Every Breath

by Nicholas Sparks

  “When did you find out?”

  “The July before last. So a little less than a year and a half ago. I’d only been retired six months and was looking forward to a new life.” Then, knowing what his next question would be, she added, “My dad lasted a little less than seven years. And I think I’m doing better than he was, for now, anyway. By that, I mean I think it’s progressing more slowly than his did, but I can tell that it’s worse now than when I first found out. I struggled to make it to Kindred Spirit this morning.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to face this, Hope.”

  “It’s awful,” she admitted. “And I haven’t figured out a way to tell the kids yet. They were so young when my dad passed away that they don’t really remember him. Nor do they remember the toll it took on the family. I know that when I finally do tell them, they’re going to react in the same way I did. They’re going to be terrified and spend a lot of time hovering over me, but I don’t want them to put their lives on hold for me. I was thirty-six when I found out, but they’re just starting out. I don’t want that—I want them to live their own lives. But once they know, that will become impossible. The only reason I didn’t fall apart when my dad was sick was because the kids were young and needed all my attention. I didn’t have a choice. But I told you what it was like with my dad…how hard it was to watch him die.”

  “You did.” Tru nodded.

  “That was one of the reasons I put the letter in the mailbox last year. Because I realized that…”

  When she trailed off, Tru reached for her hand. “You realized…?”

  “Because I realized that while it was too late for us, maybe it wasn’t too late to apologize to you, and I needed to do that. Because I saw you standing in the road and I just kept going. I’ve had to live with that, which might be punishment enough, but…part of me wanted your forgiveness, too.”

  “You’ve always had it,” he said, wrapping his other hand around hers, cradling it like a broken bird. “I wrote it in my letter—meeting you was something I would have done a thousand times over, if given the chance, even if I knew it had to end. I’ve never been angry at you because of the choice you made.”

  “But I hurt you.”

  He leaned closer and raised a hand to touch her cheek.

  “Grief is always the price we pay for love,” he said. “I learned that with my mum and when Andrew moved away. It’s the nature of things.”

  Hope was silent as she contemplated this. She stared up at him. “You know what the worst part is?” she said in a subdued voice. “About knowing that you’re dying?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Your dreams start dying, too. When I received the diagnosis, one of the first things that went through my mind was that it meant I’d probably never be a grandmother. Rocking a baby to sleep, or doing paint-by-numbers at the picnic table, or giving them baths. Little things, things that haven’t even happened and might not ever happen, seemed to be what I missed the most. Which I’ll admit makes no sense, but I can’t help it.”

  Tru was quiet as he reflected on what she’d said. “When I was in the hospital,” he finally responded, “I felt the same way. I dreamed about going hiking in Europe or taking up painting, and then I’d get massively depressed when I realized that I might not be able to do those things. But the batty thing is that once I got better, hiking and painting no longer interested me. I think it’s human nature to want what we might not be able to have.”

  “I know you’re right, but still…I was really looking forward to being a grandmother.” She managed a small laugh. “Assuming that Jacob and Rachel get married, of course. Which I doubt will happen anytime soon. They seem to enjoy their independence.”

  He smiled. “I know you said the walk this morning was tough, but you seemed all right on the way back.”

  “I felt good,” she agreed. “Sometimes it’s like that. And physically, I feel all right most of the time, as long as I don’t overdo it. I don’t think there’s been much change lately. I want to believe that I’ve come to terms with it. It’s enlightening, because it makes it easier to decide what’s important to me and what isn’t. I know how I want to spend my time, and what I’d rather avoid. But there are still days when I get frightened or sad. Especially for my kids.”

  “I would, too. When I was in the hospital, Andrew’s terrified expression when he sat with me almost broke my heart.”

  “Which is why I’ve kept it a secret so far,” she said. “Even my sisters don’t know. Or my friends.”

  He leaned in and touched his forehead to hers. “I’m honored you shared it with me,” he whispered.

