to an art auction and I want you to come."

  He leaned over the table. "Did you say art auction?"

  "It's supposed to be incredible, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It'll be held at the Greensboro Convention Center and it's being run by one of the big auction houses from New York. Supposedly, some obscure guy from North Carolina accumulated a world-class collection of modern art. People are flying in from all over the world to bid. Some of the artwork is supposed to be worth a fortune."

  "And you want to go?"

  "Hello? It's art? Do you know the last time an auction of this caliber occurred around here? Never."

  "How long's it going to last?"

  "I have no idea. I've never been to an auction before, but just so you know, I'm going. And it would be nice if you came along. Otherwise, I'm going to have to sit with my adviser, and I know for a fact that he's bringing along another professor from the department, which means they'll spend the whole time talking to each other. And let's just say if that happens, I'll probably be in a bad mood and might have to stay at the sorority house all weekend just to recover."

  "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were threatening me."

  "It's not a threat. It's just... something to keep in mind."

  "And if I keep it in mind and still say no?"

  "Then you're going to be in trouble, too."

  He smiled. "If it's important to you, I wouldn't miss it for the world."

  Luke wasn't sure why he hadn't noticed before, but it struck him at some point that getting started on the day's work had become more and more difficult as time passed. The maintenance work on the ranch had begun to suffer, not because it wasn't important, he realized, but because he had little motivation. Why replace the sagging porch railings at his mom's place? Why fill in the sinkhole that had formed near the irrigation pump? Why fill in the potholes in the long gravel drive that had grown deeper over the winter? Why do anything when they weren't going to be living here much longer?

  He'd supposed that his mom had been immune to those sorts of feelings, that she had a strength he hadn't inherited, but as he'd ridden out to check the cattle that morning, something about his mom's property had caught his attention, and he had pulled Horse to a stop.

  His mother's garden had always been a source of pride to her. Even as a toddler, he could remember watching as she readied it for the spring planting or weeded it with painstaking care during the summer, harvesting the vegetables at the end of a long day. But now, as he looked out at what should have been straight, neat rows, he realized that the plot was overrun by weeds.

  "Okay, so about this Friday." Sophia rolled over in bed to face him. "Keep in mind that it's an art auction." It was only two days away, and he tried to come across as properly attentive.

  "Yes. You told me."

  "Lots of rich people there. Important people."

  "Okay."

  "I just wanted to make sure you weren't planning to wear your hat and boots."

  "I figured."

  "You're going to need a suit."

  "I have a suit," he said. "A nice one, in fact."

  "You have a suit?" Her eyebrows shot up.

  "Why do you so sound so surprised?"

  "Because I can't imagine you in a suit. I've only ever seen you in jeans."

  "Not true." He winked. "I'm not wearing any jeans now."

  "Get your mind out of the gutter," she said, not wanting even to acknowledge his comment. "That's not what I'm talking about and you know it."

  He laughed. "I bought a suit two years ago. And a tie and a shirt and shoes, if you must know. I had to go to a wedding."

  "And let me guess. That's the only time you've ever worn it, right?"

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "I wore it again."

  "Another wedding?" she asked.

  "A funeral," he said. "A friend of my mom's."

  "That was my second guess," she said, hopping out of bed. She grabbed the throw blanket, wound it around herself, and tucked in the corner like a towel. "I want to see it. Is it in your closet?"

  "Hanging on the right..." He pointed, admiring her shape in the makeshift toga.

  She opened the closet door and pulled out the hanger, taking a moment to inspect it. "You're right," she said. "It's a nice suit."

  "There you go, sounding all surprised again."

  Still holding the suit, she looked over at him. "Wouldn't you be?"

  In the morning, Sophia returned to campus while Luke rode off to inspect the herd. They'd made plans for him to pick her up the following day. To his surprise, he found her sitting on his porch when he got home later that afternoon.

  She was clutching a newspaper, and when she faced him, there was something haunted in her expression.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "It about Ira," she said. "Ira Levinson."

  It took a second for the name to come back to him. "You mean the guy we rescued from his car?"

