Chapter Excerpt from The Other Ones:
Chapter Five: Damon Forrest Devereaux
This chapter explores the many pitfalls in Damon Devereaux's life. He grapples with issues at work, attempts to reason with a mulish coworker, tries to be a good uncle to his nephew, and struggles to get along with his sister. His birthday is imminent, and he doesn't want to attend his party. His property caretaker prompts him to go, but Damon feels his life is nothing but a myriad of problems, and there is little to celebrate.

“We’re simply not going to have adequate funding,” Dawson insisted for the umpteenth time after a habitual adjustment of his glasses. He’d grown flushed from arguing with the board.
     Damon heaved an inward sigh. He’d wanted to proceed with the project regardless, but Dawson’s neurotic tendency to nickel and dime appeared to be swaying the members.
     “Damon, can we hear from you a final time?” Sterling, their chief executive officer, asked.
     He cleared his throat, feeling Dawson’s gaze. “I’d prefer to move forward. The funding will most likely come through, and if we don’t take this opportunity, they’ll find another backer.”
     After another half-hour of discussion, the board rejected the proposal. Damon stood out in the hall afterward, attempting to appear gracious instead of maddened. Making small talk and shaking a few hands, he was aware of a tightness in his throat. The voice of reason was running out of things to say.
                                                                                               ***
     “What do you say we stop by La Mer for a quick bite before driving up the mountain?” Damon asked. He stowed his cane in the back seat.
     “Uh, I don’t know. I’m not that hungry,” Torrance replied.
     “All right.” Damon’s stomach growled as he backed out of the drive. Dawson’s vacillations had prolonged the board meeting an extra hour, and he hadn’t eaten all afternoon. Torrance’s last-minute request to be dropped at the ski resort for the last day of the season had foiled his plans to grab something quick downtown before returning to the Institute. Henry had been on his case to eat more, and La Mer offered healthy fare prepared to delicious perfection.
     However, they hadn’t traveled more than a few miles when Torrance changed his mind. “Now that I think about it, I really should grab something. The guys will be skiing by the time I get up there, and I haven’t eaten since this morning.” He pointed up the road. “Let’s stop at Burger Hut.”
     Damon recoiled in disgust. The last thing he felt liked eating was fast food. “Are you sure?” he countered. “We could still turn back for La Mer.”
     Torrance checked his watch. “No, just go through the drive-through.”
     “La Mer has a drive-through.”
     “We’re already almost there.” Burger Hut loomed on the horizon.
     “It’s only a mile back,” Damon persisted. But it was no use. Torrance had made up his mind. Damon settled for an oily fish sandwich that sat like a leaden mass in his stomach around every turn up to Bear Mountain.
                                                                                               ***
     “Well, I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” Lila informed Damon hours later after Dawson had thrown up his arms in disgust and left the room.
     “I realize that, but if you’d give it a try, I think you’d be surprised.” Damon swallowed hard, his frustration beginning its usual climb.
     With an expression indicative of a bulldog, she slammed the file down on her desk. “I don’t think so.”
     “Well, Dawson and I disagree. If you’d just take a short breather and stand back, you might see the big picture,” Damon attempted. He’d had it with her bullheadedness! He was also angry with Dawson for deserting him.
     “Why is it I’m never allowed to decide here?” she alleged.
     He felt as though his head was going to explode. “All right, Lila,” he said at last. “Try it your way.”
     She smirked. “About time. I’m going to kill this project; wait and see.”
     “Of that, I have no doubt,” he muttered rankly. Lila was going to attempt the impossible, waste precious time and resources, and finally see the light and come around to their original suggestions, as per usual.
     “Ready, Damon?” Sterling leaned his tall form against the exit door, and a gust of brisk air filled the room. They had agreed earlier to grab a latte together down the street.
     Damon nodded, reaching for his jacket. “If you only knew how much.” Perhaps the latte would shore him up for the rest of the afternoon.
     Minutes later, he gratefully accepted the steaming drink from a vendor on Evergreen Square. After taking a long sip, he turned back to his associate. “You know, Sterling, that’s a great idea. Why not run it by Alex?”
     “You can’t be serious.” Sterling squinted in the sunlight as they walked back up the icy sidewalk toward the Institute.
