“No, thank you,” he said.
“Okay. Go ahead and start. Let me take care of Scottie.”
Slipping the towel from her shoulder, she squatted beside the dog and began rubbing him briskly with the towel.
“You wouldn’t believe how much sand gets into his fur,” she said. “He’s like a sand magnet.”
“I’ll bet he’s good company.”
“He’s the best,” she said, planting an affectionate kiss on the dog’s snout. Scottie licked her face joyfully in return.
“How old is he?”
“He’s four. My boyfriend, Josh, bought him for me.”
Tru nodded. He should have assumed that she was seeing someone. He reached for his cup, not sure what to say, and decided not to ask anything more. He took a sip, thinking the coffee tasted different from the kind his family grew on the farm. Less smooth, somehow. But it was strong and hot, just what he needed.
When Hope finished with Scottie, she draped the towel over the railing to dry and walked back to the table. When she sat, her face fell half in shadow, lending her features a mysterious cast. She blew delicately on her coffee before taking a sip, the gesture strangely arresting.
“Tell me about the wedding,” he finally said.
“Oh, gosh…that. It’s just a wedding.”
“You said it’s for a good friend?”
“I’ve been friends with Ellen since college. We were in the same sorority—do they have sororities in Zimbabwe?” she interrupted herself. At his quizzical expression, she went on. “Sororities are a kind of all-women club at colleges and universities…you know, where a group of girls live and socialize together. Anyway, all the bridesmaids were in the same sorority, so it’ll be a little reunion, too. Other than that, it’s just a typical wedding. Photos, cake, a band at the reception, tossing the garter belt and all that. You know how weddings are.”
“Aside from my own, I’ve never been to one.”
“Oh…you’re married?”
“Divorced. But the wedding wasn’t anything like they do here in the U.S. We were married by an official of the court, and went straight from there to the airport. We spent our honeymoon in Paris.”
“That sounds romantic.”
“It was.”
She liked the matter-of-factness of his answer, liked that he didn’t feel the need to elaborate or romanticize it. “How do you know about American weddings, then?”
“I’ve seen a few movies. And I’ve had guests tell me about them. Safaris are popular honeymoon destinations. In any case, the weddings sound very complicated and stressful.”
Ellen would definitely agree with that, Hope thought. Switching tacks, Hope asked, “What is it like to grow up in Zimbabwe?”
“I can only talk about my own experience. Zimbabwe is a big country. It’s different for everyone.”
“What was it like for you?”
He wasn’t sure what or how much to tell her, so he kept it general. “My family owns a farm near Harare. It’s been in the family for generations. So I grew up doing farm chores. My grandfather thought it would be good for me. I milked cows and collected eggs when I was young. In my teen years, I did heavier work, like repairs: fencing, roofs, irrigation, pumps, engines, anything that was broken. In addition to going to school.”
“How did you end up guiding?”
He shrugged. “I felt at peace whenever I was in the bush. Whenever I had spare time, I’d venture out on my own. And when I finished school, I let my family know I would be leaving. So I did.”
As he answered, he could feel her eyes on him. She offered a skeptical expression as she reached for her coffee again.
“Why do I have the sense that there’s more to the story?”
“Because there’s always more to the story.”
She laughed, the sound surprisingly hearty and unselfconscious. “Fair enough. Tell me about some of the most exciting things you’ve seen on safari.”
On familiar ground, Tru regaled her with the same stories he shared with guests whenever they asked. Now and then she had questions, but for the most part, she was content to listen. By the time he finished, the coffee was gone and the sun was scorching the back of his neck. He set the empty cup back on the table.
“Would you like more? There’s a little left in the pot.”
“One cup is plenty,” he said. “And I’ve taken too much of your time already. But I did appreciate it. Thank you.”
“It was the least I could do,” she said. She rose as well, walking him to the gate. He pulled it open, keenly aware of her closeness. He started down the steps, but turned when he reached the walkway to offer a quick wave.
