Smoke

by Catherine McKenzie

  “Do you want to be one of those couples?” Ben asks.

  “You mean the ones who stay together only for the sake of the kids?”

  “Those are the ones.”

  “I never wanted to be one of those couples.”

  “I don’t think anyone ever does.”

  “But we wouldn’t be,” I say, putting every ounce of certainty I have into the words.

  “Beth, come on. We’re already one of those couples.”

  This rocks me back onto the floor. Ben reaches for me a moment too late, and my head slams into the wooden wall behind me.

  “Are you all right?”

  I sit up, rubbing the spot that feels like it cracked.

  “I think so. Clumsy me.”

  “You always were a disaster waiting to happen. It’s amazing you came through all those fires all right.”

  “It is. Though I never seem to have an accident when I’m doing something like that. Only—”

  “Only when you’re with me?”

  “I meant only when I’m in my real life.”

  “Is this your real life? I thought that was.”

  “Fighting fires?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it was. I don’t want it to be anymore.”

  “What do you want, then, Beth?”

  “I want to start a new life. With you. With us.”

  Ben works his jaw. He’s trying not to break, not to let me see him cry. I thought I’d broken him before, but I was wrong. He’s beaten down, but not finished yet. I could still do damage here if I’m not careful.

  “If there wasn’t a baby, would you still feel the same way?” Ben asks.

  “I really hope I would.”

  “I think I’m going to need more than that.”

  “I could say yes, but I don’t want to say anything I don’t know for a certainty is true. That’s what I meant by starting over. Cards on the table.”

  “Cards Against Humanity?”

  “Ha. Ha.”

  That he could joke at a time like this . . .

  That must be a good sign.

  “For real?” he says.

  “For real.”

  He looks me in the eye, green to green. “I hate what you do for a living.”

  “Working for Rich? I’m all too happy to quit.”

  “No. Firefighting. I hate it.”

  “But I quit that.”

  “Did you, now? That’s why ForestFires.com is your home page, and you’re constantly checking weather maps and following fires in progress? That’s why you never gave in your badge?”

  “And I was up on the ridge yesterday,” I complete for him.

  “Exactly. And in your condition too.”

  “It’s a part of me, Ben. I don’t know what to say. I’ll probably never be able to completely let it go. But I’m ready to put it behind me.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  “Because I’ve given you no reason to. But, listen. Yesterday, before I . . . passed out, it was good at first being up there. Back in the old rhythm, doing something. Something important. But it struck me at some point that the whole reason I was doing it this time was because it was our house I was trying to save. I wanted to save us. I’m tired of always saving everyone else.”

  “I want to believe you.”

  “You can. You really can.”

  I think about taking his hand and bringing it to my belly. Use it like an ultrasound wand, hope it will pick up the faint strut of a tiny heart, even though I know all he’ll feel is my own pulse. Because that smile from earlier, when he thought for a moment only about the baby, that smile is deep within him, waiting to break out, waiting to turn into the whoop for joy he would’ve made if we were having this conversation even a week ago.

  But that would be manipulative, oh so very, and so instead I simply ask for what I want.

  “I want this. You. Me. The baby. No baby. I want us to have a new beginning, maybe here, maybe somewhere else. Because I can’t think of what my life would be like without you. So say yes. Please?”

  CHAPTER 33

  Outside Your Body

  Mindy

  Mindy wasn’t sure when she first heard that saying about how having children is like volunteering to wear your heart outside your body for the rest of your life. She knew what it meant, of course. When Carrie was in the hospital, Mindy wished she could reach inside herself and replace Carrie’s heart with her own. Even when Angus hurt himself in an ordinary way, Mindy often felt those hurts more than he did. And there wasn’t a love like that, was there, the love one felt for one’s children? Something more and different from what she felt for Peter, though she loved him every way she could.

  And right at that moment, Mindy’s heart was locked in a basement without adequate sunlight, two days from being hauled away to a juvenile-detention facility if the judge wasn’t feeling of a mind to grant bail.

  So Mindy knew why she got in her car after she left Angus and started driving toward Nelson Elementary.

  She just didn’t know what she’d say when she got there.