  She held out the newspaper. "Read this."

  He took the paper from her and scanned the headline, which described the auction that was to take place the next day.

  Luke furrowed his brow, puzzled.

  "This is an article about the auction."

  "The collection is Ira's," she said.

  It was all there in the article. Or a lot of it was, anyway. There were fewer personal details than he would have expected, but he learned a bit about Ira's shop, and the article noted the date of his marriage to Ruth. It mentioned that Ruth had been a schoolteacher and that they'd begun to collect modern art together after the end of World War II. They'd never had children.

  The remainder of the
article concerned the auction and the pieces that were going to be offered, most of which meant nothing to Luke. It concluded, however, with a line that gave him pause, affecting him the same way it had Sophia.

  Sophia brought her lips together as he reached the end of the article.

  "He never made it out of the hospital," she said, her voice soft. "He died from his injuries the day after we found him."

  Luke raised his eyes to the sky, closing them for a moment. There was nothing really to say.

  "We were the last people to see him," she said. "It doesn't say that, but I know it's true. His wife was dead, they had no kids, and he'd pretty much become a hermit. He died alone, and the thought of that just breaks my heart. Because..."

  When she trailed off, Luke drew her near, thinking about the letter Ira had written to his wife.

  "I know why," Luke said. "Because it kind of breaks my heart, too."

  32

  Sophia

  S

  ophia had just finished putting in her earrings on the day of the auction when she saw Luke's truck come to a stop in front of the house. Though she'd teased Luke earlier about having only a single suit, in truth she owned only two, both with midlength skirts and matching jackets. And she'd purchased those only because she'd needed something classy and professional to wear to interviews. At the time, she'd worried that two wouldn't suffice, what with all the interviews she'd no doubt line up. Which made her think about that old saying... how did it go? People plan, God laughs, or something like that?

  As it was, she'd worn each of them once. Knowing that Luke's suit was dark, she'd opted for the lighter of the two. Despite her early enthusiasm, she now felt strangely ambivalent about going to the auction. Discovering that it was Ira's collection made it more personal somehow, and she feared that with every painting, she'd recall how he'd appeared as she'd read his letter in the hospital. Yet to not go seemed disrespectful, since the collection obviously meant so much to him and his wife. Still feeling conflicted, she left her room and went downstairs.

  Luke was waiting just inside the foyer.

  "Are you ready for this?"

  "I guess," she temporized. "It's different now."

  "I know. I thought about Ira most of the night."

  "Me too."

  He forced a smile, though there wasn't a lot of energy behind it. "You look terrific, by the way. You're all grown up."

  "You too," she said, meaning it. But...

  "Why do I feel like we're going to a funeral?" she asked him.

  "Because," he said, "in a way, we are."

  They entered one of the enormous exhibition rooms at the convention center an hour before noon. It was nothing like she'd expected. At the far end of the room was a stage, surrounded by curtains on three sides; on the right were two long tables on elevated daises, each bearing ten telephones; on the other side stood the podium, no doubt for the auctioneer. A large screen formed the backdrop on the stage, and at the very front stood an empty easel. Approximately three hundred chairs faced the stage in stadium formation, allowing the bidders an unobstructed view.

  Though the room was crowded, only a few of the seats were taken. Instead, most of the people wandered the room, examining photographs of some of the most valuable art. The photographs stood on easels along the walls, together with information about the artist, prices of the artist's work achieved in other auctions, along with estimated values. Other visitors clustered around the four podiums on either side of the entrance, piled high with catalogs that described the entire collection.

  Sophia moved through the room, Luke by her side, feeling slightly stunned. Not just because this was once all Ira's, but because of the collection itself. There were works by Picasso and Warhol, Johns and Pollock, Rauschenberg and de Kooning, exhibited side by side. Some were pieces that she'd never read or even heard about. Nor had the rumors of their value been exaggerated; she gasped at some of the estimates, only to discover that the next set of paintings was worth even more. Through it all, she found herself trying to reconcile those numbers with Ira, the sweet old man who'd written about nothing but the love he still felt for his wife.

