Chapter Text
"Don't start that again," Indy said, leaning one arm on the dusty mantle and staring into the fireplace. He had a headache and Marion's harping wasn't helping it any. "It's a long time in the past."
"Happens I feel like starting it again," she said, belligerently. She had been drinking all evening and had gotten onto topics he felt were best avoided. "I was just a kid and you knew it."
"You weren't any kid. I didn't drag you into my tent that night and you didn't yell rape afterwards."
"Yeah, and you didn't struggle too hard either," she said nastily. "Don't think I hadn't seen how you looked at me. You were horny as hell!" He turned from the fireplace with a dangerous expression on his face. She saw with pleasure that she had finally gotten to him and twisted the knife even deeper. "You've got a thing for little girls, huh, Indiana? Do you go through your classes systematically or just pick at random?"
He advanced on her, furious, then caught himself with difficulty. "Do you think I'd be stupid enough to risk my tenure for anything like that?" he demanded. "I made that mistake once." Besides, he thought darkly to himself, they're all over eighteen. Suddenly tired, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "You're drunk, Marion. Why don't you go to bed and sleep it off?"
"I intend to get a lot drunker. Besides, I can drink you under the table any day of the week and you know it. You owe me, Indiana, and I'm not going to let you forget it. I haven't forgotten the money you burned up in Nepal and I haven't forgotten what you did to me eleven years ago."
"Will you just drop it, for God's sake? I'm sick of hearing about it!"
"I'm sick of you and this dump you live in. I'm getting outa here and into a place of my own." She suddenly swayed unsteadily as a wave of dizziness engulfed her, so that she had to clutch the back of the chair for support.
He had turned away again and didn't notice. "Yeah, with what? You haven't got a dime to your name! "
"I'll get a job … in a bar…" she answered and knocked back the rest of the whiskey in her glass. The dizziness swept her again but she tried to ignore it. "I've got plenty of experience at that! Boy, wouldn't that look great to the Board of Regents - Professor Jones' wife workin' in a … a…" This time her head spun with such force that she dropped the glass and clutched at her temples, trying to bring the world back into focus. The floor wouldn't stay level and she started to tumble over.
Taken by surprise, Indy hesitated for an instant then caught her before she was could fall and held her close until she steadied. When she could stand, he put his arm around her shoulders and gently walked her down the hall to the bedroom. "You're tired and you've had too much to drink. You'll feel better in the morning."
She didn't argue, but let him put her to bed. He sat down on the side of the bed and smoothed her dark hair.
"Why didn't you ever come back?" Marion murmured sleepily, fast drifting off under the tender hand caressing her hair.
"Go to sleep," he said and rose. He turned out the bedside lamp and bent down to kiss her forehead, then quietly closed the door behind him and went back to sit before the fire.
* * *
Indy awoke to find Marion huddled against him, trembling. "What's the matter?" he asked groggily.
"I'm sorry, Indy," she whispered. "I'm just having bad dreams."
He turned on his side so that he could take her in his arms. "What about?"
She seemed very small and vulnerable pressed against him. "The whole thing," she whispered. "Snakes everywhere and bodies falling out of the walls on me … the walls caving in and all the air being sucked out... I was suffocating and couldn't get out and I called and called but no one could hear me."
"Who were you calling?"
She buried her face against his chest, as if ashamed, and answered in a voice so small he barely heard her. "You."
He smiled and held her tighter. "I'm here now," he whispered. "I won't leave you. Go back to sleep, honey." He kept her close to him until he was sure she was asleep again, then settled fell asleep himself.
* * *
They had been married in a quiet civil ceremony in Washington, following the hearings there. Marion had hesitated at first, ten years of bad memories crowding in on her, but in the end, she knew she could never leave him or let him go a second time. And, in truth, she had nowhere else to go. All that she had owned had gone flaming up into the cold Himalayan night earlier that year. All that she had salvaged were the clothes on her back and Abner's treasured Headpiece to the Staff of Ra.
