The Exile

by Gregory Erich Phillips

  The Exile

  by Gregory Erich Phillips

  © Copyright 2019 Gregory Erich Phillips

  ISBN 978-1-63393-765-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters may be both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue, and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Review Copy: This is an advanced printing subject to corrections and revisions.

  Published by

  210 60th Street

  Virginia Beach, VA 23451

  800-435-4811

  www.koehlerbooks.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I El Desierto

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  PART II La Jungla

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART III El Paraíso

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  PART IV El Mar

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  1

  EVERYTHING WAS DARK.

  Though her eyes could see little, her other senses were acute, telling her that she wasn’t dreaming. Terror reached down into the pit of her stomach as the sound of whirring jets and the sensation of changing air pressure revealed her worst fear—she was on an airplane.

  Hope left her heart as sharply as the air left her stomach as the plane ascended. Was she really being deported? Even after everything that led up to this, it was unbelievable.

  She struggled for composure and clarity. Had she been drugged?

  Think, Leila. Keep your head.

  The shades were down. There was no light besides the tiny dots along the aisles and a bright green “Exit” sign a few rows ahead of her. If only that were a real invitation.

  All these years she had worked to pull every detail of her life into her control. That was supposed to protect her, supposed to keep this grim past from reaching back for her. How fast it had all unraveled.

  The plane was full but eerily quiet. The air was cool and stale. The hum of the engine reaching cruising altitude overpowered the irregular breaths of her fellow passengers who, like her, must have been too dazed or too afraid to cry. All the crying had been done in the days before.

  Leila hurt all over. Her stomach turned with nausea. She was restless from sitting. Her head ached from having her thick hair pulled back for too long. She felt dirty in clothes that had been worn for . . . how many days?

  Until now, it had been possible to hope. She’d told herself that she would soon be home, that the mistake would be cleared up in time. She never imagined the despair of a dark airplane, each moment tearing her farther from the people she loved.

  Scenes from her life, lovely details which she’d taken for granted, now returned to her as memories: warm nights filled with music, her family’s embraces, the sweet smell of azalea and bougainvillea in the spring. She didn’t want to believe those times were gone, but her heart knew better and was already cataloging each memory as a treasured marker of a life that was lost.

  Her grief was numbing, too heavy and too new to understand.

  She blinked away the tears. She would not cry. She would not give up hope. Somehow, she would get back to the people she loved and be again the person she had worked so hard to become.

  This had to be a mistake.

  But was it? Perhaps the mistake had been hers all along. After all, what right had she to believe the life she had invented for herself could last? Had she forgotten so quickly who she really was?

  As Leila’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she glanced around. She needed to get her bearings. The men and women who filled the plane seemed resigned. The woman beside her sat with a face like a stone. Why wasn’t everyone crying in sorrow or screaming in rage? She could have done either of those things; she wanted to do both at the same time.

  Maybe these other people still thought they were dreaming and that they would wake up at home with their loved ones. She envied them, wishing she could believe she’d wake up with her boyfriend’s arms around her, with the windows open to the warm morning breeze off the desert. But dreams were over now. This was real.

  A sound intruded upon her thoughts—a quiet rattling, almost inaudible. As soon as she recognized it, she realized it had been going on the whole time. Then, quiet as it was, she could no longer ignore it. Naturally, this was the rickety plane. The sound irritated her, then infuriated her, then made her think it would drive her insane.

  How did this horror begin? When did her carefully crafted life begin to unravel, leading her to this day? There was the betrayal. There was the accident. But really, it started that night two years ago when she first dared ask herself if life could mean more. Hadn’t she sensed the danger in that question—that it could lead to this?

  Trust. Passion. Love.

  She had avoided such things, knowing they could shake up everything she had worked for. But now that she had felt them, how could it be undone?

  Surely, she could find a way back. Surely.

  Sorrow tore at her heart, but she fought to keep her thoughts clear. Self-pity wouldn’t bring her back to the people she loved, and it wouldn’t protect her from the dangers that might await her once this plane touched down.

  Leila had no sense of how long the flight took. She gasped at the jolt of the landing. It shocked many of the passengers out of their daze. People shifted and stood up. Someone began speaking in Spanish. The woman beside her started to cry.

  The rattling noise persisted. She wanted to scream.

  The airplane doors opened. Daylight shot in. Leila hurried out into the middle of the crowd, squinting into the sharp sunlight. She was so relieved to be off that horrible, noisy plane. The thick heat was jarring after the air-conditioned flight.

  She inhaled deeply—she knew this air. Scenes from her childhood floated toward her, brought by the scents of her never-forgotten past. The familiarity comforted her, in spite of everything it meant.

