In Nepal, they'd called it karma, divine retribution for earlier deeds and actions. Do good things and you'd be rewarded, do bad things and… well, you get the picture. I never believed in it myself; Dad raised me to worship things I could touch: pottery shards from Greece, a Mesopotamian idol, his godforsaken Staff of Ra. Maybe I believed in Fate a little… hard not to when the man you loved as a girl turns back up in your life in the shittiest little dive in the Far East, but I always believed it could be changed, that your path wasn't set in stone.
Even if there was karma out there, living the way I had to for so many years, losing Dad to his unattainable quest, should have cleared up anything I did wrong before and given me credit for years to come, like a bar tab you pay extra on when you have the dough. Almost everything I did was to survive. The one time I did anything for love, I got burnt.
I loved him, then. Seventeen, on the verge of adulthood, on the outs with Abner, and tired of being dragged everywhere and back, and here was this student, this man who came to worship at my father's feet, like all the other phonies. He never ignored me, like the rest of them… always had a little story for me or even just a smile, wicked enough under his fedora to make my knees weak, as they left me alone to go play in the dirt. I wanted him even then and why wouldn't I? He was handsome, worldly, and more important, he paid attention to me, a living, breathing person, not some musty corpse someone left in a hole a few thousand years ago.
He told me about his father not long after we slept together the first time. Not romantic, but that's what sealed it for me. He knew where I was coming from, how it felt to be forgotten, to know you'd be more important if you were dead. Too bad a few months later, Abner woke up from his living dream long enough to figure out what was happening between us, and ran him right out of camp.
A bum, he'd said. A worthless, good for nothing lecher who only wanted one thing and I'd been stupid enough given it to him. Ruined his prospects of training the greatest thing since Howard Carter and probably ruined his chances of ever finding the Ark, to boot. He cursed Jones's name every chance he got as we traipsed across the globe, following a breadcrumb trail of clues. We finally settled in Nepal when the money ran out because it seemed to be the only place no one had ever heard of Indiana Jones.
I saw the future once when I lay in his arms in an old, canvas tent in the middle of the desert and I caught a glimpse of it again when he walked back through the door of my goddamned, rotten bar in the mountains. Same smile, same cockiness that had made me simultaneously want kiss him and want to deck him in the first place, playing the hero in exchange for the trinket that my father gave his life for. Even coming home and losing the Ark to the Government couldn't take the shine off things for us.
I guess the scales weren't in my favour this time, either. I left him like this, once, not long after we'd gotten back. A note on the table telling him not to dare to look for me, all my things packed up and gone, while I went to chase rumours about Dad still being alive, wandering the mountains and living with Sherpas. He must've been laughing in Heaven or Hell or Nirvana, wherever the hell he was, to watch me ruin my life so much like he'd ruined his.
Good thing Indy never listened to what he was told. He found me in Kathmandu a couple months later, drowning in a bottle, broke and broken. Turned out the rumours were just that—Dad was gone, dead and buried somewhere in the cold snow, one of the mummies he loved so much now, and I was a goddamn fool. Things weren't ever quite the same when we got back. He didn't look at me quite the same… we fought more and I trusted him less. I knew what it was like to be infatuated with him and there were too many younger, prettier girls with eyes for romance and adventure flocking to his classes.
We rolled on because that's what we did. We were in love and that was all that should matter. He gave me his mother's sapphire, the one his father had given her when they were young and in love like us, and we'd planned in earnest for our little wedding. In time, things seemed to fall into place and I started to believe that I could have this, that I deserved happiness.
I'd never believe in karma till now, three days before Christmas, sitting in an empty house. I came home early, something I never do—funny how that works—and his things were gone. Irene, the secretary, doesn't know where he went. She said he was there, met with some swell called Donovan and, whoosh, he was gone, no word on when he'd be back or where he was headed. Didn't even take his term papers, she said. She only found out later he'd taken an emergency leave, open-ended. Doctor Brody wouldn't tell her more than that. Wouldn't tell me more than that, either.
It's funny. When I came home, everything seemed like it was going grand. The holidays, our wedding was a week away, I thought we were happy… I wanted to be home when he came home. I don't like to leave work early, but I had a hell of a Christmas present for him: he was going to be a father. It was going to be a belated birthday present for him, too, since the doctor said the baby'd come in July. But he was gone without even a note.
So instead of celebrating together, it's just me and his baby, safe inside me, spinning his mother's ring on the kitchen table, waiting to see which way fate takes it. I won't stay here and I won't be a charity case if he does come back. I've made my way alone in the world before and I'll do it again. His buddy Colin said that we always had a standing invitation; maybe I'll take a trip to England, see what life on the other side of the Pond is like.
It serves me right for thinking things would go well, that I could be happy. I'm not the kind of girl who has a fairytale ending, never was. Maybe if I hadn't run off the first time, he wouldn't be gone now. Maybe it's my fault for wanting something I had no right to in the first place. I love him, but maybe that was never enough. Maybe it never will be.
Even now, after he's walked back out of my life again, I don't think our story is done. Karma might revisit your bad deeds on you, but it's supposed to teach you a lesson too. Indy'd walked out of my life before and it taught me I could stand on my own. Things work in mysterious ways, now just isn't the right time. I'll see him again, some day, I know it.