Three years earlier, on a warm November morning in 1999, Adrienne Willis had returned to the Inn and at first glance had thought it unchanged, as if the small Inn were impervious to sun and sand and salted mist. The porch had been freshly painted, and shiny black shutters sandwiched rectangular white-curtained windows on both floors like offset piano keys. The cedar siding was the color of dusty snow. On either side of the building, sea oats waved a greeting, and sand formed a curving dune that changed imperceptibly with each passing day as individual grains shifted from one spot to the next.
三年前，在1999年的11月份的一个温暖的早晨，艾德琳威利斯回到了小旅馆并且第一眼望去发觉这里没有改变，似乎小旅馆没有受太阳，沙子和盐雾的影响。门廊也被重新粉刷过了，地板两旁的闪亮的黑色百叶窗夹杂着白色长方形窗帘的窗户看上去想偏移的钢琴键。雪松壁板是浅灰色雪的颜色。而另外一边的建筑，海燕麦摇动着，沙子形成了弯丘每天在不知不觉的改变着如同每粒沙子从一个点迁移到下个点。
With the sun hovering among the clouds, the air had a luminescent quality, as though particles of light were suspended in the haze, and for a moment Adrienne felt she’d traveled back in time. But looking closer, she gradually began to notice changes that cosmetic work couldn’t hide: decay at the corners of the windows, lines of rust along the roof, water stains near the gutters. The Inn seemed to be winding down, and though she knew there was nothing she could do to change it,Adrienne remembered closing her eyes, as if to magically blink it back to what it had once been.
随着太阳徘徊在云层中，空气中有个发光的物体，仿佛光粒子悬浮在阴霾之中并且过了一会艾德琳觉得她已经回到了过去。但是近看，她渐渐的开始发现了变化，那些表面上没能隐藏的：窗角地方有了腐烂，沿着屋顶出现了一条条铁锈，水沟旁的水渍。旅馆看上去将关闭并且她知道没有什么她能改变的，艾德琳闭着眼睛回想，仿佛奇迹般的闪回到了它过去的样子。
Now, standing in the kitchen of her own home a few months into her sixtieth year, Adrienne hung up the phone after speaking with her daughter. She sat at the table, reflecting on that last visit to the Inn, remembering the long weekend she’d once spent there. Despite all that had happened in the years that had passed since then, Adrienne still held tight to the belief that love was the essence of a full and wonderful life.
现在，在她的第六十个年头，这几个月站在自己家的厨房，艾德琳在跟女儿通完话后挂上了电话，她坐在桌旁,回想起最后一次去小旅馆，记得她在那里度过了一个漫长的假期。尽管那里发生的一切已经过了很多年了，艾德琳依然坚信爱是一个完整美好生活的本质。
Outside, rain was falling. Listening to the gentle tapping against the glass, she was thankful for its steady sense of familiarity. Remembering those days always aroused a mixture of emotions in her—something akin to, but not quite, nostalgia. Nostalgia was often romanticized; with these memories, there was no reason to make them any more romantic than they already were. Nor did she share these memories with others. They were hers, and over the years, she’d come to view them as a sort of museum exhibit, one in which she was both the curator and the only patron. And in an odd way, Adrienne had come to believe that she’d learned more in those five days than she had in all the years before or after.
外面，雨还在下，听着雨滴拍打在窗户上，她感谢这熟悉的场景。回想起那些日子她经常会有一种复杂的情感-类似于怀旧，但也不是完全相同的。怀旧一般被描绘为浪漫的：伴随这些记忆，没有理由使它们变得更加浪漫。她没有跟别人分享这些回忆。它们是属于她的，多年来，她看待它们犹如博物馆展览，在那里他是馆长和唯一的资助人。奇特的是，艾德琳已经开始相信在那5天她所得到的比她在这之前和之后人生中得到的都要多。
She was alone in the house. Her children were grown, her father had passed away in 1996, and she’d been divorced from Jack for seventeen years now. Though her sons sometimes urged her to find someone to spend her remaining years with, Adrienne had no desire to do so. It wasn’t that she was wary of men; on the contrary, even now she occasionally found her eyes drawn to younger men in the supermarket. Since they were sometimes only a few years older than her own children, she was curious about what they would think if they noticed her staring at them. Would they dismiss her out of hand? Or would they smile back at her, finding her interest charming? She wasn’t sure. Nor did she know if it was possible for them to look past the graying hair and wrinkles and see the woman she used to be.
她孤独的在家中。她的孩子已经长大，她的父亲于1996年离世了，她和杰克的17年婚姻也走到了尽头。尽管她的孩子们有时候会催促她再找一个老伴，但是艾德琳没有这想法。这并不是她对男人警惕，相反，甚至到现在她偶尔在超市还是会把焦点停留在那些年轻男人身上。由于他们有时候只比她的小孩年长几岁，她很好奇如果他们知道她在注视他们会对她有什么看法。他们会立即转身离开吗？或者对她报以微笑发现她的迷人之处？她不能确定。她也不知道他们看到花白的头发，皱纹和昔日的样子的可能性。
Not that she regretted being older. People nowadays talked incessantly about the glories of youth, but Adrienne had no desire to be young again. Middle-aged, maybe, but not young. True, she missed some things—bounding up the stairs, carrying more than one bag of groceries at a time, or having the energy to keep up with the grandchildren as they raced around the yard—but she’d gladly exchange them for the experiences she’d had, and those came only with age. It was the fact that she could look back on life and realize she wouldn’t have changed much at all that made sleep come easy these days.