  It had been a long time, but she had not forgotten her childhood home, and it had not forgotten her. If Paulo found out she was back, would he look for her? Despite the heat, a chill danced up her spine. Might he already be expecting her?

  The tarmac was alive with the sounds of sputtering engines and shouting voices. Across a short fence, two teenage boys with cell phone cameras snapped a picture of each passenger as they passed. Clearly, somebody was interested in knowing who was returning to Colombia today.

  They were corralled down a wide hallway into an open room and instructed to sit on the floor. It was stuffy and hot. There were windows on all sides, but from where Leila sat, she could see nothing to help her find her bearings—only blue sky in every direction, broken by a couple of air control tower
s. The shadows on the towers told her it was midafternoon and gave her a sense of north and south. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  A litany of names was being read, followed by the name of a town and a date of birth. She watched as a face would lift from within the group when their name was heard, but no one was called forward. The men at the computers merely typed some notes before moving on to the next name.

  She didn’t know whether she wanted them to call her name or not. After all this time, this was the moment of truth. Finally, it came.

  “Leila del Sol. Cartagena. November tenth, 1980.”

  The other man typed something into his computer, then looked up at the man who had read her name.

  “Leila del Sol? But that’s impossible. Leila del Sol has been dead for years.”

  2

  IT WAS LATE. The moon shone down onto the patio through long palm fronds. A breeze blew in off the desert, cooling the March evening. The sound of two guitars and two voices serenaded the neighborhood to sleep.

  Leila smiled at her dad as they finished a song. Then they started another. She plucked out the first notes. Manny smiled and began to strum the rhythm in the key they always played this song in. They sang together—“La Cartera.” It was a popular Colombian song about the gifts of love.

  When they were finished, they set their guitars down in unison. It was a good one to end on; she would let the song ring in her mind for the night.

  “That’s still my favorite song. You gave me all those things, Papá.”

  She breathed in deeply the dry Arizona air, scented by spring flowers and mesquite. This was such a nice evening. She had let it go too long since the last time they played together.

  Leila looked over at her dad.

  “Why did you take the chance on me, after everything you went through? Why take the risk?”

  “Love is always worth the risk.”

  Leila wasn’t sure she agreed.

  “After my first wife was killed, I didn’t expect to love again,” Manny said. “I didn’t want to. Losing my family hurt too much. It would have been easy to destroy myself in the revolution. Instead, I set my life on a whole new course, and now here I am. For me, life was the risk and death would have been easy. Life has always meant love to me, and so to live, I had to be willing to take a risk on love again.”

  He made it sound so noble, but she knew it hadn’t been any easier for him than it would be for her if she faced the same choices.

  “I’ve made my life be about so many other things,” she said. “It’s because I don’t want to take the risk. I’m afraid of getting hurt the way you did.”

  They had lowered their voices. The palms brushed rhythmically against the roofs of the single-story houses.

  “You have become such an American, my dear,” he said. “All work.”

  The remark took her by surprise.

  “I learned the value of work from you.”

  “Yes, I understand. You had much to work for. So have I. A second chance is strong motivation. But work isn’t life. I have worked for you, for Carmen, for a night like this playing music under the stars. But many Americans work for its own sake. Then they try to make themselves happy with a nice car or a big house. They spend money on a lavish vacation or an expensive meal. This weekend, you’re going to that fancy place in Sedona to receive an award. It will feel nice, but don’t start to think that sort of thing is important. Remember the Latin way, which is better. Work is only so you can enjoy your family and friends with more security and to create the little moments that make life beautiful.”

  She wanted to believe that.

  “Never forget this. Never let your life take you to a place where you’re not open to love. Never forget the culture you came from either.”

  “That all may be true, but don’t forget how cruel Colombia was to both of us. Love hardly flourished there.”

  “But even in the darkest days of the revolution, we were family. We looked out for each other. In your childhood, you children looked after each other as best you could, even with all the cards stacked against you. There was always love. In America, while things are easier, too many people try to go it alone. They close in on themselves. Family is forgotten. Friends are discarded too easily.”

  Going it alone wasn’t always so bad. Leila had everything she needed and nothing she didn’t want. Her life was ordered just so, and she liked it that way. She didn’t want to think that something was missing.

  “Life is better here, sure,” said Manny. “It’s good to have the opportunity to work and build something. I’ve done it. Now, you’re doing it. Just don’t forget why.”

  She looked up through the branches at the stars, abundant above the Valley of the Sun. The moon had passed behind the house but still glowed in the sky.

  Leila thought of all the people she worked with, Samantha in particular. Those people were the type of Americans her dad was warning her not to become. She was in danger of embarking on their path—really, she already had—but it wasn’t too late to change course. The success was seductive, and once tasted, it swept you along with it.

