SANDS IN THE HOURGLASS

October 2014

Memories are a doorway to the past, and the more one treasures the memories, the wider the door will open. That’s what Hope’s father used to say, anyway, and like many of the things he’d told her, the passage of time seemed to amplify its wisdom.

But then again, time had a way of changing everything, she thought. As she reflected on her life, it seemed impossible to believe that nearly a quarter century had passed since those days at Sunset Beach. So much had happened since then and she often felt as though she’d become an entirely different person than she once had been.

Now, she was alone. It was early evening, with a hint of winter evident in the brisk air, and she sat on the back porch of her home in Raleigh, North Carolina. Moonlight was casting an eerie glow across the lawn and silvering the leaves that stirred in the breeze. The rustling sound made it seem as though voices of the past were calling to her, as they often did these days. She thought about her children, and as she moved the rocker slowly back and forth, the memories tumbled forth in a kaleidoscope of images. In the darkness, she recalled the awe she’d felt when holding each of them in the hospital; she smiled at the sight of them running naked down the hallway after taking their baths as toddlers. She thought about their gap-toothed smiles after their baby teeth fell out, and relived the mixture of pride and worry she’d experienced as they’d struggled through their teenage years. They were good kids. Great kids. To her surprise, she realized that she could even recall Josh with a fondness that had once seemed impossible. They’d divorced eight years ago, but at sixty, Hope liked to believe that she’d reached the point where forgiveness came easily.

Jacob had dropped by on Friday night, and Rachel had brought over bagels on Sunday morning. Neither of the kids had expressed any curiosity about Hope’s announcement that she would be renting a cottage at the coast again, just as she’d done the year before. Their lack of interest wasn’t unusual. Like so many young people, they were caught up in their own lives. Rachel had graduated in May, Jacob the year before that, and both had been able to find jobs even before they’d received their diplomas. Jacob sold ads at a local radio station while Rachel worked for an internet marketing firm. They had their own apartments and paid their own bills, which Hope knew was something of a rarity these days. Most of their friends had moved back in with their parents after they’d finished college, and privately, Hope considered her kids’ independence even more noteworthy than their graduations.

Even before packing her suitcase earlier that day, Hope had had her hair done. Since her retirement two years ago, she’d been visiting an upscale place near some high-end department stores. It was her one splurge these days. She’d come to know some of the women with the same regular schedule, and she’d sat in the chair, listening as the talk at the salon ran from husbands to kids to the vacations they’d taken over the summer. The easy conversation was a balm to Hope, and while there, she’d found her thoughts drifting to her parents.

They had been gone for a long time now. Her father had passed away from ALS eighteen years earlier; her mom had survived four sad years more. She still missed them, but the pain of their loss had faded over the years into something more manageable, a dull ache that occurred only when she was feeling particularly blue.

When her hair was done, Hope had left the salon, noting the BMWs and Mercedes and the women exiting the department store loaded with bulging bags. She wondered whether their purchases had actually been necessary or whether shopping was an addiction of sorts, the pull from the shelf offering a momentary respite from anxiety or depression. There’d been a time in her life when Hope had occasionally shopped for the same reasons, but those days were long behind her, and she couldn’t help but think that the world had changed in recent decades. People seemed more materialistic, more focused on keeping up with the Joneses, but Hope had learned that a meaningful life was seldom about such things. It was about experiences and relationships; it was about health and family and loving someone who loved you in return. She’d done her best to instill these notions in her kids, but who really knew whether she’d succeeded?

These days, answers eluded her. Lately, she’d found herself asking why about many things, and while there were people who claimed to have all the answers—daytime television shows were replete with such experts—Hope was rarely persuaded. If there was one question she could have answered by any of them, it was simply this: Why does love always seem to require sacrifice?

