Every Breath(47)

Tru slid the photographs from the envelope. There were eight in total; the first he examined showed his mother and father seated together in front of a river, both of them laughing. The second was also of the two of them, staring at each other in profile, similar to the drawing he’d been working on of Hope and himself. The others were all of his mother in various poses and outfits, with clean backgrounds, a photographic style common in the late 1940s. His throat tightened at the sight of her, and he felt a sense of sudden loss he hadn’t expected.

His father handed over the drawings next. The first was a self-portrait of his mother staring at a reflection of herself in the mirror. Despite her beauty, her darkly shadowed expression gave her a haunted quality. The next was a drawing of his mother from behind. She was draped in a sheet and gazing over her shoulder, making Tru wonder whether she had used a similar photograph as inspiration. There were three more self-portraits and several landscape scenes similar to those that Tru created for Andrew. One of them, however, depicted the family’s main house before the fire, with imposing columns gracing the veranda. He realized that he’d forgotten how it had looked then.

When Tru finally set the drawings aside, his father cleared his throat.

“I thought she was good enough to open a studio, but she wasn’t interested in that. She said that she drew because she wanted to lose herself in the process. At the time, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I spent many afternoons watching as she sketched. She had a charming habit of licking her lips whenever she was working, and she was never completely satisfied with the results. In her mind, none of the drawings were ever finished.”

Tru took a sip of water, thinking. “Was she happy?” he finally asked.

His father held Tru’s gaze. “I don’t know how to answer that. I like to think she was happy when we were together. But…”

His father trailed off and Tru mulled the implications of what his father had told him earlier, the words still left unspoken. About what had really happened in that house when his mother was growing up.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to ask you a question,” his father said.

“Yes?”

“Is there anything you want from me?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“Would you like to keep a line of communication open? Or would you prefer that I vanish after I leave here today? I’ve already told you that I don’t have much time left, but after all these years, I thought it best for you to be able to make the decision.”

Tru stared at the old man seated next to him, considering it.

“Yes,” he finally answered, surprising himself. “I’d like to be able to speak with you again.”

“All right.” His father nodded. “How about my other kids?” he asked. “Or my wife? Would you like to speak with them?”

Tru thought about it before finally shaking his head. “No,” he said. “Unless they’d like to speak with me. We’re strangers, and like you, I suppose I have no desire to add further complications to any of our lives.”

His father offered a half smile at that. “Fair enough. But I do have a favor to ask of you. Feel free to say no, of course.”

“What is it?”

“Do you happen to have a photograph of my grandson that I could see?”



His father stayed for another forty minutes. He said that his wife and children supported his decision to make contact with Tru—despite their confusion about a relation they’d never met, someone sprung from a past that predated any of them. When he added that the drive back to Charlotte was a long one and that he had no desire to worry them further, Tru knew it was his father’s way of saying that it was time for him to go. Tru toted the briefcase and held the umbrella over his father as they descended the stairs to the car that had been waiting in the driveway.

Tru watched the car as it pulled away, then walked to the cottage to let Scottie out. Despite the storm, he wanted to walk the beach, needing open space and time to think.

It had been a surprising encounter, to say the least. Never had he imagined his father as a family man, someone married to the same woman for decades. Or that he’d fled the country in fear for his life because of Tru’s grandfather. As he pushed through the sand, Tru couldn’t shake a mounting feeling of revulsion for the most dominant male figure of his childhood.

There was also the family he’d never known about—half siblings, three of them—and though he’d declined to meet them, he did wonder about them. Who were they? What were they like? He doubted that any of them had felt the need to leave home the moment they’d turned eighteen as he had; their lives had surely been nothing like his. For a while he tried to picture what his own life would have looked like had his mother and father found a way to be together, but it felt too far-fetched and he soon gave up.

Staring out at the churning surf, he thought to himself that there were still too many unanswered questions, too many things he would never learn. Even about his mother. All he knew was that her short life had been even more tragic than he’d imagined, and if his father had brought her any joy at all, he was glad for that.

Tru found himself wishing that this meeting with his father had happened years earlier, when they would have had more time to get to know each other. But some things were not meant to be, and as the sun began to set, he turned back toward the house. He walked slowly, absently keeping his eye on Scottie, weighed down by the afternoon’s revelations and an ineffable sense of regret. It was nearly dark by the time he got back to the house. He left Scottie on the back porch while he showered and put on some dry clothing, then gathered up the photographs and drawings that his father had left.