Every Breath

by Nicholas Sparks

  Josh, however, had been less than impressed. “Why on earth would you buy something like that?” he’d said with a snort. At the time, he’d been eating a hot dog while Jacob and Rachel played in a bouncy house. “And where are you going to put it?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” she’d answered. Once home, she brought the box to the master bedroom, where she stored it under her bed until he went to work on Monday. Then, after adding the contents to it, she’d hidden it at the bottom of a box of baby clothes in the attic, a place she knew Josh would never find it.

  Since their time at Sunset Beach, Tru had never tried to contact her. For the first year or two, she’d worried that she might find a letter in the mailbox or hear his voice on the answering machine; when the phone rang in the evenings, she sometimes tensed, steeling herself just in case. Strangely, her relief that it wasn’t him was always coupled with a wave of disappointment. However, he’d written that there was no room for three people in the life she would be leading, and as painful as it was, she knew that he’d been right.

  Even at the lowest points in her marriage to Josh, she hadn’t tried to contact Tru, either. She’d thought about it, come close a few times, but had never succumbed to the temptation. It would have been easy to run to him, but then what? She couldn’t face the thought of having to say goodbye a second time, nor was she willing to risk the destruction of her family. Despite Josh’s failings, her children remained her priority, and they needed her undivided attention.

  So she’d kept him alive in her memories, in the only way she could. She stored her keepsakes in the box, and examined the contents every now and then, when she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed. Whenever there was a television show about the majestic game animals in Africa, she would make a point of tuning in; in the late 1990s, she stumbled upon the novels of Alexander McCall Smith and was immediately hooked, since many of the stories were set in Botswana. It wasn’t Zimbabwe, but it was close enough, she thought, and it helped further introduce her to a world she knew nothing about. Over the years, there were also occasional articles about Zimbabwe in major news magazines and the Raleigh News & Observer. She learned about the land confiscation by the government and wondered what had happened to the farm where Tru had been raised. She also read about the country’s hyperinflation, and her first thought was of how it might affect tourism and whether Tru would be able to continue guiding. Occasionally she would receive travel catalogues in the mail, and she would turn to the section that described various safaris. Though most of the safaris were in South Africa, every now and then, she’d read about the lodge at Hwange. When that happened, she would study the photographs, trying to get a better sense of the world he called home. And as she lay in bed afterward, she would admit to herself that her feelings for him were as real and strong as they had been so long ago, when she’d first whispered that she loved him.

  In 2006, when her divorce was finalized, Tru would have been fifty-eight years old. She was fifty-two. Jacob and Rachel were teenagers, and Josh was already seeing Denise. Though sixteen years had passed since she’d seen Tru, she’d hoped that there was still time to make things right. By then, practically anything could be found on the internet, but the information about the lodges at Hwange didn’t include anything about the guides, other than to note that they were among the most experienced in Zimbabwe. There was, however, an email address, and the woman who answered her query had told Hope that she didn’t know Tru, and that he hadn’t worked at the lodge in years. The same went for Romy, the friend Tru had mentioned to her. Nonetheless, the woman gave Hope the name of the previous manager, who had transferred to another camp a few years earlier, along with another email address. Hope contacted him there, and while he knew nothing of Tru’s whereabouts, he offered the name of yet another camp manager who’d worked at Hwange in the 1990s. There was no current phone number or email address, but he gave Hope a mailing address with the caveat that it might not be up to date, either.

  Hope wrote to the manager and waited anxiously for a response. Tru had warned her that time moves more slowly in the bush, and that the mail service wasn’t always reliable. Weeks passed without a response, then months, by which point Hope had given up thinking she’d ever hear from him. It was around that time that a letter had appeared in her mailbox.

  The kids had yet to come home from school, and she tore open the letter, devouring the scrawled words. She learned that Tru had left Hwange, but the manager had heard through the grapevine that he may have taken another job in Botswana. He was unsure at which camp, however. The man added that he was also fairly certain that Tru had sold the house in Bulawayo once his son headed off to a university somewhere in Europe. He didn’t know the name of the university or even the country where it was located.

  With little to go on, Hope began contacting lodges in Botswana. There were dozens of them. She sent email after email, but found no information about Tru.

  She didn’t bother trying to contact universities in Europe, since that was akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Running thin on options, Hope reached out to Air Zimbabwe, hoping to find someone who worked there who had a wife named Kim. Perhaps, through his ex, Hope might learn where Tru was. That, too, led to a dead end. A man named Ken had worked there until 2001 or 2002, but he’d left the company and no one had heard from him since.

  After that, Hope tried a more general approach. She contacted various government agencies in Zimbabwe, asking about a massive farm owned by a family named Walls. She’d held this option until last, suspecting that Tru had reduced contact with the family even further after learning what he had from his biological father. The officials there were less than helpful, but by the end of the conversations, she surmised that the farm had been confiscated by the government and redistributed. There was no information at all on the family.

  Out of ideas, Hope decided to make it easier for Tru to find her, on the off chance he was looking. In 2009, she had joined Facebook, and she checked it daily for a long time. She heard from old friends and new ones, family members, people she’d known from work. But never once did Tru try to contact her.