She had been terrified of their return to Connecticut, to a way of life she only half-remembered from her childhood. Suddenly, horribly shy, she dreaded being the inevitable object of curiosity among the other faculty wives and wondered if she could ever fit into the comfortable society there. She had been away from America so long, had lived for so many years in completely different environments, had been forced to fend for herself after Abner's death and had been successful at it. How could she possibly re-enter the quiet life of afternoon teas and sewing circles that she had frequented when her mother had been alive, so many years ago? The memory of her refined, gentle mother brought back an ache to Marion's heart that she hadn't felt in years. Suddenly, she missed her mother desperately.
Indy had gone back to his classes at Marshall College and had slipped effortlessly into his other persona. To watch him leave the house every day, clean-shaven, dressed in suit and tie and wearing his horn-rim glasses, it was hard to imagine the man who had appeared to her out of the night and her past.
The weeks had slipped past quietly through a mild winter and early spring. Somehow she had survived the obligatory little coffee klatches and had even made friends with one or two of the younger wives. Slowly, she began to feel at home here in the quiet domestic routine. She wrapped the security of the little clapboard house and tree-shaded yard around her like a blanket.
At other times, though, she ached for the high wildness of the Himalayas, to feel the cold wind in her face, to stand on the mountainside and have the earth spread out at her feet. She longed for the brisk chatter of Sherpas and warm, smoky confines of the little world she had created in the Raven. At those times, she felt that that was her real home and, then, the gossipy, catty wives of Indy's colleagues and the neat little houses lining the streets were insufferable to her and she felt almost desperate to break free of them.
It was Friday, a week before the Easter vacation and Indy sat hunched over his desk, doggedly going through the task of grading freshman mid-term exams. With luck, he would finish them in time for class Monday morning. Marion brought him a fresh cup of coffee and stood looking over his shoulder. Indy ran a hand over his sprouting beard, shook his head and clucked softly to himself, then marked another answer wrong.
"Wanna take a break?" she asked. She had been essentially alone the whole week. Even when Indy was home, he was bent over his desk with work.
"Can't," he replied laconically, his attention focused on the paper. "Hunh -- can't believe it – he got this one right."
"Well, I want to go do something," she said, crossly. "You've been so caught up in your work I've hardly seen you."
"Mm-hmm," he answered absently.
"Indy!"
He looked up tiredly and sighed. "I'm sorry, Marion, but I've really got to get these papers graded."
Whirling away from him, she snapped, "Forget it! Just forget it!"
His mouth tightened in exasperation for a minute then he dug into his pants pocket and came up with three quarters. "Look, here's 75 cents. Why don't you go to a movie? I think Jezebel is playing at the Palace Theater. "
"Is that some sort of crack?"
"For Pete's sake, Marion! I wasn't implying anything! I just thought you liked Bette Davis! Go see it. Don't go see it. Do anything you want! Just please let me get these rotten freshman tests graded!"
She eyed him angrily for a moment then snatched the coins from his extended hand. Without further comment she grabbed her purse and the car keys and stormed out, slamming the front door behind her. In a moment, he heard his old Ford start up and roar off down the street. Indy let her go, deciding it was getter to give her a chance to cool off and went back to his papers.
The clock in the living room was striking eleven when he finally decided he'd had enough and stretched, popping the kinks out of his back and neck. It dawned on him that Marion should have been back by then. Oh, well, he thought, she probably stopped to get a cup of coffee or something.
He went to bed and read for a while, all the time listening for the sound of the Ford Model A to pull into the driveway. By 12:30, he had begun to worry. He got up and pulled on his robe and slippers and went into the living room, where he put a small log on the fire and stoked up the embers then stretched out on the couch.
He was jerked out of sleep two hours later by insistent pounding at the front door. By the time he had scrambled up, trying to clear his mind of sleep, there was the sound of running footsteps and then a car motor gunning. Indy flung open the front door in time to see a black sedan round the corner, its lights off.
As he stepped out onto the porch, his foot caught on something and he bent down to pick it up. It was Marion's purse, empty of its usual contents but containing a small folded piece of paper. Indy stepped back into the light of the living room to read it and was snapped into full wakefulness. The note, printed in block letters as if in a deliberate attempt to disguise the handwriting, read, "We have Ravenswood's daughter. Bring the map of Tenochtitlan to war memorial. You will be met. Do not call the police. "
* * *