“Nice meeting you, Tru,” she called out with a smile. Though he had no way to know for sure, he wondered whether she continued to watch him as he wound toward the beach. For some reason, it took a great deal of willpower to stop himself from glancing over his shoulder to find out.
Autumn Afternoons
Back at the house, Tru found himself at loose ends. If he could, he’d call Andrew, but he wasn’t comfortable with the thought of dialing from the house phone. Overseas charges were substantial, and besides, Andrew likely wouldn’t be home yet. After school, he played soccer with his youth club; Tru always enjoyed watching him practice. Andrew lacked the innate athleticism that other kids on the team displayed, but he was a relaxed and natural leader, much like his mother.
Thinking about his son eventually made Tru retrieve his drawing materials, which he carried out to the back deck. Next door, he noticed that Hope had gone inside, although the towel she’d used on Scottie was still draped over the railing. Settling himself in the chair, he debated what he should sketch. Andrew had never seen the ocean, not in person, so Tru decided to try to capture the enormity of the sight before him, assuming that was even possible.
As always, he started with a general and faint outline of the scene—a diagonal point of view that included the shoreline, breaking waves, the pier, and a sea that stretched to the horizon. Drawing had always been a way to relax his mind, and as he sketched, he allowed it to wander. He thought about Hope and wondered what it was about her that had captured his interest. It was unusual for him to be so instantly taken with someone, but he told himself it didn’t really matter. He’d come to North Carolina for other reasons, and he found his thoughts drifting to his family.
He hadn’t seen or spoken to his stepfather, Rodney, or his half brothers, Allen and Alex, in almost two years. The reasons were rooted in history, and wealth had further compounded the estrangement. In addition to the Walls family name, Tru had inherited partial ownership of the farm and business empire. The profits were substantial, but in his daily life, he had little need for money. Whatever he earned from the farm was sent to an investment account in Switzerland that the Colonel had set up when Tru was still a toddler. The funds had been piling up for years, but Tru seldom checked the balance. From that account, he arranged for money to be sent regularly to Kim and he paid for Andrew’s schooling, but aside from the outright purchase of the house in Bulawayo, that was it. He had already arranged to sign over a chunk of the money to Andrew when his son reached the age of thirty-five. He assumed that Andrew would find more use for it than he would.
Recently, his half brothers had started to become resentful about that, but theirs had always been a distant relationship, so it wasn’t altogether unexpected. Tru was nine years older than the twins, and by the time they would have been old enough to remember Tru, he was already spending most of his time in the bush, as far away from the farm as possible. He moved away for good when he was eighteen. In essence, they were, and always had been, strangers to each other.
Things with Rodney, on the other hand, were more complicated. Tru’s equity in the business had been causing problems with Rodney ever since the Colonel had died, thirteen years ago, but in truth, the relationship had been broken far longer than that. To Tru’s mind, it dated back to the fire, when Tru was eleven years old.
Much of the compound had gone up in flames in 1959. Tru had barely escaped by jumping from a second-floor window. Rodney had carried Allen and Alex to safety, but Tru’s mother, Evelyn, had never made it out.
Even before the fire, Rodney had never been supportive or affectionate with his stepson; he mostly tolerated Tru. In the aftermath, Rodney’s attention became almost nonexistent. Between dealing with his grief, raising toddlers, and managing the farm, he was overwhelmed. In retrospect, Tru understood that. At the time, it hadn’t been so easy, and the Colonel hadn’t offered much in the way of support, either. After the death of his only child, he sank into a profound depression that seemed to lock him away in a vault of silence. He would sit near the blackened ruins of the compound, staring at the wreckage; when the debris was hauled off and construction began on the new houses, he stared without speaking at the ongoing work. Occasionally Tru went to sit with him, but the Colonel would mumble only a few words in acknowledgment. There were rumors, after all; rumors about his grandfather, the business, and the real reason for the fire. At the time, Tru knew nothing about them; he knew only that no one in his family seemed willing to speak to him or even offer so much as a hug. If it hadn’t been for Tengwe and Anoona, Tru wasn’t sure he would have survived the loss of his mother. The only thing he could really remember from that period was regularly crying himself to sleep and spending long hours wandering the property alone after school and his chores. He understood now that those had been his first steps on the journey that led him from the farm to living in the bush. Had his mother survived, he had no idea who he would have become.
