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.
22
Michael stared at the trophy, and time slowed as the seconds dripped into the pools of thought rippling in his mind. His fingers ran over the tiny figure. The engraving pulsed on the burnished gold surface, and he traced his finger across his father’s name. And the name below it: Serviceton High School.
This trophy was Dad’s? Michael racked his mind for some—any—kind of memory of seeing it on the mantelpiece between his brother’s haul of glory and his own.
He drew a blank.
Then a second and third thought pressed in on him. Why am I carrying this around? And why would Dad put it in my suitcase?
From the sofa, the Baggage Handler quietly whistled. What was that tune? Michael knew it, but it crouched in a dark corner of his mind.
Michael offered the trophy to him. “Why would he do this?”
The Baggage Handler leaned back with a low whistle. “Why would who do what?”
“Dad. Put this trophy in my suitcase.”
“I prefer to call it baggage.”
Michael’s anger flickered, and he poked a nervous head out from behind his usual defenses. Who cared what it was called?
The Baggage Handler smiled. “You’ve never seen this trophy, have you?”
Michael pulled back his hand. How did he know that?
“Do you know why you’ve never seen this trophy?”
Michael shook his head, his curiosity piqued.
“Because your father never wanted you to see it.”
“How do you know that?”
The Baggage Handler fixed piercing blue eyes on Michael. “You’d be surprised.”
Michael folded his arms, still grasping the trophy. “Really? Try me.”
The Baggage Handler moved from the sofa and squatted down next to Michael. “Because I’ve seen this thousands of times, even down to a similar athlete on the top of the trophy. And the reason is always the same. Michael, your father is a proud man. He obviously thought if you saw this, it would change how you felt about him.”
Michael ran his fingers over the golden figure. His father had talked for years about how he could have been an Olympian but never had the opportunity. “How would this change how I felt about him? So he won some trophies. So did I.”
The Baggage Handler smiled, yet he looked a bit sad. “Because it made him feel inferior, he thought you’d see him as inferior.”
Inferior? Michael again stared at his father’s name, etched in a flowing script on the plaque on the marble column. The harsh fluorescent light caught it, and the plaque began to glow. A flash of light spread across it, and then a gray patch extended into a line and then a second and a third to complete the letter. Michael was transfixed as two more words were added to the plaque.
Eighth place.
Michael knew what that meant in a race of eight runners.
“But my father never tried athletics.”
“I think you’ll find he did, Michael.”
“So why would he put this in my baggage?”
“We’ll get to that.” The Baggage Handler nodded at the suitcase.
Michael again looked inside. The sea of red rosettes had parted to reveal paper underneath. Michael swept the ribbons aside to reveal dozens of participation certificates, each labeled with his father’s name and the bulk-printed logo of Serviceton High School. They looked like the artistic merit certificates he had brought home every year he was in school. Certificates that divided his parents—his mother’s encouragement was often tempered with his father’s comments about the poor prospects of an artistic career.
But these weren’t certificates of merit. He shuffled through them—participation in the 400m, participation in the 1500m. Tried hard in the 110m hurdles. Participated in cross-country but didn’t finish. His father had tried everything. And failed.
Michael made his way to the sofa, realization shining into every dark corner of his childhood. “Is this real?” He let go, and the certificates fluttered back into the suitcase.
“This is very real. You’ve carried this baggage all the way here.”
Michael dropped onto the sofa, fireworks bursting in his head. The fake timber of the chunky TV, the explosion of color, the mismatched furniture, the rickety mustard-yellow fridge. Old trophies he’d never seen before. Certificates from his father’s failed attempts to be an athlete.
This strange guy.
“Where is here?”
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The Baggage Handler tapped the badge on his overalls. “This is Baggage Services! This is where people come to deal with their baggage.”
“Are you part of the airline?”
The Baggage Handler laughed. “No.”