She didn’t know. What she did know was that she’d observed it in her marriage, as a parent, and as the grown child of a father who’d been condemned to slowly waste away. But as much as she’d pondered the question, she still couldn’t put her finger on the reason. Was sacrifice a necessary component of love? Were the words actually synonyms? Was the former proof of the latter, and vice versa? She didn’t want to think that love had an intrinsic cost—that it required disappointment, or pain, or angst—but there were times when she couldn’t help it.

Despite the unforeseen events of her life, Hope wasn’t unhappy. She understood that life wasn’t easy for anyone, and she felt satisfied that she’d done the best she could. And yet, like everyone, she had regrets, and in the past couple of years, she’d revisited them more frequently. They would crop up unexpectedly, and often at the strangest of times: while she was putting cash into the church basket, for instance, or sweeping up some sugar that had spilled on the floor. When that happened, she would find herself recalling things she wished she could change, arguments that should have been avoided, words of forgiveness that had been left unspoken. Part of her wished she could turn back the clock and make different decisions, but when she was honest with herself, she questioned what she really could have changed. Mistakes were inevitable, and she’d concluded that regrets could impart important lessons in life, if one was willing to learn from them. And in that sense, she realized that her father had been only half-correct about memories. They weren’t, after all, only doorways to the past. She wanted to believe that they could also be doorways to a new and different kind of future.

Hope shivered as a chilly gust swept through the back porch, and she knew it was time to head inside.

She’d lived in this house for more than two decades. She and Josh had purchased it shortly after they’d taken their vows, and as she breathed in the familiar surroundings, she thought again how much she’d always adored the place. It was Georgian in style, with large columns out front and wainscoting in most of the rooms on the main floor. Nonetheless, it was probably time to sell it. It was too much, too large for her, and trying to keep all the rooms dusted felt Sisyphean. The stairs, too, were becoming a challenge, but when she’d mentioned the idea of selling, Jacob and Rachel had balked at relinquishing their childhood home.

Whether she sold it or not, it needed work. The hardwood floors were scuffed and scraped; in the dining room, the wallpaper had faded and needed to be replaced. The kitchen and bathrooms were still functional, but definitely outdated and in need of remodeling. There was so much to do; she wondered when, or even if, she’d be up to it.

She moved through the house, turning off lights. Some of the switches on the lamps were notoriously hard to turn, and it took longer than she expected.

Her suitcase stood near the front door, next to the wooden box she’d retrieved from the attic. The sight of them made her think about Tru, but then again, she’d never really stopped thinking about him. He would be sixty-six now. She wondered whether he’d retired from guiding, or still lived in Zimbabwe; perhaps he had moved to Europe or Australia or someplace even more exotic. She speculated about whether he lived near Andrew, and whether he’d become a grandfather in the years they’d been apart. She wondered if he’d married again, whom he had dated, or even if he remembered her at all. Then again, was he even still alive? She liked to think she would have instinctively known if he was gone from this world—that they were somehow linked—but she admitted that might be wishful thinking. Mostly though, she questioned whether the final words in his letter could possibly be true—whether, for them, anything would always be possible.

In the bedroom, she put on the pajamas that Rachel had bought for her last Christmas. They were cozy and warm, exactly what Hope wanted. She slipped into bed and adjusted the covers, hoping for the sleep that so often eluded her these days.

Last year at the beach, she’d lain awake thinking about Tru. She’d willed him to come back to her, reliving the days they’d spent together with vivid intensity. She remembered their encounter on the beach and the coffee they’d shared that very first morning; she replayed for the hundredth time their dinner at Clancy’s and their stroll back to the cottage. She felt his gaze on her as they sipped wine on the porch, and the sound of his voice as he read the letter on the bench at Kindred Spirit. More than anything, she recalled the tender and sensual way they’d made love; the intensity of his expression, the words he’d whispered to her.

She wondered at how immediate it all still felt—the tangible weight of his feelings for her; even the implacable guilt. Something had truly broken inside her that morning she left, but she wanted to believe that in the break, a stronger element had eventually taken root. In the aftermath, whenever life seemed unbearably difficult, she would think of Tru and remind herself that if she ever reached the point where she needed him, he would come. He’d told her as much on their last morning together, and that promise was enough for her to carry on.

