The Wedding
BY NICHOLAS SPARKS


Prologue
Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change? Or do
character and habit
form the immovable boundaries of our lives?
It is mid-October 2003, and I ponder these questions as I
watch a moth flail
wildly against the porch light. I�m alone outside. Jane,
my wife, is sleeping
upstairs and she didn�t stir when I slipped out of bed. It
is late; midnight has
come and gone, and there�s a crispness in the air that
holds the promise of an
early winter. I�m wearing a heavy cotton robe, and though
I imagined it would be
thick enough to keep the chill at bay, I notice that my
hands are trembling
before I bury them in my pockets.
Above me, the stars are specks of silver paint on a
charcoal canvas. I see Orion
and the Pleiades, Ursa Major and Corona Borealis, and
think I should be inspired
by the realization that I�m not only looking at the stars,
but staring into the
past as well. Constellations shine with light that was
emitted aeons ago, and I
wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might
use to illuminate
life�s mysteries. But there is nothing.
This doesn�t surprise me. I�ve never considered myself a
sentimental man, and if
you asked my wife, I�m sure she would agree. I do not lose
myself in films or
plays, I�ve never been a dreamer, and if I aspire to any
form of mastery at all,
it is one defined by rules of the Internal Revenue Service
and codified by law.
For the most part, my days and years as an estate lawyer
have been spent in the
company of those preparing for their own deaths, and I



suppose that some might
say that my life is less meaningful because of this. But
even if they�re right,
what can I do? I make no excuses for myself, nor have I
ever, and by the end of
my story, I hope you�ll view this quirk of my character
with a forgiving eye.
Please don�t misunderstand. I may not be sentimental, but
I�m not completely
without emotion, and there are moments when I�m struck by
a deep sense of
wonder. It is usually simple things that I find strangely
moving: standing among
the giant sequoias in the Sierra Nevadas, for instance, or
watching ocean waves
as they crash together off Cape Hatteras, sending salty
plumes into the sky.
Last week, I felt my throat tighten when I watched a young
boy reach for his
father�s hand as they strolled down the sidewalk. There
are other things, too: I
can sometimes lose track of time when staring at a sky
filled with wind-whipped
clouds, and when I hear thunder rumbling, I always draw
near the window to watch
for lightning. When the next brilliant flash illuminates
the sky, I often find
myself filled with longing, though I�m at a loss to tell
you what it is that I
feel my life is missing.
My name is Wilson Lewis, and this is the story of a
wedding. It is also the
story of my marriage, but despite the thirty years t...

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