The Return

They lingered at the kitchen table, filling in blanks and answering questions about each other’s past. When they eventually brought their dishes to the sink, Hope turned on the radio, letting the music drift out of the kitchen as they wandered back to the couch. The fire was still burning, casting a yellow glow through the room. Tru watched as she took a seat and tucked the blanket around herself, thinking that he never wanted this day to end.

* * *

Until he’d learned that Hope had placed a letter in Kindred Spirit, Tru had sometimes thought that he’d died twice, not just once, in his lifetime.

Upon his return to Zimbabwe in 1990, he’d spent time with Andrew, but he could remember feeling numb to the world, even as he’d played soccer or cooked or watched TV with his son. When he went back to the bush, working with the guests was a distraction, but he could never escape thoughts of her. When he would stop the jeep on game drives so the guests could photograph whatever animal they were seeing, he would sometimes imagine that she was in the front seat beside him, marveling at his world in the same way he continued to marvel at the world they’d briefly inhabited together.

The evenings were hardest. He couldn’t concentrate long enough to either draw or play the guitar. Nor did he socialize with the other guides; instead, he would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Eventually his friend Romy grew concerned enough to mention it, but it was a long time before Tru could even bring himself to say Hope’s name.

It took months for Tru to return to his normal habits, but even then, he knew he was no longer fully himself. Prior to meeting Hope, he’d dated occasionally; afterward, he lost all desire to do so. Nor did that feeling ever change. It was as though that part of him, the desire for female companionship or the spark of human attraction, had been left behind on the sandy shores of Sunset Beach, North Carolina.

It was Andrew who finally got him drawing again. During one of Tru’s visits to Bulawayo, his son asked whether Tru was angry with him. When Tru squatted lower and asked why he would ever think such a thing, Andrew mumbled that he hadn’t received a drawing in months. Tru promised to start sketching again, but on most evenings, when he put pencil to paper, it was Hope he sketched. Usually he recreated from memory something from their time together: the sight of her staring at him as he held Scottie that first day on the beach, or how ravishing she’d looked on the night of the rehearsal dinner. Only after he’d made good progress on a drawing of Hope would he turn his attention to something he suspected Andrew would like.

The drawings of Hope took weeks to complete, not days. There was a newfound desire within him to match them perfectly with his memories, to capture those images with precision and care. When he was finally satisfied, he would save the drawing and start on the next. Over the years, the project became something of a compulsion, feeding an unconscious belief, perhaps, that re-creating Hope’s likeness perfectly would somehow bring her back to him. He made more than fifty detailed sketches, each of them documenting a different memory. When he was finished, he put them in order, a chronicle of their time together. At that point, he started to draw the corresponding sketches of himself, or how he imagined he’d looked to her in those same moments. In the end, he had them bound in a book—drawings of himself on the left-hand pages, and Hope on the right—but he had never shown it to anyone. He’d finished it the year after Andrew went to college. It had taken nearly nine years to complete.

That was another reason he lost much of his sense of purpose as the century wound down. He paced the house with nothing to do, leafed through the book every night, and dwelt on the fact that everyone who mattered in his life was gone. His mother. His grandfather. Kim, and now Andrew. Hope. He was alone, he thought, and would always be alone. It was a hard time, maybe as hard as his recovery from the accident would later be, but in a different way.

Botswana and the lion quest, as he referred to it then, had been good for him; but always, he kept the book of sketches at hand, among his most vital possessions. After the accident, the book was the only thing he really wanted, but he didn’t want to ask Andrew to bring it. He had never told Andrew about it, and he didn’t want to lie to him or Kim. Instead, he had his ex-wife make arrangements to box up all of his things in Botswana and place them in storage. She did, but he spent much of the next two years worrying that the book had somehow been lost or damaged. The first thing he did after moving out of the rehab facility was make a short trip to Botswana. He hired some youths to help him open box after box until the book was found. Aside from being dusty, it was in perfect condition.

But the compulsion to relive in images the days that they’d shared together began to dim not long after that. For his own good, he knew he couldn’t keep dreaming that they would someday be together again. He had no idea that around that time, Hope had been trying to find him.

Had he known, and despite his lingering injuries, he told himself he would have moved heaven and earth to go to her. And there’d been a moment when he’d come close to doing exactly that.

* * *

Twilight came softly to Carolina Beach.

Hope and Tru, their limbs brushing occasionally, sat on the couch, continuing to talk, heedless of the waning light as they delved deeper and deeper into each other’s lives. The glasses of wine, long since empty, gave way to cups of tea, and generalities gave way to intimate details. Staring at her profile in the lengthening shadows, Tru could hardly grasp that Hope was actually with him. She was, and always had been, his dream.

“I have a confession to make,” he finally began. “There’s something I haven’t told you. About something that happened before I took the job in Namibia. I wanted to tell you earlier, but when you told me that you tried to find me…”

“What is it?”

He stared into his glass. “I almost came back to North Carolina. To look for you. It was right after I finished my rehabilitation, and I bought a ticket and packed my bags and actually made it to the airport. But when it came time to head through security…I couldn’t do it.” He swallowed, as if recalling his paralysis. “I’m ashamed to say that in the end, I just…walked back to my car.”

It took a moment for understanding to dawn on her. “You mean that when I was looking for you, you were trying to find me, too?”

He nodded, conscious of the dryness in his throat, knowing she was thinking about the years they’d lost—not once, but twice.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said slowly.

“I don’t think there’s anything to say, other than that it breaks my heart.”

“Oh, Tru,” she said, her eyes growing moist. “Why didn’t you get on that plane?”

“I didn’t know if I could find you.” He shook his head. “But the truth is, I was afraid of what would happen if I did. I kept imagining that I’d finally catch sight of you in a restaurant, or on the street, or maybe in your yard. You’d be holding hands with another man, or laughing with your kids, and after all I’d just been through, there was part of me that knew I wouldn’t be able to endure that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to be happy, because I did. I wanted that for you every single day in the last twenty-four years, if only because I knew that I wasn’t happy. It felt like part of me was missing, and always would be. But I was too afraid to do anything about it, and now—after hearing about your life—all I can think is that I should have had more courage when it mattered the most. Because it means I wouldn’t have wasted the last eight years.”