并不是说她对变老感到遗憾。人们现在不听的谈论关于年轻时期的荣誉，但是艾德琳并不想再变年轻一次。中年年龄，或许可以，但是青春期还是算了吧。诚然，她会错过一些事情-在楼梯上蹦跳，一次可以携带多个购物袋或者当外孙在花园中奔跑能够有体力跟得上他们—但是她可以很高兴和他们交换只有到了她这年纪才有经验。事实是当她回首看生活的时候她会意识到她没有太多需要改变的对那时候的生活并且最近这些日子也使得她更容易入睡。
Besides, youth had its problems. Not only did she remember them from her own life, but she’d watched her children as they’d struggled through the angst of adolescence and the uncertainty and chaos of their early twenties. Even though two of them were now in their thirties and one was almost there, she sometimes wondered when motherhood would become less than a full-time job.
另外，年轻也会有年轻的问题。不仅她在自己的生活中亲身经历过，而且她也看着她的孩子们挣扎的通过青春期的焦虑和他们20出头时的不确定和混乱。即使2个孩子已经30多了另一个也接近30岁了，她有时候想知道什么时候能够放下母亲这份全职工作。
Matt was thirty-two, Amanda was thirty-one, and Dan had just turned twenty-nine. They’d all gone to college, and she was proud of that, since there’d been a time when she wasn’t sure any of them would. They were honest, kind, and self-sufficient, and for the most part, that was all she’d ever wanted for them. Matt worked as an accountant, Dan was the sportscaster on the evening news out in Greenville, and both were married with families of their own. When they’d come over for Thanksgiving, she remembered sitting off to the side and watching them scurry after their children, feeling strangely satisfied at the way everything had turned out for her sons.
麦特32岁，阿曼达31岁而丹也刚刚度过了29岁。他们都读过大学，她为此感到骄傲，由于曾近有段时间她不确定他们将会变成什么样。他们诚实，仁慈和独立，这些部分都是她曾经想要他们具备的。麦特是一名会计，丹是格林维尔一个晚间新闻的体育主播，并且他们都已经有了各自的家庭。当他们感恩节过来的时候，她会坐在旁边并且看着他们追着孙子美们跑来跑去，为了她的孩子们感到不可思议的满足。
As always, things were a little more complicated for her daughter.
她的女儿的情况就有些复杂了。
The kids were fourteen, thirteen, and eleven when Jack moved out of the house, and each child had dealt with the divorce in a different way. Matt and Dan took out their aggression on the athletic fields and by occasionally acting up in school, but Amanda had been the most affected. As the middle child sandwiched between brothers, she’d always been the most sensitive, and as a teenager, she’d needed her father in the house, if only to distract from the worried stares of her mother. She began dressing in what Adrienne considered rags, hung with a crowd that stayed out late, and swore she was deeply in love with at least a dozen different boys over the next couple of years. After school, she spent hours in her room listening to music that made the walls vibrate, ignoring her mother’s calls for dinner. There were periods when she would barely speak to her mother or brothers for days.
当杰克离开家的时候，孩子们才14,13和11岁并且每个孩子对待他们离婚这件事都采取不同的方式。麦特和丹在运动场上发泄他们的暴躁，偶尔也会在学校惹事，但是阿曼达是受影响最大的。作为排在2个兄弟中间的孩子，她一直是最敏感的并且作为一个10几岁的小孩，她需要她的父亲在家里，要是能否分散母亲担忧和关心的眼神那多好。她开始穿些艾德琳认为是破布的服装，跟着一帮人一起玩到很晚才回家，并且在接下来的几年一直声称她恋爱了，对象是一打不同的男孩子。放学后，她花费几个小时在自己的房间里，听些能够让墙壁颤抖的音乐，完全听不见她母亲叫她吃晚饭。有段时期她很少和母亲和兄弟进行交谈沟通。
It took a few years, but Amanda had eventually found her way, settling into a life that felt strangely similar to what Adrienne once had. She met Brent in college, and they married after graduation and had two kids in the first few years of marriage. Like many young couples, they struggled financially, but Brent was prudent in a way that Jack never had been. As soon as their first child was born, he bought life insurance as a precaution, though neither expected that they would need it for a long, long time.
过了几年，阿曼达最终发现她的方式,变成了一种生活方式那让人觉得奇怪的熟悉，就像曾经艾德琳经历过的。她在大学认识了布伦特，并且在毕业后结了婚还在结婚的头几年有了2个孩子。像其他年轻夫妇一样，他们财政上并不宽裕，但是布伦特是节俭的，而杰克则不是。他们第一个孩子一出生，他就购买了人寿保险以防万一，虽然从不期望在很长很长一段时间内他们会需要用到它。