Michael tried to put this experience in some kind of order, some sort of sense. It hurt his head. “How can you not be a part of the airline but have my suitcase?”
“We prefer to call it baggage.”
“How did I get the wrong baggage?”
Silence. The hint of a smile under a navy-blue cap.
Michael mentally retraced his steps at the airport. “I grabbed it off the carousel—”
Silence. Michael connected the dots.
“—without looking.” The last dot connected to the others.
The Baggage Handler clicked his fingers. “Bingo! In fact, you all did.”
You all? “How many other people are here?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Who knows about this place?”
The Baggage Handler yawned in an extravagant stretch. “Everyone.”
“So that suitcase I brought in. That was someone else’s baggage? Did you give it to them? What are they doing?”
The Baggage Handler’s brow furrowed. “They’re dealing with it, in their own way.”
“What does that mean?”
The Baggage Handler leaned forward. “Why are you interested in people you’ve never met? You all want to know how everyone else is handling their own baggage, almost as an excuse to not deal with your own. Dealing with your baggage is hard. Carrying it appears to be easier, but it’s not, and it can destroy people in the long run.” The Baggage Handler bit his lip as if holding back tears. “And you’ve asked me about someone else, not how you can deal with your own baggage.”
Michael fought back his own tears as he lifted his father’s certificate from the suitcase. Tears of shock. Anger. Frustration. “He always said I wasn’t good enough, except when I was winning a race. Even then he’d ask me if I could shave another tenth off my time.”
The Baggage Handler fixed a gaze on him with clouded blue eyes, a look approaching wistfulness. “I think you can see who he was disappointed in.”
In that moment Michael understood. He wasn’t carrying around his father’s disappointment in him. He was carrying around his father’s disappointment in himself.
The Baggage Handler picked up the school trophy. “Eighth place. Your father decided that rather than dealing with all his baggage about his failure, he would get you to carry it. That’s completely unfair to you—and I can’t express just how sorry I am he did that—but you don’t have to carry it.”
Tears blurred the room. “It would make sense that his stuff would end up in my baggage and not Scott’s.” Living in the shadow of an older brother who played his father’s beloved ball sports had stunted Michael’s growth for as long as he could remember.
The Baggage Handler smoothed his overalls, compassion sparkling in his eyes. “In Scott’s baggage is exactly what you’re carrying here. I’ll have a conversation with him once his baggage gets too heavy for him as well. Michael, your father’s baggage is taking up precious space in your own life, and it’s weighing you down.”
The weight of years of rejection perched squarely on Michael’s shoulders. He stared at the carpet.
“If Dad’s baggage is taking up space in my life, why have I carried it?”
“An excellent question that’s difficult to answer. It’s partially because you didn’t realize it was there. Look, the problem isn’t you’ve been handed some baggage. Everyone has baggage. It’s that it’s difficult for you to move forward with your life. Every time an opportunity presents itself, you can’t move quickly because this weight drags behind you.”
The Baggage Handler nodded, a single tear streaking its way down his face. “That’s been there for a very long time. A very long time. I’m sorry about what has happened with your father. You’ve heard how you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family? That’s true for you. But you don’t need to carry this baggage. You have a choice.”
Well, that’s good news. I don’t have to carry it.
But the next thought was terrifying. “Do I have to give all this back to my dad?” His father was a hard man to deal with in the best of times. The conversation about messing up the meeting with Coach Crosswell would be difficult enough. Handing back this trophy and the certificates would be impossible.
“No, you can leave it all with me.”
Michael shook his head in amazement. “Who are you?”
The young man simply tipped his cap, and black, curly hair sprung free over his forehead. “I’m the Baggage Handler. I’m here to help you with your baggage.”
Michael sighed as he checked his phone. “What’s the point? I’ve missed the rest of my meeting with the coach because of my baggage.”
