I met his wife, a savvy, not-to-be-fooled kind of a woman, who eyed me oddly, as if she guessed more about what went on in our office over the last year than she let on.
She looked around as if taking mental photographs of the place, where each person sat, the lay of the land, the corner office politics with the male owner dominating on the third floor and the female owner dominating on the first, with everything else a kind of limbo where the rest of us survived – our boss ruling from her corner office although without the same sense of fear the owners conveyed.
His wife, perhaps even guessing her husband’s role in the whole thing, bringing with her a sense of relief that the ghost of the past would not suddenly pop up and have even more tension to the scene.
It is possible she had some here before, but I suspect not, certainly not when the ghost still worked here, other wise her husband might well have gone out of his mind watching those worlds collide.
He seemed a little nervous about her meeting me, as if he feared I would convey one of my earlier suspicions when I certainly would not have. I actually felt sorry about his discomfort, knowing that something immensely valuable had gone from his life, a spirit that had made him feel important at a time and place when no one else would.
I also felt incredibly sad by the fact he would never know the truth behind what had transpired practically under his nose, and how he would never know why the spirit had been forced to resign.
At the end of the day, some things are best left unsaid.
What good would it do destroying a myth?
That ghost really meant something to him, a gift to a man who needed someone to make him more than he is, though with the spirit gone, he returned to what he had been before, a bit more deflated perhaps, knowing he has faded back into the twilight and no spirit like that will come again, a spirit that was a gift because he had so little of his own.
We all look back in time, the past year like a flash back to another place and time, this spirit like a reincarnation of a spirit I once had in my life long ago, and perhaps this is true for him as well, thought I also suspect the spirit is not a secret he will share with anyone, even though losing that ghost may well be one of the most painful moments of his life.
Explaining the details of why the spirit went would only rub salt into a still fresh wound.
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