     Damon glanced at him. “Why not?”
     He shrugged, snowflakes landing on his dark wavy hair. “It’s beyond his level of expertise.”
     Damon experienced a rush of frustration. Although young and inexperienced, Alex possessed a phenomenally creative intellect. But recently, he and Sterling had butted heads over politics and, as a consequence, Alex had been conspicuously absent on several recent projects.
     Damon sensed a car close by when Sterling suddenly grabbed his arm and yanked him out of the way. The car passed by with one wheel skirting the curb where the two had been walking.
     “Stupid ass!” Sterling screamed as he shook his fist.
     Damon’s latte lay spilled all over the ground in front of him.
                                                                                               ***
     Back at work again, Damon, still shaken, limped toward his office to gather his things. He needed to call the car salesman before meeting his sister. He was reaching for the phone when it rang.
     “Dr. Devereaux.”
     “Dames? It’s Nance.”
     “Hi, Nancy.”
     “Happy birthday,” she exclaimed. Damon’s birthday was the following day.
     “Don’t remind me.”
     “Can you come by later tonight?”
     “Nancy, I don’t want a party.”
     “I’ve already invited people.”
     Damon leaned forward in alarm. “But I told you—”
     “It’ll just be Jake, Aunt Sally, and Grandma Olive. And possibly Jane,” she added.
     “I won’t be able to stay long.” His calf had been killing him. “I need to put this damn leg up.”
     “That’s all right. Are you on your way to see Liam?”
     “I wanted to call him first and see if—”
     “No, Dames, don’t even worry about it. Just swing by the dealer and then pick me up afterward,” Nancy insisted. Her car was at the shop, and she needed a lift to work.
     Damon stiffened. They planned to surprise Torrance with a car for his seventeenth birthday, and he’d been unable to reach the salesman earlier to clear up a few final details. It would be a waste of time to drive out there, but Nancy believed her friend Liam was indeed at work and most likely out on the lot showing a car to a customer. “Why not give him a call tomorrow instead?” Damon asked again.
     “Because you’re coming here, and it’s on the way,” she said.
     “On the way” was hardly accurate. It was miles down a highway perpendicular to his sister’s neighborhood. It was a small matter, but he felt pushed. “Okay,” he said at last.
     “One other favor. Can you stop by and let Whiskers in on your way home later? I’m running a little behind and need to stop by the bakery after work for your cake. Torrance will disown me if anything happens to his cat.”
     “Okay,” he repeated.
     “Are you excited about your party?”
     He hesitated. “See you in a few.”
     Sleet obscured the windshield as he drove down the high-speed road leading to the showroom. A rabbit ran across the slushy pavement, and he slammed on his brakes. It bounded away to safety, and the car behind him passed over a double yellow line after flashing Damon an obscene gesture.
     Reaching the building, he attempted to cover his head with his arms as he hurried inside. The sleet had transformed into a deluge of rain. Once indoors, he wiped the water from his glasses with a handkerchief before spotting a mechanic.
     “Excuse me, may I speak to Liam for a moment?”
     The mechanic shook his head. “He left hours ago.”
     Damon turned and walked back out into the rain.
                                                                                             ***
     “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!”  Damon peered out his sister’s back door hours later while holding up a bowl of cat food. The storm had ended, but Whiskers was nowhere in sight. He sighed and turned back to the kitchen. He’d have to stay put for a bit and wait for Torrance’s cat to return. He couldn’t leave Whiskers out until nightfall. An owl might get him, and there’d be hell to pay.
     Damon relaxed in a stuffed chair in the living room and shut his eyes. He felt bone tired. If only he could close his eyes forever. After the difficult past week, nothing appealed to him any longer. Even the thought of returning home to heat some dinner exhausted him. He had to eat, though—he was thin as a rail. Lose any more weight, and Henry would admit him.
     The one bright spot in the past week was the unexpected sound of several overwintering robins. A rare event in Greenough Park, he’d heard their distinctive chirping one sunny afternoon but had yet to spot one. The cheery harbingers of spring seemed to promise better days ahead and never failed to buoy his spirits.
     Once, in passing, his pastor had asked Damon if he had ever experienced joy. Unable to pinpoint an actual event in his life that evoked that elusive feeling, Damon had shaken his head. The robins returned later that week, and he felt it—joy.