That night at the beach, as sleep remained out of reach, she’d found herself attempting to rewrite history in a way that gave her peace. She imagined herself turning the car around at the corner and racing back to him; she imagined sitting across the table from Josh and telling him that she’d met someone else. Dreamy images of a later reunion at the airport, where she’d gone to pick up Tru after his flight back from Zimbabwe, played out in her mind; in this fantasy they embraced near the baggage claim and kissed amid throngs of people. He put his arm around her as they walked to her car, and she pictured the casual way he tossed his duffel bag into the trunk as though it had actually happened. She imagined them making love in the apartment she once called home, all those years ago.

But after that, her visions had become clouded. She couldn’t visualize the kind of house they would have chosen; when she pictured them in the kitchen, it was either at the cottage her parents had sold long ago or the home she owned with Josh. She couldn’t imagine what Tru would do for a living; when she tried, she saw him returning at the end of the day dressed in the same kind of clothing he’d worn the week she’d met him, as though coming in from a game drive. She knew he’d regularly return to Bulawayo to see Andrew, but she had no frame of reference to even conjure up how his home or neighborhood might appear. And always, Andrew remained a ten-year-old, his features forever frozen in time, just as Tru remained forever forty-two.

Strangely, when she fantasized about a life with Tru, Jacob and Rachel were always present. If she and Tru were eating at the table, Jacob was refusing to share his french fries with his sister; if Tru was drawing on the back porch of her parents’ cottage, Rachel was finger-painting at the picnic table. In the school auditorium, she sat beside Tru as Jacob and Rachel sang in the choir; on Halloween, she and Tru trailed behind her children, who were dressed as Woody and Jessie from Toy Story 2. Always, always, her children were in the life she imagined with Tru, and though she resented the intrusion, Josh was there as well. Jacob in particular bore a strong resemblance to his father, and Rachel had grown up thinking that one day she might become a doctor.

Hope had eventually gotten out of bed. It was chilly at the beach, and, putting on a jacket, she’d retrieved the letter Tru had written to her long ago and seated herself on the back porch. She’d wanted to read it, but couldn’t summon the will to do so. Instead, she’d stared at the darkness of the ocean, clutching the well-worn envelope, overwhelmed by a surge of loneliness.

She’d thought to herself that she was alone at the beach, far from anyone she knew. Only Tru was with her; except of course, he was never really there at all.

Hope had returned from her week at the beach the previous year with a mixture of hope and dread. This year, she told herself that things would be different. She had decided that this would be her last trip to the cottage, and in the morning, after placing the box on the back seat, Hope rolled her suitcase to the rear of the car with a determined step. Her neighbor Ben was raking his lawn and came over to put it in the trunk. She was thankful for his help. At her age injuries came more easily and were often slow to heal. Last year, she’d slipped in the kitchen, and though she hadn’t fallen, catching herself had left her with a sore shoulder for weeks.

She ran through her mental checklist before getting in the car: the doors were locked, she’d turned out all the lights, the garbage cans stood by the curb, and Ben had agreed to collect her mail and newspapers. The drive would take her a bit less than three hours, but there was no reason to rush. Tomorrow, after all, was the day that mattered. Just thinking about it made her nervous.

Thankfully, traffic was light for most of the trip. She drove past farmland and small towns, keeping a constant speed until she reached the outskirts of Wilmington, where she ate lunch at a bistro she remembered from the year before. Afterward, she swung by a grocery store to stock the refrigerator, stopped at the rental office to pick up the keys, and began the final leg of her journey. She found the cross street she needed, made a few turns, and eventually pulled in the drive.

The cottage resembled the one her parents had once owned, with faded paint, steps leading up to the front door, and a weather-beaten porch out front. Seeing it made her miss the old homestead keenly. As she’d suspected, the new owners had wasted no time in tearing it down and building a newer, larger home similar to the one where Tru had stayed.

