David’s insides seethed with a cocktail of anger and fear. He raised a quivering finger. “Where did you get this?”
The Baggage Handler sat back on the sofa, a picture of innocent calm as he crossed his legs. “Why do you assume I put it in there? You packed your bag. You carried it around. You locked it, and you opened it.”
“Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“Well, I think so, and I think you should be angry with the person inflicting this on you.”
David felt heat rising to his face as he folded his arms. “Finally, we’re on the same page. Give me a name.”
The Baggage Handler’s eyebrows knitted together in surprise. “Well . . . you, David.”
David’s brain asked a thousand questions at once. He had no idea what to do with any of them. “Just . . . what . . .” Words, David’s usual weapon of choice, deserted him. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Baggage Handler.”
David huffed his impatience through clenched teeth. “No, who are you really?”
“Sorry, maybe I should speak a little slower for you. I . . . am . . . the . . . Baggage . . . Handler.” He chuckled, impressed at his own joke, and thick black curls sprung free as he scratched under his cap.
David lurched forward as if he were going to grab this young guy by the straps of his overalls. “Look, buddy, I’ve got no idea what’s going on here, but I haven’t got the time to work out if this is the most elaborate prank in history or if you’re a stalker or whoever—whatever—you are. I need to get out of here. Show me the way out.”
The Baggage Handler frowned as he studied his hands. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You promised to deal with your baggage before you left here today.”
David clenched and unclenched his hands as the adrenalin surged through him like a rising tide. “Promised? What are you talking about?”
The Baggage Handler reached across to the counter, where he’d placed his clipboard. He turned it around and tapped his finger on the form David signed.
David stepped forward to read it. “‘I promise to make a choice about my baggage before I leave this facility.’” And then, at the bottom of the form, his hastily scrawled signature.
“It looks like you’ve got a choice to make.” The Baggage Handler placed the clipboard next to him.
A white-hot rage flamed in the very fiber of David’s being. He glared at the Baggage Handler, and then he stormed out of the room, only to be confronted once again by a line of white doors in a corridor disappearing into infinity. His ragged breathing caught in his throat and bounced into the distance. Trapped. He skulked back into the waiting room.
“Why me?” David stood at his full height. He had to wrestle back some power. Somehow.
“Why not?” The Baggage Handler laced his fingers behind his head.
Another escape route cut off. “All right, so I have to get out of here, and I have to make some kind of decision about all this stuff that has magically appeared in my suitcase. What do I have to do?”
The Baggage Handler gave a sage nod. “That’s better. When did this thing happen with Sharon?”
David narrowed his eyes again. How did he know about that? Maybe Sharon was behind all this. Now that made sense. Tread carefully. “Last year.”
“You’ve been carrying it around for six months, then, maybe longer.”
A silence grew in the room, and then David waved a finger at the Baggage Handler as his careful tread disappeared under the adrenalin of indignance. “Hang on a minute. She cheated on me, so why do I have to deal with it? Why is it in my baggage?”
The Baggage Handler shrugged. “I’ve seen this happen thousands of times. This isn’t the baggage of someone who’s been unfaithful. It’s the baggage of unforgiveness.”
“Unforgiveness?” David spat out the word.
“Yes, unforgiveness. You carry the consequences of someone else’s behavior, and it ends up eating you alive. David, you’re the one carrying your baggage around, and it’s weighing you down. But you’re choosing what to carry.”
David simply stared. “That just shows you’ve read that newspaper.”
“Read it, seen it, heard it, felt it, lived it. I’ve spoken to so many people in your situation, and the one thing you all have in common is holding on to bitterness because you think you’re punishing the other person. But you end up paying the price yourself.”
David dropped his head.
“I’m going to guess that you’re angry, no fun to be around, resenting the world around you, and addicted to various things to self-medicate the pain. But then it gets worse. You can’t sleep, and you live off antacids. Your body is drowning in bitterness. What you’ve done is drink poison in the hope that the person who wronged you will die.”
David’s eyes flitted back and forth as he processed these incisions into his life. This Baggage Handler was reading him like a book.
“And I’ve yet to meet a person who carries this extra baggage and is either happy to carry it or doesn’t feel its weight. And yet they still carry it.”
David looked up at the Baggage Handler with a steely glare, his lips pursed.
The Baggage Handler studied him with piercing blue eyes. From the end of the counter, the alarm clock ticked louder, its tinny counting of the seconds bouncing off white walls.
“Why do you think that is, David?”
The beginning of an answer half escaped David’s lips before his mind had a chance to reel it back in. “Because I’m . . .”
“You know, don’t you?” The Baggage Handler leaned forward in eager anticipation, rubbing his hands together as David arrived at the right answer. “You feel it as well. It’s because, deep down, you know you’re—”
“Right.” David again dropped his head and stared at the fraying white carpet. “She was the one who was wrong.”