  Luke's thoughts seemed to mirror her own, for he reached for her hand and murmured, "There was nothing in his letter about this."

  "Maybe none of this mattered to him," she said, baffled. "But really, how could it not?" When Luke failed to answer, she squeezed his hand. "I wish we could have helped him more."

  "I don't know that there was any more that we could have done."

  "Still..."

  His blue eyes searched hers. "You read the letter," he said. "That's what he wanted. And I think that's why you and I were meant to find him. Who else would have waited around?"

  When the announcement was made for people to take their seats, Luke and Sophia found a couple of empty ones in the back row. From there, it was almost impossible to see the easel, which disappointed Sophia. It would have been great to be able to see some of the paintings up close, but she knew those seats should go to prospective buyers, and the last thing she wanted was for someone to tap her on the shoulder and ask her to move later. A few minutes after that, men and women in suits began to take their seats behind the phones on the elevated tables, and slowly but surely, the overhead lights began to dim as a series of spotlights beamed down to illuminate the stage.

  Sophia scanned the crowd, spotting her two art history professors, including her adviser. As the clock approached one, the room slowly grew quieter, the hushed murmur gradually fading out completely when a silver-haired gentleman in an exquisitely tailored suit strolled to the podium. In his hands, he held a folder and he spread it wide before reaching into his breast pocket for his reading glasses. He propped them on his nose, adjusting the pages as he did so.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank all of you for coming to the auction of the extraordinary collection of Ira and Ruth Levinson. As you know, it's unusual for our firm to host such an event in venues other than our own, but in this case, Mr. Levinson didn't leave us much choice. It's also rather unorthodox for the particulars of today's auction to have remained somewhat vague. To begin, I'd like to explain the rules regarding this particular auction. Beneath each of the seats is a numbered paddle, and..."

  He went on to describe the bidding process, but with her thoughts drifting to Ira again, Sophia tuned it out. Only vaguely did she hear the list of those who'd chosen to attend the auction - curators from the Whitney and MoMA, the Tate, and countless others from cities overseas. She guessed that most of the people in the room were representatives of either private collectors or galleries, no doubt hoping to acquire something extremely rare.

  After the rules were outlined and certain individuals and institutions thanked, the silver-haired gentleman focused the attention of the audience again. "At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce to you Howie Sanders. Mr. Sanders served as Ira Levinson's attorney for many years, and has prepared some remarks he'd like to share with you as well."

  Sanders appeared then, a bent, elderly figure whose dark wool suit hung off his bony frame. Slowly, he made his way to the podium. There, he cleared his throat before launching into his speech in a voice that was remarkably vigorous and clear.

  "We're gathered here today to participate in an extraordinary event. After all, it is very unusual for a collection of this size and significance to go unnoticed and unremarked upon for so many years. Until six years ago, I suspect that very few in this room even knew of the existence of this collection. The circumstances of its creation - the how, so to speak - were described in a magazine article, and yet I admit that even I, the man who served as Ira Levinson's attorney for the past forty years, have been astounded by the cultural importance and value of this collection."

  He paused to look up at the audience before going on. "But that is not why I'm here. I'm here because Ira was explicit in his instructions regarding this auction, and he asked me to say a few words to all of you. I confess that this is somethin
g I would rather not have been asked to do. Though I am comfortable in a courtroom or in the confines of my office, I am rarely required to face an audience of this nature, where many of you have been charged with the responsibility of securing a specific piece of art for a client or an institution at a price that even I have difficulty comprehending. And yet, because my friend Ira asked me to speak, I now find myself in this unenviable position."

  A few good-natured chuckles were audible from the audience.

  "What can I tell you about Ira? That he was a good man? An honest, conscientious man? That he was a man who adored his wife? Or should I tell you about his business, or the quiet wisdom he exuded whenever we were together? I asked myself all these questions in an effort to discern what it was that Ira really wanted me to say to all of you. What would he have said if he, not I, had been standing before you? Ira, I think, would have said this to you: 'I want all of you to understand.'"