Every Breath

The passage of time made things worse, not better. Her mom eventually became as housebound as her dad once had been. She left the house only to go to the doctor’s office, and four years after her husband’s funeral, she was scheduled for a hernia operation. The surgery was considered a minor one, and by all accounts, it went well. The hernia was repaired, and her mother’s vitals had remained stable throughout the procedure. In post-op, however, her mother never woke from the anesthesia. She died two days later.

Hope knew the physician, the anesthesiologist, and the nurses. All had taken part in other operations that same day, both before and after Hope’s mother’s, with no other patients suffering adverse consequences. Hope had spent enough time in the medical world to know that bad things sometimes happened and there wasn’t always an easy explanation; part of her wondered whether her mom had simply wanted to die and somehow succeeded.

The following week passed in a blur. Dazed, she remembered little about the wake or the funeral. In the weeks that followed, neither she nor her sisters had the emotional reserves necessary to start going through their mother’s belongings. Instead, Hope would sometimes wander the home where she’d grown up, unable to grasp the idea of living without parents. Even though she was an adult, it would take years for her to stop thinking she could pick up the phone and call either one of them.

The loss and melancholy faded slowly, eventually displaced by fonder memories. She would recall the vacations they’d taken as a family and the walks she’d enjoyed with her father. She remembered dinners and birthday parties and cross-country meets and school projects with her mom. Her favorite memories were of her parents as a couple, recalling the way they used to flirt when they thought the kids weren’t looking. But the smile would often fade as quickly as it had come, for it would make her think of Tru as well, and the opportunity she’d lost for the two of them to make a life together.

Back at the cottage, Hope took a few minutes to warm her hands over one of the burners on the stove. Way too cold for October, she thought. Knowing the temperature would drop further as soon as the sun went down, she considered using the fireplace—gas lines, with gas logs, so a flip of a switch was all it took to light it—but decided instead to raise the thermostat and make herself a cup of hot chocolate. As a child, she’d liked nothing better when she was chilled, but she’d stopped drinking it around the time she became a teenager. Too many calories, she’d worried back then. These days, she no longer cared about such things.

It reminded her of her age, something she’d rather not think about. Fair or not, they lived in a society that placed an emphasis on youth and beauty when it came to women. She liked to think she didn’t look her age, but also admitted that she might be fooling herself.

She supposed it really didn’t matter. She’d come to the beach for more important reasons. Sipping her hot chocolate, she watched the play of fading sunlight on the water as she reflected on the last twenty-four years. Had Josh ever sensed that she had feelings for another man? As hard as she’d tried to hide it, she wondered whether her secret love for another had in some way undermined her marriage. Had Josh ever intuited that when they were in bed together, Hope sometimes fantasized about Tru? Had he sensed that part of her would always be closed off to him?

She didn’t want to think so, but could it have been a factor in his numerous affairs? Not that she was willing to take all the blame, or even most of it, for what he’d done. Josh was an adult and fully in control of his behaviors, but what if…?

The questions had plagued her ever since she’d learned of his first affair. She’d known all along she hadn’t committed fully to him, just as she now knew that the marriage had been doomed from the instant she’d accepted his proposal. She tried to make up for it with friendship these days, even if she had no desire to rekindle anything between them. In her mind, it was a way to make amends, or atone, even if Josh might never really understand.

She would never confess her guilt to him—she never wanted to hurt anyone again, ever. But no confession meant no chance at forgiveness. She accepted that, just as she accepted the guilt for other wrongs she’d committed in her life. In quiet times, she’d tell herself that most of them would be considered minor when compared to the secret she’d kept from her husband, but there was one that continued to haunt her.

It was the reason she’d come to the beach, and the mirror image of the two great wrongs in her life struck her as both ironic and profound.

To Josh, she’d said nothing about Tru in the hope of sparing his feelings.

To Tru, she’d told the truth about Josh, even while knowing the words would break his heart.

THE BOX

Hope woke to the sight of a sky the color of robins’ eggs, peeking through gauzy white curtains. Glancing out the window, she saw that the sun made the beach glow almost white. It was going to be a gorgeous day, except for the temperature. A cold front pushing down from the Ohio Valley was expected to last for a few more days, with gusty winds that would likely steal her breath as she walked the beach. In the past few years, she had begun to understand why Florida and Arizona were such popular retirement destinations.

Stretching her stiff legs, she got up and started some coffee, then showered and dressed. Though she wasn’t hungry, she fried an egg for breakfast and forced herself to eat it. Then, putting on her jacket and gloves, she stepped onto the back porch with her second cup of coffee, watching the world slowly come to life.

There were few people on the beach: a man trailing behind a dog in the same way she used to follow Scottie, and a female jogger in the distance who’d left a trail of footprints near the water’s edge. The woman had a bouncy stride that kept her ponytail swinging to a lively beat, and as Hope watched, she remembered how much she used to enjoy running. She’d given up the sport when the kids were young, and for whatever reason never resumed. She thought now that it had been a mistake. Nowadays, her physical condition was a source of constant preoccupation—sometimes she longed for the heedless way in which she once took her body for granted. Age revealed so many things about oneself, she mused.

She took a sip of coffee, wondering how the day would unfold. She already felt on edge, even as she cautioned herself against getting her hopes up. Last year when she’d come to the beach, she’d been buoyed by the excitement of her plan, despite its unlikely odds of success. But last year had been the beginning and today it would end…answering once and for all the question of whether miracles really could happen.

When Hope finished her coffee, she went inside and checked the clock. It was time for her to get started.

On the counter was a radio, and she turned it on. Music was always part of the ritual, and she adjusted the dial until she found a station playing soft acoustics. She increased the volume, remembering that she and Tru had been listening to the radio on the night they’d first made love.

In the refrigerator she found the bottle of wine she’d opened the night before and poured herself a small glass, not much more than a swallow. Like the music, wine was part of the ritual she followed whenever opening the box, but because she had to drive, she doubted she would even finish what she’d poured.

She carried the glass to the table and took a seat. The box was where she’d left it the day before. Setting the glass aside, she pulled the box toward her. It was surprisingly heavy. It was constructed of dense wood, both chocolate- and caramel-colored, and had oversize brass hinges. As usual, she took time to admire the intricate carvings on the lid and around the sides—imaginative stylized elephants and lions, zebras and rhinos, giraffes and cheetahs. She’d spotted the box in a booth at a Raleigh street fair, and when she learned that it had been made in Zimbabwe, she knew she had to buy it.

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.