She laughed again. “I’ll tell you on the drive.”
Two days later, Zoe awoke to the sound of vervet monkeys chattering outside her guest room at the Royal Livingstone Hotel. Joseph lay beside her on his back, snoring softly. She kissed his cheek and slipped out of bed, dressing in capris and a white cotton shirt. She grabbed her backpack off the floor and stole out of the room into the coolness of the morning. The monkeys scattered when they saw her, and she watched them go, laughing at the sight of a baby hanging onto its mother for dear life.
She crossed the wide lawn and took a seat on the deck overlooking the Zambezi. In the distance, the mist of Victoria Falls hovered like a cloud on the horizon. She took out the envelope that Monica Kingsley had given her in New York. She had hesitated to open it before now, preserving it on the intuition that she would find a more appropriate moment. Now, studying her mother’s graceful penmanship, she knew she had been right to wait.
She breached the seal of the envelope and extracted two sheets of yellowed paper. She looked toward the falls again and took a deep breath. Then she read her mother’s words.
Dearest Zoe,
I hope this letter never reaches you. I hope I am with you when you enter womanhood and realize the strength and beauty that dwells in you. But our lives are not in our hands. I am writing you because my work is dangerous and because what I have to say cannot be left unsaid.
I have many regrets as a mother. If you are reading this, I imagine you can name them as well as I can. I’ve never been great at motherhood—at least the conventional kind. I have long struggled to harmonize my passions with my devotion to you and Trevor. So before I go any further, let me offer you an apology. For the days when I was gone and you needed me, for the times when I was there and my mind was in another place, for allowing others to raise you in your early years, I am sorry. I tried to make it up to you by taking you with me when I could. It hasn’t been enough, I know, but it’s the best I’ve known how to give.
I remember the first time I took you to Victoria Falls. I saw the spark in your eyes, and the way it quickly grew into a flame. I knew then that our hearts carry the same beat. I never told you about the beginning of my love affair with Africa. It was a Kenyan poet who convinced me that the stories we tell ourselves about the “Dark Continent” are deeply flawed. Wesley had a better name for Africa. He called it “The Garden of Burning Sand”—a land of splendor and severity, a land that gives and takes away. I loved him for a memorable season, and then life called me home. The rest you know.
If you are reading this, you are thirty and I am gone. I’m not certain where life has taken you, but I know that the spark I saw in your ten-year-old eyes was not a lie. I am writing to offer you a proposition. Please feel completely free to decline it if you have chosen a different path. But if your future is still open, I ask that you consider it.
Buried in the charter of my foundation is a clause that names my successor upon my death. I chose Monica Kingsley to serve as Executive Director. I trust her implicitly, and that is a rare thing. What you do not know is that the charter allows for the appointment of a Special Envoy who would operate outside the sphere of Monica’s control and exercise a discretion that otherwise I have reserved for myself. This position is available to only two people. I offered it to Trevor first, but I asked him to consider leaving it to you. I suspect he did. His passions are elsewhere. I offer it now to you.
Perhaps you have wondered why I left you with a charitable trust. Perhaps you have questioned my judgment in naming Atticus Spelling as trustee. I created the trust for a reason—to train you to think of your life as an instrument of good. Even Atticus I chose for a purpose, though I never told him why. I wanted you to learn the traditional rules of philanthropy so that when you have gleaned their wisdom and been frustrated by their rigidity you will know exactly how and when to break them. Human problems must be met with human compassion. The person, not the system, must be preeminent.