  The realization that Tru had seemingly vanished—and that they would never see each other again—had put her in a funk for months, and made her reflect on all the other losses in her life. But this was a different kind of grief, one that grew stronger with every passing year. Now, with her children grown, she spent her days and nights alone. Life was passing and all too soon would come to an end; despite herself, Hope began to wonder if she’d be alone when she took her final breaths.

  Her house, she sometimes felt, was slowly but surely becoming her tomb.

  * * *

  At the cottage, Hope took a small sip of wine. Though it was light and sweet, it tasted foreign in the morning. Never once in her life had she drunk wine this early, and she doubted she ever would again. But today, she thought she deserved it.

  As transporting as the memories were, as much as they’d sustained her, she was tired of feeling trapped by them. She wanted to spend her remaining years waking in the morning without wondering whether Tru would somehow find her again; she wanted to spend as much time with Jacob and Rachel as she could. She longed, more than anything, for peace of mind. She wanted a month to pass without feeling the need to examine the contents of the box that sat on the table in front of her; she wanted to focus instead on crossing a few of the big items off her bucket list. Sit in the audience of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Visit the Biltmore Estate at Christmas. Bet on a horse running at the Kentucky Derby. Watch UNC and Duke play basketball at Cameron Indoor Stadium. That last one would be tough; tickets were nearly impossible to get, but the challenge of that was part of the fun, right?

  Not long after her trip to the beach last year, on a day she’d been feeling particularly blue, she’d deleted her Facebook page. Since then, she’d also left the box in the attic, no matter how strongly she’d felt the pull to examine the contents. Now, however, the box was calli
ng to her, and she finally lifted the lid.

  On top was Ellen’s faded wedding invitation. She stared at the lettering, remembering who she’d been back then and recalling the worries that had plagued her when she first arrived at the beach that week. Sometimes she wished she could speak with the woman she used to be, but she wasn’t sure what she would have said. She supposed that she could assure the younger version of herself that she’d have children, but would she add that raising them wasn’t anything like the ideal she’d envisioned? That as much as she treasured them, there were countless times when they enraged or disappointed her? That her worries about them were sometimes overwhelming? Or would she tell the younger version of herself that, after having children, there would be times when she wished she could be truly free again?

  And what could she possibly say about Josh?

  She supposed it didn’t matter now, nor was it worth the time it took to even dwell on the questions. But the invitation nonetheless made her reflect that life resembled an infinite number of dominoes set up to topple on the world’s largest floor, where one domino leads inevitably to the next. Had the invitation not arrived, Hope may never have argued with Josh, or spent the week without him at Sunset Beach, or even met Tru in the first place. The invitation, she speculated, was the domino that, when toppled, set in motion the rest of her life. The choreography that had led to the most profound experience of love she’d ever had struck her as both scripted and improbable, but she wondered again to what end.

  Setting the invitation aside, Hope reached for the first of the drawings. Tru had drawn her the morning after they’d made love, and Hope knew that she no longer resembled the woman in the drawing. In the sketch, her skin was soft and unlined, glowing with the last breath of youth. Her thick hair was shot with sunlit highlights, her breasts were firm and high, her legs toned and unblemished. He’d captured her in a way that no photograph ever had, and as she continued to study it, she mused that she’d never looked prettier. Because he’d drawn her the way he saw her.

  Placing it on top of the wedding invitation, she reached for the second drawing. He’d completed it while she’d been at the wedding, and over the years, whenever she went through the contents of the box, she always lingered over this sketch. In it, the two of them stood on the beach, near the water’s edge. The pier was in the background and sunlight glinted off the ocean as they stared at each other in profile. Her arms were around his neck and his hands were at her waist. Again, she thought he’d made her more beautiful than she really was, but it was the image of him that captured her. She studied the lines at the corners of his eyes and the dimple in his chin; she traced the shape of his shoulders beneath the loose fabric of his shirt. Most of all, though, she marveled at the expression he’d given himself as he stared at her—that of a man deeply in love with the woman he held in his arms. She pulled the drawing closer, wondering whether he had ever again looked at another woman this way. She would never know, and though there was part of her that wished him happiness, another part wanted to believe that the feelings they’d had for each other were entirely unique.

  She set that drawing aside as well. Next came the letter that Tru had written to her, the one she’d found in the glove compartment. The paper had yellowed at the edges and there were small tears in the creases; the letter had become as brittle as she had. The realization brought a lump to her throat as she traced a line between her name at the top and his at the bottom, connecting them once more. She read the words she already knew by heart, never tiring of their power.

  Rising from the table, Hope moved to the kitchen window. As her mind wandered, she realized that she could see Tru walking past the cottage with a fishing pole draped over his shoulder, a tackle box in his other hand, and she watched as he turned to face her. He waved, and in response, she reached out, touching the glass.

  “I never stopped loving you,” she whispered, but the glass was cold and the kitchen was quiet, and when she blinked she realized that the beach was entirely deserted.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes to go, one item left. It was a photocopy of a letter she’d written last year. She’d placed the original in Kindred Spirit on her previous trip to the beach, and as she unfolded the copy, she told herself how silly her gesture had been. A letter means nothing if the intended recipient never receives it, and Tru would never learn of it. Yet in the letter, she’d made a promise to herself, one that she intended to keep. If nothing else, she hoped it would give her the strength she needed to finally say goodbye.