  “I thought about telling you earlier,” she confessed. “After you told me about your accident. But I was having such a wonderful time, I didn’t want it to end.”

  “It still hasn’t ended,” he said. “I’d rather be here with you than anywhere else. And despite what you just told me, it’s been one of the best days of my life.”

  “You’re a sweet man, Tru.” She smiled sadly. “You always were.”

  She angled her face slightly to give him a gentle kiss, the brush of his whiskers triggering a sense of déjà vu. “I know you said that two glasses of wine is your limit, but I think I’d like another glass. Would you care to join me? There’s another bottle in the refrigerator.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said.

  While he was in the kitchen, Hope rubbed her face wearily, hardly able to believe that her secret was finally out. She’d hated telling Tru, but having spoken the words once, she knew she would be able to say them again. To Jacob and Rachel and her sisters. Her friends. Even Josh. But none of them would react like Tru, who had somehow eased her fears, if only for a moment.

  Tru returned from the kitchen with a pair of glasses and handed one to her. As soon as he took his seat, he lifted his arm and she snuggled within his embrace. For a while they sat in silence, staring into the fire. Hope’s mind reeled with all the events of the day: Tru’s return, the book of sketches, telling him her secret. It was almost too much to process.

  “I should have gotten on the plane,” Tru said into the silence. “I should have tried harder to find you.”

  “I feel like I should have tried harder, too,” she said. “But knowing that you thought about me all these years means everything to me.”

  “Me too. Just like today…it’s been all I ever dreamed of.”

  “But I’m dying.”

  “I think you’re living,” he said with surprising firmness. “And day by day, that’s all any of us can ever do. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be alive a year from now, or a month from now. Or even tomorrow.”

  She let her head drop back against his arm. “That’s what people say, and I know there’s truth to it. But it’s different when you know for certain that you only have so much time left. If my dad is any guide, I have five, maybe five and a half years. And the last year isn’t so good.”

  “In four and a half years, I’ll be seventy.”

  “So what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything can happen, and that’s the point. What I do know is that I’ve spent the last twenty-four years dreaming of you. Wanting to hold your hand and talk and listen and cook dinners and lie beside you at night. I haven’t had the life that you did. I’ve been alone, and when I learned about your letter, I realized that I was alone because I was waiting for you. I love you, Hope.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time. It’s finally time for us. For you and me. No matter what the future has in store for either of us.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He kissed her neck softly, and she felt the blood rush to her stomach, like it had so long ago. Tucking some strands of hair behind her ear, he murmured, “Marry me. Or don’t, and just be with me. I’ll move to North Carolina and we can live wherever you want. We can travel, but we don’t have to. We can cook together, or eat out every meal. It doesn’t matter to me
. I just want to hold you, and love you with every breath that you or I ever take. I don’t care how long it lasts, and I don’t care how sick you get. I just want you. Will you do that for me?”

  Hope stared at him, stunned, before finally breaking into a smile.

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I’ll do anything you want,” he said. “As long as it’s with you.”

  Without a word, she reached for his hand. Rising from the couch, she led him to the bedroom, and that night they rediscovered each other, their bodies moving to the memory of another time, familiar and yet tenderly, impossibly new. When they were finished, she lay next to Tru, staring at him with the same deep contentment she saw in his eyes. It was a look she’d missed all her life.

  “I’d like that,” she finally whispered.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  She moved closer, kissing him on the nose, then on the lips. “I’d like,” she whispered, “to marry you.”

  Epilogue

  I struggled with the ending of Tru and Hope’s story. I didn’t want to catalogue Hope’s drawn-out battle with ALS, or the countless ways in which Tru tried to ease her decline. I did, however, write an additional chapter about the week that Hope and Tru spent at Carolina Beach, as well as Hope’s conversation with her children, their wedding the following February, and the safari that they enjoyed on their honeymoon. I concluded the chapter with a description of their annual treks to Kindred Spirit, where they left the manila envelope in the mailbox so that others might share in their story. In the end, though, I discarded the pages I’d written—in my talks with them, it was clear that the story they wanted to share was a simple one: They fell in love, were separated for years, but found a way to reunite, partly because of the magic associated with Kindred Spirit. I didn’t want to distract from the almost fable-like quality of their tale.