Since then, she’d only rarely visited Sunset Beach, as it no longer felt like home. Like many of the small towns dotting the coast, it had changed with the times. The pontoon bridge had been replaced with something more modern, larger homes were now the norm, and Clancy’s was gone as well, the old restaurant limping along until a year or two after the century began. Her sister Robin had been the one to tell her about the restaurant’s closing; on a trip to Myrtle Beach ten years ago she and her husband had made a detour to the familial island, because she, too, had been curious about the changes time had wrought.

These days, Hope preferred Carolina Beach, an island a little ways to the north, and closer to Wilmington. She’d first visited it upon her counselor’s suggestion in December 2005, when the divorce proceedings with Josh were at their worst. Josh had made plans to bring Jacob and Rachel out west for a week during winter break. The kids were young teenagers, moody in general, and the implosion of their parents’ marriage had compounded the stress they were feeling. While Hope had recognized that the vacation might be a beneficial distraction for the kids, her counselor pointed out that spending the holidays at home alone wouldn’t be good for her own mental state. She had suggested Carolina Beach to Hope; in the winter, she’d said, the island was low-key and relaxing.

Hope had booked a place sight unseen, and the little cottage at the beach had turned out to be exactly what she’d needed. It was there where Hope had begun the process of healing; where she’d gathered the perspective she needed to enter the next phase of her life.

She had known she wouldn’t reconcile with Josh. She had cried over him for years, and while his last affair had been the deal breaker, the first one was still the most painful to remember. At the time, the kids weren’t yet in school and their needs were constant; meanwhile her father had recently taken a turn for the worse. When Hope learned of the affair, Josh apologized and promised to end it. However, he remained in contact with the woman even as Hope’s father got sicker and sicker. She felt as though she was on the verge of panic attacks for months, and it was the first time she’d considered ending the marriage. Instead, overwhelmed at the prospect of upheaval and afraid of the devastating effect divorce could have on her kids, she stuck it out and did her best to forgive. But other affairs followed. There were more tears and too much arguing, and by the time she finally told Josh that she wanted a divorce, they’d been sleeping in separate bedrooms for nearly a year. The day he moved out, he told her she was making the biggest mistake of her life.

Despite her best intentions, bitterness and rancor surfaced in the divorce. She was shocked at the rage and sadness she felt, and Josh was equally angry and defensive. While the custody arrangements had been fairly straightforward, the financial wrangling had been a nightmare. Hope had stayed at home when the kids were young and it wasn’t until they were both in school that she went back to work, but no longer as a trauma nurse. Instead, she’d worked part-time with a family practice group so she could be home when the kids finished at school. While the hours were easier, the pay was less, and Josh’s attorney argued strenuously that since she had the skills necessary to increase her salary, any alimony should be drastically reduced. Nor, like so many men, did Josh believe in an equal property division. By that point, Josh and Hope were communicating primarily through their lawyers.

She had felt battered by emotion—feelings of failure, loss, anger, resolve, and fear—but as she walked the beach during that Christmas break, she worried mainly about the kids. She wanted to be the best mother she could be, but her counselor had continually reminded her that if she didn’t take care of herself first, she wouldn’t be able to provide the kids with the solid support they needed.

Deep down, she knew her counselor was right, but the idea felt almost blasphemous. She’d been a mother so long that she wasn’t even sure who she really was anymore. While at Carolina Beach, though, she had gradually accepted the notion that her emotional health was as important as the children’s. Not more important, but not less important, either.

She also understood how slippery the slope might be if she didn’t heed her counselor’s advice. She’d seen women lose or gain substantial weight while going through a divorce; she’d heard them talking about Friday and Saturday nights at the bars and admitting to one-night stands with strangers, men they barely remembered. Some remarried quickly, and it was almost always a mistake. Even those who hadn’t gone wild often developed self-destructive habits. Hope had seen divorced friends increase the two glasses of wine on the weekend to three or four glasses multiple times during the week. One of those women had come right out and said that drinking was the only way she’d survived her divorce.