  This is a letter to God and the Universe.

  I need your help, in what I imagine will be my last attempt to apologize for a decision I made so long ago. My story is both straightforward and complicated. To capture accurately all that happened would require a book, so instead, I will offer only the basics:

  In September of 1990, while visiting Sunset Beach, I met a man from Zimbabwe named Tru Walls. At the time, he worked as a safari guide at a camp in the Hwange reserve. He also had a home in Bulawayo, but he’d grown up on a farm near Harare. He was forty-two, divorced, and had a ten-year-old son named Andrew. We met on a Wednesday morning, and I’d fallen in love with him by Thursday evening.

  You may think this impossible, that perhaps I’m confusing infatuation with love. All I can say is that I’ve considered those possibilities a thousand times and rejected them. If you met him, you would understand why he captured my heart; if you had seen the two of us together, you would know that the feelings we had for each other were undeniably real. In the short period we were together, I like to think that we became soul mates, forever intertwined. By Sunday, however, it was over. And I was the one who ended it, for reasons I have agonized over for decades.

  It was the right decision at the time; it was also the wrong decision. I would do the same thing again; I would have done it all differently. This confusion remains with me even now, but I have learned to accept that I will never rid myself of the questions.

  Needless to say, my decision crushed him. My guilt over this continues to haunt me. I have now reached a point in life where making amends whenever possible feels important. And this is where God and the Universe can help, for my plea is a simple one.

  I would like to see Tru again so that I can apologize to him. I want his forgiveness, if something like that is even possible. In my dreams, I’m hopeful that this will give me peace of mind; I need him to understand how much I loved him then, and still love him now. And I want him to know how sorry I am.

  Perhaps you are wondering why I did not try to contact him through more conventional means. I did; I tried for years to find him, without luck. Nor do I really believe this letter will reach him, but if it does, then I will ask if he remembers the place that we visited together on Thursday afternoon, right before it began to rain.

  This is where I’ll be on October 16, 2014. If he remembers the place with the same reverence I do, then he’ll also know what time of day I’ll be there.

  Hope

  * * *

  Eyeing the clock, Hope knew that Kindred Spirit was waiting. She put the items back in the box and closed the lid with finality, already knowing that she wouldn’t return the box to the attic, nor would she bring the contents home. The box itself would be left here at the cottage, on the mantel, and the owner could do with it whatever he wanted. Aside from the wedding invitation, the rest of the contents would be left at Kindred Spirit later in the week. She needed a day or two to erase their identities, but she hoped that other visitors would revel in the items, as she and Tru had once treasured Joe’s letter to Lena. She wanted people to know that love often lies in wait, ready to bloom when least expected.

  The drive was straightforward, a route she knew like the back of her hand. She crossed over the newer bridge at Sunset Beach, drove past the pier to the western edge of the island, and found a place to park.

  Bundling up, she trudged slowly through the low-slung dunes, relieved to see that as much as the island had cha
nged, the beach was still the same. Storms and hurricanes as well as currents were continually altering the barrier islands along North Carolina’s coast, but Sunset Beach appeared relatively immune, even though she’d heard last year that Bird Island could now be accessed on foot even when it wasn’t low tide.

  The sand was spongy, leaving her winded, and her legs felt leaden. When she reached the western edge of Sunset Beach, she glanced over her shoulder. She saw no one else walking in the same direction, only a lonely stretch of sand with gentle waves lapping along the shoreline. A brown pelican skimmed the breakers, and she watched until it became nothing but a speck in the distance.

  Gathering herself, she started forward again, crossing the hard-packed sand gully that had been submerged only hours before. As soon as she reached Bird Island, the wind, which had been blowing steadily, ceased, as though welcoming her home. The air itself felt thinner and filmy here, and the sun, now ascendant, made her squint as it reflected off the prism of the sea. In the sudden silence, Hope understood that she’d been lying to herself ever since she’d arrived. She wasn’t making this trek to say goodbye. She’d come here because she still wanted to believe in the impossible. She’d come because part of her clung irrationally to the belief that Kindred Spirit held the key to their future. She’d come today because she longed with every cell of her body to believe that Tru had somehow learned about her letter and would be here, waiting.

  Logically, she understood how crazy it was to wish for such a thing, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Tru would be there. With every step, his presence seemed closer. She heard his voice in the endless roar of the ocean, and despite the chill, she felt herself growing warmer. The sand clawed at her, grabbing every step, but she increased her pace. Her breath came out in little puffs; her heart began to race, but still she pressed onward. Terns and gulls clustered in groups while sandpipers darted in and out of the gently lapping waves. She felt a sudden kinship with them, for she knew they would be the only witnesses to a reunion that had been twenty-four years in the making. They would watch as she fell into his arms; they would hear him proclaim that he’d never stopped loving her. He would spin her around and kiss her, and they would rush back to the cottage, eager to make up for lost time…