  Still, their story didn’t quite feel complete to me. The writer in me couldn’t help feeling that there was a gap concerning Tru’s life in the years prior to his reunion with Hope. For that reason, in the months immediately prior to publication, I called Tru to secure his approval for another trip to Zimbabwe. I wanted to meet Romy, a man who had played a minor, almost inconsequential role in the love story of Tru and Hope.

  Romy had retired to a small village in Chegutu District in northern Zimbabwe, and the journey was a story in and of itself. Guns were plentiful in that part of the country, and I was worried about being kidnapped, but the driver I hired happened to be well connected to the tribes who controlled the area and ensured my safe passage. I note this only because it was a reminder of the lawlessness now present in a country that I nonetheless regard as one of the most remarkable places on earth.

  Romy was thin and gray-haired, his skin darker than most of the other villagers’. He was missing a front tooth, but like Tru, he still moved with surprising agility. We spoke while sitting on a bench that had been assembled from cinder blocks and what had once been the bed of a pickup truck. After I introduced myself, I told him about the book that I’d written and explained that I was hoping for more background on his friend Tru Walls.

  A slow smile spread across his face. “So he found her, yeah?”

  “I think they found each other.”

  Romy bent forward and picked up a stick from the ground.

  “How many times you been to Zimbabwe?”

  “This is my second trip here.”

  “You know what happens to the trees after the elephants knock them over? Why you don’t see trees lying on the ground everywhere?”

  I shook my head, intrigued.

  “Termites,” he said. “They eat everything, until there’s nothing left. Good for the bush, but bad for anything made of wood. That’s why this bench has cinder blocks and metal. Because termites just eat and eat, and they never stop.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

  Romy rested his elbows on his bony knees and leaned toward me, still holding the stick. “Tru was like that after he came back from America…like he was being eaten up from the inside. He’d always liked to be by himself, but now it was more…he was always alone. He would stay in his room, drawing pictures, but he didn’t show me his pictures anymore. For a long time, I didn’t know what was wrong, just that every September, he would start acting sad again.”

  Romy cracked the stick in half and let the pieces fall to the ground.

  “Then, one night in September—five or six years after the trip to America?—I saw him sitting outside. He was drinking. I was having a smoke and went to join him. He turned to me, and his face…I’d never seen him look that way before. I asked him, ‘How are you doing?’ But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell me to go away, so I sat down next to him. After a while, he gave me a drink. He always had good whiskey. His family was rich, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “After some time, he finally asked me what was the hardest thing I ever did. I said I didn’t know, life is full of hard things. Why did he want to know? He said that he knew the hardest thing he had to do, and that nothing would ever be greater than that.”

  Romy let out a wheezy breath before going on. “It wasn’t the words…it was how he said it. There was so much sadness, so much pain, like those termites had eaten his soul. And then he told me about that trip to America…and the woman. Hope.”

  Romy turned to face me.

  “I’ve loved some women in my life,” he said with a grin. But then the grin faded. “When he talked, I knew I never loved anyone that way. And when he told me how he said goodbye…” Romy stared at the ground. “He cried, like a person broken. And I felt his heart aching inside me, too.” He shook his head. “After that, whenever I saw him I would think, he’s still feeling pain, just hiding it.”