  She turned and looked at her dad in the darkness. “Was love worth the risk for you?”

  “Absolutely. My heart still hurts, even after all these years. I won’t pretend that you and Carmen have made up for it. I know you understand, but I can’t talk to Carmen about it. She’s jealous of my old love. But you know.”

  Leila nodded.

  “Was Job happy again after God gave him a new family? I doubt it. Who could recover from the loss of a wife and a child? But it’s better than not to have loved at all.” He paused. “I hope you learn these lessons sooner than I did. Too many years of fighting. Too long running away from myself and arguing with God. Too many years talking about love without living it. My biggest regret was that I didn’t change in time to save my wife. My life’s main value has been in what I did do to save you.”

  Leila picked her guitar up from where she had set it down against her chair. She hugged it to her chest and closed her eyes. She could still feel the faintest vibration in the wood of the instrument, so recently touched by music. The resonance passed into her. It comforted her but also unsettled her. Music always reminded her that life wasn’t as simple as she tried to make it. She was never in control. The lessons of her life should have taught her that by now, even though it seemed like a lesson she had to learn over and over. She was never in control of music either, even if she knew all the words of a song and where to find every note on the strings. Music had a life all its own. It would be frightening to let life itself take on the unpredictable magic of a song.

  3

  LEILA MADE ONE more pass through her hair, then dropped the brush into the sink, its porcelain spotted with black and tan flecks of makeup. She was satisfied and left her room. Her dad was right—this wasn’t what was important, but tonight could be fun. It always felt good to get dressed up and feel beautiful.

  It wasn’t easy being the curvy girl living in Phoenix, with its workout culture and packed calendar of pool parties. All the girls had perfect abs. Leila tried to embrace her Latina curves, even though she wished she could drop about fifteen pounds. But tonight, in her little black dress, with her dark hair combed back as straight as it would go, she felt confident and proud.

  Being here was a big deal. Why downplay it? A girl from the barrio was at a Sedona mansion, about to receive an award.

  Samantha had rented the entire mansion up in the high desert north of Phoenix for this weekend’s event. Leila’s room was on the ground floor, in the back. Samantha had absolutely assigned the guest rooms according to status—or maybe based on who she needed to impress. Clearly, that wasn’t Leila.

  What did she care? It was an honor just to be here. She left her room.

  There was Cox in the hallway, also making his way toward the ballroom. Too late to try to avoid him. He stopped and gaped at her.

  “Damn, Leilalala. Can I be your date
tonight?”

  “Do you ever quit?”

  “Not if you go looking that hot.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Up here, Cox.”

  Leila could not have imagined a more average-looking thirty-year-old man than Cox: thin frame, light-brown hair, pale skin that burned mercilessly in the Arizona sunshine. But his attitude made him anything but average. She grudgingly marveled at the way his boundless ego could command a room. He had no scruples and no shame when it came to making money or getting laid.

  Leila walked past him quickly toward the ballroom, aware that if she slowed down a lecherous hand would catch up with the small of her back. The ballroom was decorated with the typical desert décor. The dominant colors were rust and sky blue. On the walls hung paintings of cacti or lonely cowboys. The tables overflowed with a lavish spread of appetizers, dwarfing the little potted cacti. Two full bars served opposite ends of the room. It was noisy. Even up here in Sedona, the room couldn’t escape the feel of the corporate event that it was. Leila walked to one of the bars and asked for a Coke. Cox was right behind her and ordered a double Scotch. She turned to face him just in time to avoid his hovering hand.

  “It won’t hurt you to drink tonight, baby. No one’s driving.”

  “You’re not allowed to call me baby. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Why don’t you ever drink?”

  “None of your business.” She smiled at him, then walked toward one of the tables.

  “Hi, Paul, so glad you’re here.”

  Paul lifted his expansive frame out of his chair and hugged her.

  “Leila, you look amazing.”

  “Thanks. Did Clary come up too?”

  “Yes, he’s getting drinks. He’ll be back in a moment.”

  She sat down. Cox had disappeared, just as she’d planned it. Paul and Cox despised each other.

  Samantha stepped to the podium and tapped the microphone.

  Leila was shocked she hadn’t seen Samantha Frye the moment she entered the ballroom. Like Cox, Samantha commanded a room, but no one begrudged Samantha her ego. She had earned it. Standing tall and vibrant in a tight blue dress—cut low enough to display her expensive breasts—Samantha brought all the eyes in the room to her. Her hair may not have been naturally blond, and it was entirely possible that she’d had some face work done to go along with her impressive body work, but there was no denying she looked fantastic for fifty.