     Rising, Damon opened the front door. Whiskers looked up to greet him, and there at his feet lay a dead robin.
     It seemed to finish him off, the sight of the silenced bird. He told himself that the world was full of carnage as he relaxed in his parlor later after returning home. The bowl he’d set down for the cat afterward contained a shredded bird—a chicken, he reasoned.
     A terrible pall encompassed him as he stared out the window at the barn. He felt anger toward life itself. After a tiring week of messages from Bristol’s attorney, Lila’s relentless bullying, and Nancy poking her nose in his business, could he at least have been spared the sight of the poor bird lying dead on the steps? The more he thought of it, the worse he felt.
     He’d wanted to see a robin, and he’d seen one. The irony of that skewered him further. His elevated leg began to ache again. Beauty seemed an illusion to him tonight.
     After shutting Whiskers indoors, he’d buried the robin in the corner of the garden. How light the lifeless creature had felt in his gloved hands—as if made of air. He’d gently laid it to rest in the soft earth and folded the dark soil over of it with his bare hands.
     One minute the bird was singing in the treetop, and the next, folded into a grave. Damon wished he were in his grave. The thought of facing another day held no appeal. He dozed and dreamed he was at the Institute, attempting to put out fire after fire with his voice of reason.
     “Hey . . .” Donte nudged him.
     Damon opened his eyes. “What?”
     “Don’t you have to be at your sister’s place?”
     Damon checked his watch. “I guess I can still make it.”
     Donte grunted. “Have a good time.”
     “Right,” was his grim return.
                                                                                               ***
     “Happy birthday!” Nancy exclaimed thirty minutes later as she placed a chocolate cake on the center of the dining room table. Whiskers glared at him from across the room and then disappeared like a shot after spotting a dog on Damon’s lap.
     “No singing, please,” Damon implored, glancing around the table.
     “Where’d you get that mangy little creature?” his cousin Jake asked.
     “He’s a stray. I named him Gus,” he added.
     “How adorable,” Nancy’s friend Jane murmured, reaching over and scratching Gus behind the ears.
     Damon felt her soft hair brush his face and caught a whiff of perfume.
     “All that expense for a stray,” Nancy clucked as she served her brother a large piece of cake.
     “That’s too much,” he protested.
     “Damon has plenty of money,” Aunt Sally piped in.
     “Until Bristol finishes with him,” Jake chuckled.
     “I hope Gus doesn’t have any bad habits. He’s too old to unlearn them.” Grandma Olive made a stern face.
     “First the forsaken house and now the discarded dog. You have a penchant for lost causes.” Nancy set aside a slice for Torrance, delayed at Bear Mountain.
     “The O’Connell House is a lovely old home,” Jane said. “And I’m so glad you’re returning it to its former grandeur.”  Her light blue eyes were complimentary.
     “Thank you,” Damon responded, noting Nancy’s smile out of the corner of his eye.
     Damon turned to his sister. “The house will increase in value after the renovations are completed, and he’s a good watchdog. Donte hasn’t lost a chicken since Gus arrived.”
     A phone rang, and Jane reached into her purse to answer it, casting everyone a look of regret. “Please excuse me,” she apologized. “I need to take this in the other room. It’s about my upcoming performance.”
     “Of course,” Nancy replied. “You can go in the den.” She smiled proudly after Jane’s departure. “Jane is a concert pianist.”
     “Oh my!” Aunt Sally exclaimed.
     “Such a lovely, accomplished person,” Grandma Olive said. “And so beautiful, too.”
     Damon turned to Jake. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, would you like to represent me in my divorce?”
     Jake looked up from his plate in surprise. “Are you serious?”
     “You told me you’re broke.”
     Jake smiled, his dark hair falling across his pale face. “I’m surviving.”
     “I can’t believe you’re getting a divorce,” Grandma Olive exclaimed with a shake of her curly gray head.
     “Of everyone in the family, we least expected it of you, Damon.” Aunt Sally said.
     “You were always so by-the-book,” Grandma Olive continued, sipping her tea. “We never envisioned you cutting Bristol loose like that.”
     Nancy nodded. “Even I have to admit I thought the two of you would be together forever. The day you told us you’d separated, I felt blindsided.”
