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.

So she’d kept him alive in her memories, in the only way she could. She stored her keepsakes in the box, and examined the contents every now and then, when she knew she wouldn’t be disturbed. Whenever there was a television show about the majestic game animals in Africa, she would make a point of tuning in; in the late 1990s, she stumbled upon the novels of Alexander McCall Smith and was immediately hooked, since many of the stories were set in Botswana. It wasn’t Zimbabwe, but it was close enough, she thought, and it helped further introduce her to a world she knew nothing about. Over the years, there were also occasional articles about Zimbabwe in major news magazines and the Raleigh News & Observer. She learned about the land confiscation by the government and wondered what had happened to the farm where Tru had been raised. She also read about the country’s hyperinflation, and her first thought was of how it might affect tourism and whether Tru would be able to continue guiding. Occasionally she would receive travel catalogues in the mail, and she would turn to the section that described various safaris. Though most of the safaris were in South Africa, every now and then, she’d read about the lodge at Hwange. When that happened, she would study the photographs, trying to get a better sense of the world he called home. And as she lay in bed afterward, she would admit to herself that her feelings for him were as real and strong as they had been so long ago, when she’d first whispered that she loved him.

In 2006, when her divorce was finalized, Tru would have been fifty-eight years old. She was fifty-two. Jacob and Rachel were teenagers, and Josh was already seeing Denise. Though sixteen years had passed since she’d seen Tru, she’d hoped that there was still time to make things right. By then, practically anything could be found on the internet, but the information about the lodges at Hwange didn’t include anything about the guides, other than to note that they were among the most experienced in Zimbabwe. There was, however, an email address, and the woman who answered her query had told Hope that she didn’t know Tru, and that he hadn’t worked at the lodge in years. The same went for Romy, the friend Tru had mentioned to her. Nonetheless, the woman gave Hope the name of the previous manager, who had transferred to another camp a few years earlier, along with another email address. Hope contacted him there, and while he knew nothing of Tru’s whereabouts, he offered the name of yet another camp manager who’d worked at Hwange in the 1990s. There was no current phone number or email address, but he gave Hope a mailing address with the caveat that it might not be up to date, either.

Hope wrote to the manager and waited anxiously for a response. Tru had warned her that time moves more slowly in the bush, and that the mail service wasn’t always reliable. Weeks passed without a response, then months, by which point Hope had given up thinking she’d ever hear from him. It was around that time that a letter had appeared in her mailbox.

The kids had yet to come home from school, and she tore open the letter, devouring the scrawled words. She learned that Tru had left Hwange, but the manager had heard through the grapevine that he may have taken another job in Botswana. He was unsure at which camp, however. The man added that he was also fairly certain that Tru had sold the house in Bulawayo once his son headed off to a university somewhere in Europe. He didn’t know the name of the university or even the country where it was located.

With little to go on, Hope began contacting lodges in Botswana. There were dozens of them. She sent email after email, but found no information about Tru.

She didn’t bother trying to contact universities in Europe, since that was akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Running thin on options, Hope reached out to Air Zimbabwe, hoping to find someone who worked there who had a wife named Kim. Perhaps, through his ex, Hope might learn where Tru was. That, too, led to a dead end. A man named Ken had worked there until 2001 or 2002, but he’d left the company and no one had heard from him since.