The Baggage Handler shook his head. “She was, but that doesn’t mean you’re completely right. Why do people think that for them to be right, the other side must be one hundred percent wrong? Life is far more nuanced than that.”
David glowered. “So I’m to blame here? Is that it?”
Another shake of the head. “You’re contributing to this mess as well. She was in the wrong—I agree with you—but you’re contributing to the lack of a solution.”
Sharon’s voice rang in his ears. I’m so sorry, David . . . It was a once-off thing . . . I was lonely, and you weren’t listening. Tears. Lots of tears. But none from David. Just the set of his jaw and a battle to keep his mind replaying the scene that led to the photo he found.
David’s eyes softened a touch. “She thought it would be enough to say she was sorry.”
“She was sorry. What did you do with that?”
“If I was to censor it and take out all the bad language?”
The Baggage Handler chuckled softly. “That would be nice.”
“Then I didn’t say much.”
The Baggage Handler pointed at David’s suitcase. “You’re about to break up a family, devastate your daughter, and complicate your life because, deep down, being right is the most important thing to you.”
“Look. Whoever you are—whatever you are—it’s been a tough year, but I’m not the one who started all this.”
A shadow passed over the Baggage Handler’s eyes. “I know, but relationships don’t break up one day out of the blue.”
That sinking feeling was back in the pit of David’s stomach. That sense of foreboding, of ownership. Of making a mistake.
“You’re angry with her—obviously—but the question here isn’t about what. It’s about why.”
Why? It was the smallest of questions, but it jolted David. It was a question he’d never allowed to be part of the argument that raged in his head. He had fought through the who and spent a lot of time fighting off the details of the what. But why was never invited into the discussion.
The Baggage Handler stood and smoothed his overalls. “This is a lot to take in, so I’ll leave you for a few minutes to think about it. But just a reminder, you signed a form that said you would choose what to do with your baggage before you left, and the clock appears to be ticking toward your meeting.” He moved to the door and turned the handle. “I’ll be right back.”
David sat down on the edge of the sofa, his knee keeping time with his machine-gun heartbeat as the alarm clock continued its tinny ticking. He stared at the photo in the suitcase, the image of his wife kissing his best friend flaming into life from slow-burning embers deep within him. His breathing grew shallower as his mind ticked over. He checked his phone. Another fifteen minutes gone. In forty-five minutes his career would be over.
It’s why.
Sharon’s voice again pierced his memory. You’re never home . . . I’m tired of eating dinner alone . . . You missed another recital, but it was so good to see Jerry there.
A small crack appeared in his anger, a wall that he’d bricked in with the mortar of justified righteousness since he’d found the photo on her phone.
He hadn’t wanted to work from dawn to dusk. No one did. But when you were the breadwinner and providing for a family that constantly needed you to provide, you did. For the clothes. The dresses. The endless carousel of princess movies.
Everything to make them happy.
The gnawing in the pit of his stomach grabbed him, but it didn’t need an antacid. It needed something far deeper.
It’s why.
With a downward glance, he made a connection that swept all his thoughts aside.
He had seen that polo shirt on the golf course several times.
And it was in the photo. Jerry had been wearing it on the ferry.
With his wife, whom he was kissing.
David leaned forward and picked up the photo. Sharon’s lips shone a bright pink. His eyes shot to the collar on the shirt in the suitcase and the pink mark his wife’s lips had left on it.
David screamed as he grabbed the tickets and receipts and tore them into strips until they were strewn all over the floor. He ripped the photo into confetti and took Jerry’s shirt, pushing aside the twenty-year friendship with his best friend as the anger rose in him, and tried to rip it into shreds. He made a small tear and then a satisfying rip as the anger drove him to a frenzy. With an anguished scream he threw it in the trash can under the coffee machine. He slammed the suitcase shut and then sat back down on the sofa in triumph. “Right. Dealt with.”
The insanity of the whole situation threatened to tip him upside down. David stood, his breathing ragged and his pulse racing. He needed to center himself and get back on track. He took the first steps on his usual journey to rationalize the whole experience. This had to be stress from the fight to save his career.
He closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Right. I’ve dealt with whatever this sideshow is, and I’ve got to get back to this meeting. I need to think about my presentation.”
He closed his eyes and tried to picture Caitlin on the ferry. She was smiling, but next to Sharon was someone else. Jerry now sat in his place.
David snapped his eyes open and trailed his fingertips in ever-faster hypnotizing circles on his temples. “Okay, I’ve got the reports.” He needed to touch base with something in the real world, and an overwhelming desire to check the one thing that would save his career flared in his head.
He opened his eyes, but the usual feeling of calm wasn’t quite back. This was different than it normally was when he nailed the lid on any situation getting away from him. One corner was loose, and he knew it.
The alarm clock’s tinny ticks boomed across the room.
David opened the suitcase again. Sitting on top of the financial reports were a man’s shirt with a lipstick stain, two ferry tickets, a couple of restaurant receipts, and a selfie of his wife kissing his former best friend.