Hope didn’t want to fall into the same trap, and her time at the beach was clarifying. After returning to Raleigh, she’d joined a gym and started taking spin classes. She’d added yoga to her routine, prepared healthy meals for herself and the kids, and, even on nights she couldn’t sleep, forced herself to stay in bed, breathing deeply, trying to discipline her mind. She’d learned to meditate, and put a renewed emphasis on rekindling friendships where contact had lapsed in recent years.

She had also made a vow to never say anything bad about Josh, which hadn’t been easy but had probably laid the groundwork for the relationship they had now. These days, most of her friends couldn’t understand why she still made time for him in her life, considering all the heartache he’d caused her. The reasons were multifaceted, but also her secret. When asked, she would simply tell them that as terrible a husband as he’d been, he’d always been a good father. Josh had spent a lot of time with the kids when they were young, attending extracurriculars and coaching their youth teams, and he’d spent his weekends with the family instead of with friends. The latter was something she’d insisted upon before agreeing to marry him.

She hadn’t, however, accepted Josh’s marriage proposal right away. Let’s see how things go for a while, she’d told him. As he left, he’d paused in the doorway.

“There’s something different about you, ” he’d said to her.

“You’re right, ” she’d said. “I am different. ”

Eight weeks passed before she finally accepted his proposal, and unlike all her friends, she insisted on a simple wedding a couple of months after that, with only close friends and family in attendance. The reception dinner was potluck, one of her brothers-in-law manned the camera, and the guests finished out the evening dancing at a local nightclub. The short engagement and low-key wedding surprised Josh. He couldn’t fathom why she didn’t want the kind of wedding that all of her friends had insisted upon. She told him she didn’t want to waste the money, but in truth, she suspected she was already pregnant. It turned out she was—with Jacob—and for an instant, she thought perhaps that it might be Tru’s, but that was impossible. The timing wasn’t right, nor could Tru father a child, but in that moment, she understood that she had no desire to smile through the faux romance of a fairy-tale wedding. By then, after all, she understood the nature of romance, and knew it had little to do with trying to create a fantasy. Real romance was spontaneous, unpredictable, and could be as simple as listening to a man read a love letter found in a lonely mailbox on a stormy September afternoon.

At the cottage, Hope began to settle in. She set the wooden box on the kitchen table, put away the groceries, unpacked her belongings into the drawers so she wouldn’t be living out of a suitcase all week, and texted her kids, letting them know she’d arrived. Then, donning a jacket, she stepped onto the back deck and slowly descended the steps to the sand. Her back and legs were stiff from the drive, and though she felt like taking a stroll, she wouldn’t go far. She wanted to conserve her energy for the following day.

The sky was the color of cobalt, but the breeze was chilly and she tucked her hands into her jacket pockets. The air smelled of brine, primordial and fresh. Near a truck parked at the water’s edge, a man sat in a lawn chair flanked by a row of fishing poles, their lines disappearing into the sea. He was shore fishing, and Hope wondered whether he’d have any luck. Never once had she seen someone at the beach actually reel in a fish from the shallow water, but it seemed to be a popular pastime.

In her pocket, she felt her phone vibrate. Hoping it was one of the kids, she noted instead a missed call from Josh. She put the phone back in her pocket. Unlike Jacob and Rachel, he had been interested in her reasons for going to the beach. He thought she hated the beach, since she’d never wanted to vacation there while they’d been married. Whenever Josh had suggested that the family rent a house at the beach, Hope had always offered an alternative: Disney World, Williamsburg, camping trips in the mountains. They went skiing in West Virginia and Colorado, and spent time in New York City, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon; eventually they’d purchased a cabin near Asheville, which Josh had kept in the divorce. For years, the thought of being at the beach had just been too painful. In her mind, the beach and Tru were forever linked.

