Loss

LOSS

I

In the spring of ’79, the efforts of Damon Sharpe’s research reached a pinnacle. He had in part been victorious, he believed, in his battle to unearth a truth obscured by time. He had only to look on it with his own eyes to verify the success as more than personal, though it remained a victory few recognized as authentic.

The only things that made Damon different to his wife, Anne, were that she loved him and that he was who he was—and he had loved her, even if no one else seemed to remember her. Damon’s wife, they probably called her, the ones who knew he had a wife. The invisible woman.

Spring became summer, which faded into early autumn. The leaves turned and fell.

Anne lay among the sheets of the bed with her head against a flat white pillow. As the wall clock ticked away, she stared at the empty space on the other side of the bed.

At the age of 38, her husband had died of a heart attack and Anne was alone with a house full of things, unfilled wishes, dreams, and remnants.

The days and hours became lost in a blur. Now she stood in silence in front of a polished wooden casket.

It might be the first time any of them had noticed Anne’s wispy form, her light-complexioned features with pale blond hair that fell straight down on each side, and her brown eyes.

The others who filled the room spoke in hushed tones. Anne heard soft steps approaching from behind. A hand touched her shoulder. She pulled away from it.

“I’m sorry, dear,” the person, an elderly woman with curled white hair, said.

“Sorry for what?” Anne replied. She saw no value in artificial kindness. She certainly didn’t owe it to anyone.

She didn’t even know the woman who stood in front of her or most of the rest of these people, and they never knew her. They couldn’t know how she felt, what she and her husband had shared, or what remained now that he was gone.

The only things left of Damon Sharpe, other than the ring she wore and his still form in that casket, were inside of her and inside that house they had shared, though its contents had become almost worthless to her. The house might as well be empty. In a way, it was.

“Anne,” a soft voice said to her from nearby, “if there is anything I can do, please let me know.”

Anne turned and fixed the brown-haired woman in the gray dress with a flat stare. The woman swallowed, taking a step back.

“Anne, it’s me,” she said. “Tabby Reinhart. I know we haven’t talked in a while, but—”

“Miss Sharpe?” another voice broke in, the voice of a man.

The tall man in the dark blue suit stood just outside of Anne’s peripheral vision, to her left and behind, as if he meant to force Anne to turn around to face him. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. She continued to face the casket.

“My condolences,” the man’s low voice spoke.

“Why are you here?” Anne asked.

“Why, Miss Sharpe, I’ve come to pay my respects.”

“There is nothing respectful about your visit here. We both know that.”

The man shifted. She could imagine the amused look that crossed his face, even if she didn’t look at him.

“Miss Sharpe—”

“Mrs. Sharpe.”

A cough.

“Very well, Mrs. Sharpe, my name is Brock Keller. Your husband and I—”

“I know who you are,” Anne said, “and I know why you’re here. You’re here to have one last laugh before they lower my husband into the ground.”

She faced the black-haired man in the blue suit and locked him full in her stare. “You have no right to be here.”

Keller appeared surprised. The surprise was feigned, Anne knew. No matter what he pretended or said to the contrary, Keller knew the hardship he had inflicted.

“You did your best to destroy everything my husband worked for,” Anne said to him.

“No, Mrs. Sharpe, you have it wrong,” Keller said.

“He was my husband,” she said. “You think I don’t know what went on in his life? You think I don’t know about the things you’ve done? You’re a liar,Keller.”

Keller looked around, becoming nervous. People were staring. Tabby Reinhart, still standing near, took another step back.

“Get out of here,” Anne said to Keller. “You are not welcome here. Get out.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” he asked.

“Get out!” Her hand twisted into a fist. She swung and struck him right in the face.

Keller’s head jerked back. His face flushed crimson. He grabbed her arms and she fought him, screaming.

“GET OUT! GET OUT!”

Arms grabbed Keller from behind and pulled him back. Tabby rushed between them, pleading quietly with Anne. Anne shoved her away. More people pulled Anne back, but she shouted and fought against them.

Keller yanked his arms free of those around him and strode for the door. At the door, he took a look back, his jaw clenched. His eyes burned with anger.

“Dear, please,” the older woman urged Anne. “It’s all right. He’s gone.”

Anne turned her eyes toward the door where Keller stood a moment before, saw the truth of the old woman’s words, and forced her mouth shut. She pushed her shaking hands down to her sides.

“Will you be all right?” another voice asked her from out of eyesight. She didn’t know who had spoken and didn’t care. She took a deep breath. With this group of people around her, she felt like she was suffocating.

“Please,” she said through her teeth. “I just need to be alone.”

The group hesitated. After a moment, someone stepped away. The rest soon followed, leaving Anne again to stand in front of her husband’s coffin, tears on her face, emotion pouring from her fractured life.

The people standing behind her still wore those masks of concern, she imagined. She couldn’t turn to face them. Not now, in her moment of weakness. They didn’t deserve to witness this, her fragility. Besides, they wouldn’t understand.

It wasn’t sadness that possessed her and hardened her face against the tears that fell. It was hatred.