But that wasn’t the only change in the aftermath of his mother’s death. After she passed, Tru had asked Tengwe to purchase some drawing paper and pencils. Because he recalled seeing his mother sketch, he began to do so as well. He had no training and little natural skill; it was months before he could re-create on paper something as simple as a tree with any semblance of realism. It was, however, a way to escape his own feelings and the quiet desperation always present at the farm.
He longed to draw his mother, but her features seemed to vanish more quickly than his skill developed. Everything he attempted struck him as wrong somehow, not the mother he remembered, even when Tengwe and Anoona protested otherwise. Some attempts were closer than others, but never once did he complete a drawing of his mother that he felt fully captured her. In the end, he threw the stack of sketches away, resigning himself to that additional loss, like the other losses in his life.
Like his father.
Growing up, it had sometimes felt to Tru as though the man had never existed. His mother had said little about him, even when Tru pressed; the Colonel refused to speak of him at all. Over time, Tru’s curiosity waned to almost nothing. He could go years without thinking or wondering about the man. Then, out of the blue, a letter had arrived a few months ago at the camp in Hwange. It had originally been sent to the farm; Tengwe had forwarded it, but Tru hadn’t bothered opening it right away. When he finally did, his initial instinct was to regard it as some sort of practical joke, despite the plane tickets. It was only when he scrutinized the faded photograph that he realized that the letter might be genuine.
The photo showed a young, handsome man with his arm around a much younger version of a woman who could only be Tru’s mother. Evelyn was a teenager in the photograph—she had been nineteen when Tru was born—and it struck Tru as surreal that he was more than twice the age she’d been back then. Assuming, of course, that it actually was her.
But it was. In his heart, he knew it.
He didn’t know how long he stared at it on that first evening, but over the next few days, he found himself continually reaching for it. It was the only photograph he had of his mother. All the others had been lost in the same fire that had killed her, and seeing her image after so many years triggered a flood of additional memories: the sight of her sketching on the back veranda; her face hovering above him as she tucked him into bed; the sight of her wearing a green dress as she stood in the kitchen; the feel of her hand in his as they walked toward a pond. He still wasn’t sure whether any of those events were real or simply figments of his imagination.
Then, of course, there was the man in the photograph…
In the letter, he’d identified himself as Harry Beckham, an American. He claimed to have been born in 1914, and to have met Tru’s mother in late 1946. He’d served in World War II as part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and after the war, he’d moved to Rhodesia, where he worked at the Bushtick Mine in Matabeleland. He’d met Tru’s mother in Harare, and said that the two of them had fallen in love. He further claimed not to have known that she’d been pregnant when he moved back to America, but Tru wasn’t sure he believed that. After all, if he hadn’t even suspected that Tru’s mum had been pregnant, why would he have searched for a long-lost child in the first place?
Tru supposed he would find out soon enough.
* * *
Tru continued to labor over the sketch for a couple of hours, stopping only when he thought he had something that Andrew might enjoy. He hoped it might make up for the week they wouldn’t be together.
Heading inside, he toyed with the idea of going fishing. He enjoyed it and hadn’t had much time for it in the past few years, but after sitting for much of the afternoon, he felt the urge to get his blood flowing. Maybe tomorrow, he thought, and instead changed into the only pair of shorts he owned. He found a closet full of beach towels, grabbed one, then went to the beach. Dropping the towel in the dry sand near the water’s edge, he waded in, surprised by how warm the water was. He moved through the first set of mild breakers, then the next, and once he was beyond them, he was chest-deep in the water. Kicking off the bottom, he began to swim, hoping to make it to the pier and back.