Nonetheless, she sent the kids to summer camps near Myrtle Beach and surfing camps at Nags Head. Both Jacob and Rachel took naturally to surfing, and ironically, it was after one of Rachel’s stays at surfing camp that Josh and Hope first began to heal the wounds of the divorce. While at camp, Rachel had complained of difficulty breathing and a racing heart; back at home, they took her to see a pediatric cardiologist, and within a day she was diagnosed with a previously undiscovered congenital defect that would require open-heart surgery.

At the time, Hope and Josh hadn’t spoken for nearly four months, but each of them set aside their antagonism for the benefit of their daughter. They alternated spending nights in the hospital and never once raised their voices in anger. The unity of their shared suffering had passed as soon as Rachel was released from the hospital, but it was enough to set in motion a relationship that allowed them to discuss the children in a cordial manner. As time passed, Josh remarried to a woman named Denise, and surprising Hope, something akin to friendship began to slowly renew.

Partly, it had to do with Josh’s marriage to Denise. As that relationship began to disintegrate, Josh began calling Hope. She tried to offer as much support as she could, but in the end, Josh’s divorce from Denise ended up being even more acrimonious than his divorce from Hope.

The stress of the divorces had taken a heavy toll on Josh and he no longer resembled the man she’d married. He’d put on weight and his skin was pallid and spotted; he’d lost much of his hair and his once-athletic posture had become stooped. One time, after she hadn’t seen him for a few months, it had taken Hope a few seconds to recognize him when he waved at her from across the dining room of their country club. She no longer found him attractive; in more ways than one, she felt sorry for him.

Not long before he’d retired, he’d shown up at her door in a sports jacket and pressed slacks. His freshly showered appearance had signaled that it wasn’t a normal visit, and she’d motioned him toward the couch. She made sure to sit at the opposite corner.

It took a while for him to get to the point. He started with small talk, discussing the children, and then a bit about his work. He asked whether she was still doing the New York Times crossword puzzles, a habit she’d picked up shortly after the kids started school that had slowly but surely become a minor addiction. She told him that she’d finished one just a few hours ago, and when he brought his hands together, she asked him what was on his mind.

“I was thinking the other day that you’re the only real friend I have anymore, ” he finally said. “I have partners at work, but I can’t really talk to any of them the way I do with you. ”

She said nothing. Waiting.

“We’re friends, right? ”

“Yes, ” she said. “I suppose we are. ”

“We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we? ”

She nodded. “Yes. ”

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately…about you and me. The past. How long we’ve known each other. Did you realize it’s been thirty years? Since we met? ”

“I can’t say that I’ve thought about it much. ”

“Yeah…okay. ” Though he nodded, she knew he’d wanted a different answer. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I know I made a lot of mistakes when it came to us. I’m sorry about the things I did. I don’t know what was going through my mind at the time. ”

“You’ve already apologized, ” she said. “And besides, that’s all in the past. We divorced a long time ago. ”

“But we were happy, right? When we were married. ”

“Sometimes, ” she admitted. “Not always. ”

He nodded again, a hint of supplication in it. “Do you think we could ever try again? Give it another shot? ”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “You mean marriage? ”

He raised his hands. “No, not marriage. Like…going on a date. As in, can I take you to dinner on Saturday night? Just to see how it goes. It might not go anywhere, but like I said, you’re my closest friend these days—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, ” she said, cutting him off.

“Why not? ”

“I think you’re probably in a low spot right now, ” she said. “And when you’re feeling low, sometimes even bad ideas can seem like good ones. It’s important for the kids to know that we still get along, and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize that. ”

“I don’t want to jeopardize it, either. I’m just wondering if you’d be willing to give us another chance. Give me a chance. ”

In that moment, she wondered how well she’d ever known him.

“I can’t, ” she finally said.