II

As far as Anne was concerned, the man who conducted the funeral didn’t even know her husband, but he was the first one who had offered to conduct the service. When the generic eulogy dribbled from his lips, Anne sat looking but not quite listening. When it ended, she stood up and walked for the door.

“Honey, I’m sorry,” someone said, and Anne moved right past her.

“Anne,” a man with dark hair and eyes, who had sat in the back until now, called to her. His voice failed to penetrate her cyclone of thoughts. She ignored everything around her, especially those who tried to approach or speak to her, and continued walking until she met the cold, drenching rain outside. Thunder tore through the gray skies.

Ruben Ramirez emerged from the funeral home behind her, calling her name again, but Anne kept walking. The cacophony of torrents overcame all else until she reached the small gray car, put the key in, opened the door, and climbed in. She slammed the car door shut against the rain.

The drive home was a gray mess of rain-swept streets.

Once parked in her driveway, she walked again through the deluge with no hurry in her step. She unlocked the door and stepped into the house. Rainwater gushed from her clothing.

Anne’s efforts to keep their home tidy despite Damon’s accumulated stacks of books, paper-packed folders, and curiosities were hours wasted. Even with the clutter, the place seemed like a hollow shell instead of a home.

How different it appeared to her now. Everything familiar had become a mockery. She didn’t think she could stay here any longer.

She found a black, blue-striped duffel bag jammed into one corner of the bedroom closet. She tossed it onto the bed and began throwing clothes into it.

Heedless of Anne’s incredulity, the object of her late husband’s studies persisted. Damon believed he had been close, but as close as he might have been, even he couldn’t traverse the chasm that was death. After years of research, he would never see a resolution. He would never know for certain.

But Anne might. A strange idea had entered her distant mind while she sat quiet during the droning monologue of his funeral service.

Before the funeral, she considered burning every last one of his papers. Damon had been so consumed with it that it kept him from sleep on many nights. Even when he did slide into bed, insomnia kept him fidgeting for an hour or more. It drove Anne to annoyance until Damon sprang up again to continue reading and speculating on that mythological obsession of his.

He kept stacks of photographs. Anne had flipped through them but could never make full sense of them, which sometimes prompted a lengthy explanation from Damon. She did recognize photos of mounds of rock and crumbling stone structures from a Peruvian archaeological site. Some of the photographs were of rather random piles of rock elsewhere. She remembered a photo of a gourd painted with an obscure image and many more photos of quipu, those knotted strands of varying colors that remained of the ancient world. There were many more photographs in the attic, boxes of them.

Damon had also bought books—obscure, unlisted books. He had written enough to fill a book of his own, but that had never been his goal.

In the later days, Damon’s sense of humor evaporated. His health waned. He became pale from too many hours indoors. He presented an odd sight in creeping through their home during the late hours in his efforts to keep from waking Anne, although she had already awoken. The ordeal had also taxed her.

A few men of influence had denounced Damon’s work. His correspondence with archaeologist Dr. Lawrence Cornwell, who had exhibited a rare interest in Damon’s discoveries, had become stagnant. Many of Damon’s colleagues had turned their backs on him. Most of this, if not all of it, Anne attributed to Brock Keller. The man had the tongue of a snake.

Keller had done his part to make life difficult for Damon. Damon had nowhere else to turn for support but Anne, and also Ruben, whose assistance had proven useful on numerous occasions.

Anne liked Ruben. He didn’t allow his emotions to get in the way of work. Anne might have been the same way, but today she proved to herself and others that she wasn’t. When she saw Keller at the funeral, she lost it.

Without Damon in her life, Anne had a lot to consider and a massive decision to make. It might be the death of her.

She turned away from the bag on the bed, now stuffed with clothing, and moved around the bed to the oil painting on the opposite wall. Damon had painted it in his younger days; against a background of orange-yellow sunlight, it featured a row of birds’ silhouettes perched on a fence. She slid the painting aside to reveal a wall safe.

She spun the combination dial through the proper sequence of numbers and opened the safe. Inside rested several stacks of cash and a folder thickly-padded with her husband’s research papers.

Prompted by an impulse she couldn’t place, Anne had left the folder in the safe before departing earlier for the funeral. Now she took the folder and every last dollar from the safe and transferred it into the duffel bag.

She no longer wanted to burn her husband’s papers. She would keep them. Seeing Keller today had helped her to decide that. Damon was gone from her life, but Keller had shown his face today to prove he wasn’t. Damon’s work wasn’t done. If that was the truth of it, Anne had a tremendous step to take.

There was one more thing: a camera. She found Damon’s camera, bundled it in multiple layers of soft cloth, and placed it into the bag.

After zipping up the bag, she thought about calling Ruben, but hesitated in front of the phone.

A thud startled her. Anne closed the safe and maneuvered the painting back into place.

Had the sound come from the front door? Was someone here? She sat on the bed beside her packed bag and waited for them to go away.

Outside, the rain continued to pour.

She heard something else, some other sound—a click? She leaned forward, listening, but found it difficult to hear between the rushing rain and her position in the back bedroom.

She walked to the living room and approached the curtained window to peek outside. Before she had the chance, she heard the sound again.

An unmistakable click sounded from the front door. She looked to the doorknob as it turned, and her heart pounded when the door swung open.