  Romy grew quiet, and for a while we just sat together and watched twilight descend over the village. “He never talked about it no more. I retired then, and I didn’t see Tru for a long time, not until he had the big accident. I went to see him at the hospital. Did you know about that?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He looked terrible, so terrible. But the doctors said he was a lot better than before! He was mixing up his words a lot of the time, so I did a lot of talking. And I was trying to be cheerful, to make jokes, and I asked him, did he see Jesus or God when he died? He made a sad smile, one that nearly broke my heart. ‘No,’ he said to me, ‘I saw Hope.’”

  * * *

  When I returned from Zimbabwe, I drove to the beach where Tru and Hope now live. I had taken nearly a year to research and write the book, and was reluctant to intrude on them anymore. Nonetheless, I found myself walking near the water’s edge, past their cottage. I didn’t see them.

  It was midafternoon. I continued to walk up the beach, eventually reaching the pier, and strolled to the end of it. There were a handful of people fishing, but I found a clear spot in the corner. I stared at the ocean, feeling the breeze in my hair, knowing that writing their story had changed me.

  I hadn’t seen either of them in months, and I missed them. I drew comfort from the knowledge that they were together, the way they were supposed to be. Later, as I passed by their cottage a second time on the way back, my eyes were drawn automatically to their home. Still no sight of them.

  It was getting late by then, the sky a mixture of violets, blues, and grays, but on the horizon, the moon had begun its rise from the sea, as if it had spent the day hiding at the ocean floor.

  Twilight began to deepen and I found myself scanning the beach again. I could see their house in the distance, and though the beach had largely emptied, I saw that Tru and Hope had emerged to enjoy the evening. My heart leaped at the sight of them, and I thought again about the years they’d spent apart. I thought about their future, the walks they would miss and the adventures they would never have. I thought about sacrifice and miracles. And I thought also about the love they’d always felt for each other—like stars in the daytime sky, unseen, but always
present.

  They were at the bottom of the ramp, the one that Tru had been building the first time I met him. Hope was in her wheelchair, a blanket over her legs. Tru was standing beside her, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. There was a lifetime of love in that simple gesture, and I felt my throat close up. As I continued to stare, he must have sensed my presence in the distance, for he turned in my direction.

  He waved a greeting. Though I waved back, I knew it was a farewell of sorts. While I considered them friends, I doubted we would speak again.

  It was their time, at last.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  While my novels generally hew to certain expected norms (they’re usually set in North Carolina, feature a love story, etc.), I do try to vary the themes, characters, or devices in interesting ways with every book. I’ve always loved the literary device of “self-insertion,” in which the author himself makes an appearance in a fictional work—sometimes as a thinly veiled autobiographical narrator, like Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, or merely incidentally, like the character of Stephen King in The Dark Tower: Volume VI, whose entirely fictional diary plays a role in the story (and whose death is mentioned in the novel as occurring in 1997). One of my favorite novelists, Herman Wouk, wrote a novel at age ninety-seven, The Lawgiver, in which he fictitiously gets involved in a disastrous attempt to make a movie in Hollywood, over the misgivings of his real-life wife, Betty. This layered, “story-within-a-story” device involving the author always felt intriguing to me—the novelistic equivalent of Renaissance painters mischievously inserting themselves into their tableaux. I hope you agree that the bookends I wrote in my own voice added an interesting dimension to what is in other ways a classic story of lovers long denied.

  While my “discovery” of Tru and Hope’s story is entirely fictional, the inspiration and setting of the novel are drawn directly from my own experiences. I first traveled to Africa in 2010, and on that trip fell head over heels in love with the countries I was lucky enough to visit—the utterly spectacular landscapes, the fascinating and varied cultures, the turbulent political histories, and curious sense of timelessness I experienced there. I’ve since returned to Africa several more times, each time exploring different regions and visiting a rapidly disappearing natural environment. These trips were nothing short of life-changing, expanding my awareness of the places far removed from my staid existence in small-town North Carolina. On each of these trips, I met dozens of safari guides whose rich knowledge and fascinating life stories provided grist for my creative mill, and eventually inspired me to create a character whose fate was entwined with and governed by his life growing up in Africa.