“Why not? ”

“Because, ” she told him, “I’m in love with someone else. ”

As she walked the beach, the damp, cold air began to make her lungs ache, and she decided to turn around. At the sight of the cottage in the distance, a memory of Scottie flashed through her mind. Had he been with her, she knew he would have been disappointed and stared at her with those sweet, sad eyes of his.

The kids had little memory of Scottie. Though he’d been part of the household when they were young, Hope had read once that the part of the brain that processes long-term memory isn’t fully developed until a child is seven or so, and Scottie had passed away by then. Instead, they remembered Junior, the Scottish terrier who was part of their lives until both Jacob and Rachel were in college. While Hope had doted upon Junior, she secretly admitted that Scottie would always be her favorite.

For the second time on the walk, she felt her phone vibrate. While Jacob hadn’t yet responded, Rachel had texted back, telling Hope to hav fun! Any cute guys? Luv u with a smiley face. Hope knew that kids these days had their own texting protocols, complete with brief responses, acronyms, incorrect spelling and grammar, and a heavy use of emojis. Hope still preferred the old-fashioned way of communicating—either in person, on the phone, or in a letter—but her kids were of a different generation, and she’d learned to do what was easiest for them.

She wondered what they would think if they knew the real reason she’d come to Carolina Beach. She often had the sense that her kids couldn’t imagine her wanting more from life than doing crosswords, occasionally visiting the salon, and waiting around for them to visit. But then, Hope recognized that they had never known the real her, the woman she’d been at Sunset Beach so long ago.

Her relationship with Rachel was different than it was with Jacob. Jacob, she thought, had more in common with his father. The two of them could spend an entire Saturday watching football; they went fishing together, enjoyed action movies and target shooting, and could talk about the stock market and investing for hours. With Hope, Jacob mainly spoke about his girlfriend, and often seemed at a loss for words after that.

She was closer with Rachel, particularly since her heart surgery as a teen. Although the cardiologist who oversaw Rachel’s case had assured them that repairing her complicated defect was a reasonably safe procedure, Rachel had been terrified. Hope had been equally fearful, but she’d done her best to exude confidence with her daughter. In the days leading up to the operation, Rachel cried often at the thought of dying, and even more bitterly at the idea of having a disfiguring scar on her chest if she did survive. Consumed with anxiety, she babbled as if in a confessional: she told Hope that her boyfriend of three months had begun to pressure Rachel for sex and that she was probably going to say yes, even though she didn’t want to; she admitted that she worried constantly about her weight and that she’d been bingeing and purging for several months. She said she worried all the time about almost everything—her looks, popularity, grades, and whether she’d get accepted to the college she wanted to attend, even though the decision was years away. She picked at her cuticles incessantly, ripping at them until they bled. Occasionally, she confided, she even thought about suicide.

While Hope had known that teens were adept at keeping secrets from their parents, what she heard in the days both prior to and after the surgery alarmed her deeply. After Rachel was released from the hospital, Hope found her a good therapist and eventually a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressants. And slowly but surely, Rachel began to feel more at ease with herself, her acute anxiety and depression finally subsiding.

But those terrible days had also been the start of a new stage in their relationship, one in which Rachel learned she could be honest with her mom without feeling judged, without worrying that Hope would overreact. By the time Rachel went off to college, she seemed to feel as though she could tell her mom almost anything. Though grateful for the honesty, Hope admitted there were some subjects—mainly concerning the quantity of alcohol that college students seemed to drink every weekend—where a little less honesty would have meant less anxiety on Hope’s part.

Perhaps their intimacy was the reason for Rachel’s text. Like any loyal girlfriend, Rachel reflected her concern for Hope’s relationship status by asking about “cute guys. ”

“Have you ever thought about maybe meeting someone? ” Rachel had asked her a little over a year ago.