It took a while to find his rhythm, despite the placid surface of the ocean. Because he hadn’t swum any kind of distance in years, he found it slow going. He inched past one house and then another; by the fifth house, his muscles had begun to tire. When he reached the pier, exhaustion had set in, but he was nothing if not persistent. Instead of wading ashore, he turned and began the even slower swim back to where he’d started.
When he finally reached his house and went ashore, the muscles in his legs were shaking and he could barely move his arms. Nonetheless, he felt satisfied. At the camp, he was limited to calisthenics and the kind of explosive jumps that could be done in confined areas. He ran whenever possible—he would circle the interior perimeter of the guide camp for half an hour a few times a week, the most boring jog on the planet, he’d long ago decided—but on most days, he was able to do quite a bit of walking. In the camp where he worked, a guide could allow guests to leave the jeep and head into the bush, as long as the guide was armed. Sometimes that was the only way to get close enough to spot some of the rarer animals like black rhinos or cheetahs. For him, it was a way to stretch his legs; for the guests, it was usually the highlight of any game drive.
Once inside, he took a long shower, rinsed his shorts in the sink, and had a sandwich for lunch. After that, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. It had been a long time since he’d had an afternoon with nothing whatsoever on the schedule, and it left him feeling unsettled. He picked up his sketchbook again and examined the drawing he’d done for Andrew, noticing some changes he wanted to make. It was always that way; Da Vinci once said that art is never finished but only abandoned, and that made perfect sense to Tru. He decided he’d work on it again tomorrow.
For now, he picked up his guitar and went to the back deck. The sand blazed white in the sun and the blue water stretching to the horizon was strangely calm beyond the breakers. Perfect. But as he tuned his guitar, he realized he had no desire to spend the rest of the day at the house. He could call for a car, but that seemed pointless. He had no idea where he would even want to go. Instead, he remembered that Hope had mentioned a restaurant a little way past the pier, and he decided that later tonight, he’d have dinner there.
Once the guitar was readied, he played for a while, running through most of the songs he’d ever learned. Like sketching, it allowed his mind to wander, and when his gaze eventually drifted to the cottage next door, his thoughts again landed on Hope. He wondered why, despite having a boyfriend and the wedding of a close friend only days away, she had come to Sunset Beach alone.
* * *
Hope found herself wishing that her hair and nail appointments had been scheduled for today instead of tomorrow morning, just so she’d have an excuse to get out of the house. Instead, she spent the morning going through a few of the closets at the cottage. Her mom had suggested that she take anything she wanted, with the unspoken caveat that Hope should try to anticipate her sisters’ desires as well. Both Robin and Joanna would be coming down to the cottage in the next few weeks to help with the sorting, and all of them had been raised in a way that left little room for selfishness. Because Hope had only limited storage space at her condominium, she had no problem with keeping almost nothing for herself.
Still, going through a single box took more time than she’d anticipated. After disposing of the junk (which was most of it), she’d been left with a favorite pair of swim goggles, a tattered copy of Where the Wild Things Are, a Bugs Bunny key chain, a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, three completed coloring books, postcards from various places where the family had vacationed, and a locket with a photograph of Hope’s mother. All those items made her smile for one reason or another and were worth keeping, and she suspected that her sisters would feel the same way. Most likely, anything kept would end up in another box tucked away in an attic somewhere. Which raised the question of why they were bothering to go through it all in the first place, but deep down, Hope already knew the answer. Throwing it all away didn’t feel right. For some crazy reason, part of her wanted to know these things were still around.
She’d be the first to admit that she hadn’t been thinking all that straight lately, starting with the idea of coming here ahead of the wedding. In hindsight, it seemed like a bad idea, but she’d already requested and received the vacation days, and what was the alternative? Visiting her parents and trying not to worry about her dad? Or staying in Raleigh, where she’d be equally alone, but surrounded by constant reminders of Josh? She supposed she could have taken a vacation somewhere else, but where would she have gone? The Bahamas? Key West? Paris? She would have been alone there, too, her dad would still be sick, Josh would still be in Las Vegas, and she would still have a wedding to attend this weekend.
Every Breath Page 6