     “Me too,” added Grandma Olive. “You were such joy as a child. Your great-grandfather told me he never had so much as a scooch of trouble from you.”
     Damon felt his hackles rising. His maternal grandparents, he recalled, had bickered constantly, and she undoubtedly harangued his grandfather into an early grave. His sister’s spouse had never seemed particularly happy during their brief marriage. He’d been the enduring, silent type who lived for television sports. His untimely death from cancer had left his sister with a significant life insurance policy, and she’d taken the entire tragedy in stride.
     “It’s not a separation,” Damon declared at last. “It’s a rupture.” He glared at his birthday gathering. “And because of this bite, I never feel well anymore.” He twisted in his uncomfortable chair. “I think she was slipping me something before that, too.”
     Jake crinkled his eyes. “I’ve always wondered if you were mistaken. Brown recluse are not native to this area, and she’s incapable of harming anyone, much less you.”
     Damon stared at him in surprise. “What qualifies you to you say that? You hardly know her.”
     “Because I just know,” Jake replied, pushing his straight hair back from his round eyes. “You two were a perfect match, if there is such a thing.”
     “Why is that?” Damon snapped. “Because we’re both stuffed shirts?”
     “Exactly,” Jake laughed. “Besides, Bristol has plenty of money of her own. Why would she need to murder you for yours?”
     “Because she’s covetous. And she’s heartless.”
     “I ran into her the last time I was in Hidden Hollow,” Aunt Sally declared. “Frankly, I think she’s hoping for a reconciliation.”
Damon flinched and turned back to his cousin. “Well, how about Janelle? Did she love you?” Janelle, Jake’s ex-wife, had taken him to the cleaners and left him penniless.
     Jake placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands together, deep in thought. “Not really. We had what’s called puppy love.”
     “What the hell is that?” Damon asked, recalling how much in love they had appeared at their hippie beach wedding. And neither had been exactly teenagers; in fact, Jake must have been twenty-four at the time.
     “It’s something that doesn’t last. It wears off through no fault of either person,” he explained. “When it came right down to it, we had very little in common.”
     “Why haven’t you ever married again?” Damon questioned, secretly regarding his cousin’s insights as patently false.
     “I haven’t ruled it out.”
     “But you’re living with Gayle, isn’t that right?” Gayle was Jake’s latest flame.
     “Yes.”
     “Why don’t you get married?”
     “Because we don’t want to put that kind of pressure on each other. We prefer to leave the back door open in case one of us decides to leave.”
     Damon glowered. “Well, I prefer the front door, and if you’re not interested, I’ll find someone else.”
     “I didn’t say I wouldn’t represent you,” he began.
     “I’m prepared to pay you a fortune.”
     Jake studied Damon uneasily. “Do you really think she’s dangerous?”
     Damon stared him straight in the eye. “She’s vindictive as hell.”
     Jane reappeared, and Damon stood up to pull out her chair. “Allow me.”
     “Thank you,” she replied, slipping into her seat. “And I apologize for the interruption.”
     “Think nothing of it,” Nancy assured her. “Tell us, Jane, won’t you be performing the Rachmaninoff at your next concert here in town? My brother considers it to be the most romantic piano concerto of all time . . .”
                                                                                                ***
     Damon pulled into his drive and breathed a sigh of relief, the evening mercifully behind him. Gus yawned next to him in the passenger’s seat.
     “My sentiments exactly.” Damon scooped him up to carry inside.
     After changing into his pajamas, he glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was almost midnight. Another five minutes, and he’d be a year older. While brushing his teeth, he studied his drawn reflection in the bathroom mirror. He felt older than his actual age and looked it, too.
     Damon rinsed the toothbrush and wiped his face. In the distance, church bells tolled, marking the hour. He stood still and listened. There was another sound, very faint yet discernible, nonetheless. A soft clicking against the trees, earth, and windowpane came from outdoors. He opened the window and witnessed a snowstorm—his favorite—with millions of tiny crystalline balls drumming and bouncing in a musical cadence with the wind.
     The beauty of the snow cascading under the glow of his porchlight filled him with wonder. The timing itself seemed difficult to fathom. He stood and watched the beautiful scene for a long time before he shut the window and went to bed.
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