“Not really. ”

“Why not? Is it because no one has asked you out? ”

“I’ve been asked out by a few different men. I just told them no. ”

“Because they were jerks? ”

“Not at all. Most of them seemed very kind. ”

Rachel had frowned at that. “Then what is it? Is it because you were afraid? Because of what happened between Dad and Denise? ”

“I had the two of you and my work, and I was content with that. ”

“But you’re retired, we don’t live at home anymore, and I don’t like the thought of you always being alone. I mean…what if the perfect man is out there just waiting for you? ”

Hope’s smile bore a trace of melancholy. “Then I suppose I’ll have to try to find him, won’t I? ”

As terrifying as Rachel’s heart surgery had been for Hope, the slow-motion death of her father had in some ways been even more difficult to endure.

The first few years after Sunset Beach hadn’t been so bad. Her father could still move around, and with every passing month, Hope could remember growing more firm in her conviction that he’d contracted a slower-progressing version of ALS. There were periods when he even seemed to improve, but then, in the course of six or seven weeks, it was as though a switch had suddenly been thrown: Walking became difficult for her father, then unsteady without support, and then altogether impossible.

Along with her sisters, Hope chipped in to help as much as possible. They installed hand railings in the bathtub and hallways and found a used van for disabled people with a wheelchair lift. They hoped it would enable their father to get around town, but his ability to drive lasted less than seven months, and their mother was too nervous to drive the van at all. They sold it at a loss, and in the last year of his life, her father never ventured farther than either the front porch or back deck, unless he was going to see his doctors.

But he wasn’t alone. Because he was loved by his family and revered by former students and coworkers, visitors flocked to the house. As was customary in the South, they brought food, and at the end of every week, Hope’s mother would plead with her daughters to take some of it home with them because the refrigerator was overstuffed.

Even that relatively uplifting period was short-lived, however, ending for good when her father began losing the ability to speak. In the final few months of his life, he was hooked to an oxygen tank and suffered from violent coughing fits because his muscles were too weak to dislodge the phlegm. Hope could remember the countless times she pounded on his back while her father struggled to breathe. He’d lost so much weight that she sometimes felt as though she would break him in half, but eventually her dad would cough up the phlegm and take long, gasping breaths in the aftermath, his face as pale as rice.

The final weeks seemed like a single extended fever dream—home health nurses were hired, at first for half the day, and then around the clock. Her dad had to be fed liquid through straws. He became so weak that finishing even half a glass took nearly an hour. Incontinence followed as his body rapidly wasted away.

Hope visited him every day during that period. Because speaking had become a challenge for him, she did all the talking. She would tell him about the kids, or confide her struggles with Josh. She confessed that a neighbor had seen Josh at a hotel with a local Realtor; she confirmed that Josh had recently admitted the affair but was still in communication with the woman, and Hope wasn’t sure what to do.

Finally, during one of his last lucid periods, six years after her stay at Sunset Beach, Hope told her father about Tru. As she spoke, he maintained eye contact, and when she reached the part of the story where she’d broken down in front of her father on the porch, he moved his hand for the first time in weeks. She reached over, taking it in hers.

He breathed out, long and hard, sounds coming from the back of his throat. They were unintelligible, but she knew him well enough to understand what he was saying.

“Are you sure it’s too late? ”

Six days later, he passed away.

Hundreds of people attended the funeral, and afterward everyone made their way to the house. When they left later that evening, the house went quiet, as though it had died as well. Hope knew that people reacted to stress and grief in different ways, but she found herself shocked by her mom’s downward spiral, which was furious in its intensity and seemingly unstoppable. Her mom fell into bitter fits of unpredictable weeping and started drinking heavily. She stopped tidying up and left dirty clothes strewn about the floors. Dust coated the shelves, and dishes would sit on the counters until Hope came by to clean. Food spoiled in the refrigerator and the television blared nonstop. Then her mom began to complain of various ailments: sensitivity to light, aching joints, waves of pain in her stomach, and difficulty swallowing. Whenever Hope went to visit, she found her fidgety and often unable to complete her thoughts. Other times, she would retreat to her darkened bedroom and lock the door. The silence behind the door was often more unnerving than her fits of weeping.

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.

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