The Baggage Handler chuckled. “You were going to miss out on that scholarship because of your baggage anyway. And it’s not pointless.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apart from the fact that if you deal with your baggage today, you won’t need to carry it around with you for the rest of your life, what if I were to tell you there’s another way to achieve your dream? Not your father’s. Yours.”
23
David cradled his head in his hands as he rocked back and forth on the sofa. His anger was gone, shoved out of the way by a feeling that had threatened to mug him for six months. A feeling he had found impossible to banish without the constant presence of his anger.
He had brought this on.
A single sob rose in his throat, and he forced it back down with the little composure he had left. The door opened, and the Baggage Handler looked at the confetti on the floor and shook his head. “I’m amazed at how many people think that’s the best way to deal with their baggage.”
David looked through tears that were foreign to him. “Why is this happening?”
The young man sat down next to him. “Because you’re carrying around baggage that’s more than weighing you down. It’s killing you. Literally. I’ve seen it all before—I’m guessing digestion problems, headaches, sleepless nights?” He counted them off on his fingers.
David stared at the floor as the Baggage Handler ticked off his health problems as though he were reading down a menu.
The Baggage Handler leaned into him. “And that’s not to mention what’s happening to your heart.”
Fear gripped David with an icy hand. “What do you know about my heart?”
The Baggage Handler fixed a gaze on him with clouded blue eyes, a look approaching wistfulness. “More than you’ll ever know.”
David sniffed back control, avoided the young man’s sad eyes, and cleared his throat. “Why am I the one who has to deal with this?”
The Baggage Handler put out his hands. “You’ve been hurt. You’ve been betrayed. But your baggage isn’t the betrayal. You’ve been using it to justify other things you’re doing.”
David narrowed his eyes as he folded his arms. “Such as?”
“For one, you’ve used it to justify hurting Sharon for months. That trip a few months ago, at the karaoke bar when those girls—”
David’s mouth fell open. “You know about that?”
“Of course. And you thought staying angry justified doing it. Good for the goose, good for the gander, and all that.”
David’s mind raced. This guy was picking out his flaws with surgical precision.
“I know about all things, including the ultimatum you gave to your wife last night.”
David’s neck threatened to snap as he spun to face the Baggage Handler.
“But she and Jerry—”
“I know. As I said, you have a right to feel betrayed, but you’re responsible for your behavior, not hers.”
The injustice again raged inside David. “I’ve nearly killed myself to provide for my family. I get repaid like that, but it
’s my problem?”
The Baggage Handler nodded.
“Everything I did—all the work I put in, all the extra hours—I did to make them happy.”
Still that slow nod.
“She tells me she doesn’t want me to work so much, but we never seem to have enough money—”
“David, your marriage has been in trouble for longer than six months. You’ve got to understand that you’ve contributed to that, and when Sharon—”
“Now, hang on a minute—”
The Baggage Handler again put out his hands. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. Your wife shouldn’t have done what she did. My heart breaks for what happened to you, and I don’t condone the way she chose to handle the distance between you. I’m glad she’s tried to own what she did, but I’ve seen this time and time again. When people come here carrying unforgiveness, they feel like they’ve got a Get Out of Jail Free card because of what’s been done to them. And in the past six months, you’ve been looking for evidence she’s still having an affair behind your back. Checking her phone for more photos. Working out if she’s got email accounts you don’t know about.”
David stopped breathing. That was exactly what he’d been doing.
“You haven’t found anything, have you?”
He hadn’t.
“That’s because, as she said, it was over, but the part of you that was hurt almost needed to believe it was still going on.”
David’s breath came back. Slow. Fuming.
The Baggage Handler leaned back and crossed his ankles.
“But still you look. Here’s my question: how is that working out for you?”
A numbness spread down David’s spine and froze every joint. The Baggage Handler was right. It wasn’t working out for him. As much as it was making him feel righteous, it was making his marriage—and, in turn, his life—worse.
“Your digestion is shot to bits, and the headaches . . . Do you think there’s a chance that’s all linked?”
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