  Mindy arrived at her destination as the volunteers were pulling into the parking lot to serve breakfast. A fleet of cars, driving in a caravan from a local caterer who’d agreed to provide sustenance to the displaced and figure out payment later. Mindy had received an e-mail asking her to participate. She’d been too preoccupied with everything to even respond. Now she was sure that even if she volunteered, they’d turn her away.

  Mindy watched the beehive of activity as the volunteers exited their cars and popped open their trunks. There were some young women she didn’t recognize, and in charge of it all was Honor. The younger women (well, maybe they weren’t so young, early twenties) were tall and had those defined muscles in their legs Mindy could only dream of achieving. They were wearing shorts and T-shirts, almost like a uniform. It was still that hot, dry weather that was doing as much to fuel the fire as the wind and the lack of rain.

  Her phone beeped with an incoming text. It was from Peter.

  Where are you? it read.

  She called him.

  “I went to see Angus,” she said in greeting.

  “They let you in? I thought visiting hours didn’t start until ten?”

  “I’m his mother.”

  She heard Peter breathe deeply into the phone like he did when he was upset.

  “You didn’t even leave a note. We were worried.”

  “I’ve just got . . . everything on my mind right now.”

  “And I don’t? Did you think that maybe I’d want to go with you?”

  Mindy watched as one of the women lifted a heavy metal container from the trunk of her car, her arms straining under the weight. She stumbled and would have dropped it but for her friend’s intervention.

  “Mindy?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Are you going to say anything?”

  “What is there to say? Obviously, I didn’t think.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He is not okay. How could he be okay?”

  “Are you still there? Will they let me in to see him?”

  “Ask for Deputy Clark. He seems like a good guy.”

  “Where are you?”

  She got out of the car. The air struck her as if she’d opened her oven after baking a cake. The smoke was thicker than it had been, and she glanced over her shoulder at the Peak. From this distance, a couple of miles, it was a shadowy outline. Mindy shuddered. What had Angus done?

  “Min?”

  “There’s something I need to try for Angus. Something I think might help.”

  “What are you talking about? The lawyer said—”

  “I know what he said.”

  After they’d gotten home from the police station the night before, Mindy and Peter had called the best defense lawyer in town. He’d told them that he couldn’t get Angus out before Monday and mentioned a terrifying amount of money as the bond the court was likely to set.
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  “Jim said he’d let us take a second mortgage on the house if we needed to,” Peter said, referring to his boss.

  Mindy looked at herself in the car window. Her hair was flat and her eyes were puffy and the T-shirt she was wearing was stretched out at the neck. There was a trace of Angus about the slope of her eyes, and they shared the same ears, but that was about it.

  “Angus says he didn’t do it,” Mindy said.

  “And you believe him?”

  “I have to.”

  “Min.”

  “I know, Peter. To be honest, I’ve doubted him this week. But now . . . I think I believe him. I think we have to act on that basis.”

  “Did he explain why he was out of the house? What he was doing?”

  “Not really, no, but—”

  “Then how can you be so sure?”

  “Why are you cross-examining me?”

  “I’m sorry, Min. I don’t mean to.”

  “I know. That’s good of Mason. About the loan.”

  Peter sighed. He sounded close to his breaking point, and part of Mindy ached to get back in the car to go to him. But she had other priorities.

  “Go see him, Peter. Go see him and listen to what he has to say. Can you do that for me?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Don’t take Carrie. I don’t want her there.”

  “Will you be home soon?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  There were a lot more people inside the gym than the last time Mindy was there. So much had happened in the past week. So much had changed.

  She wondered if it was too much to change back.

  Mindy searched the crowded room. Most of the beds were full, and there was an oddly festive atmosphere about the place. Kids were running around between the cots, playing some made-up game, and the air was infused with the saltiness of mass-produced bacon and breakfast sausages. About twenty volunteers were manning the food station—those lithe, pretty girls Mindy had seen outside—with Honor watching over them all.

  Tucker was sitting on a bench behind his mother, his eyes intent on his phone, his fingers moving nimbly over the screen. She felt a powerful animal instinct to go up to him right then and there and . . . No. She couldn’t do that. Throttling the boy wasn’t going to solve anything.

  Mindy saw Honor’s head move in her direction, and she ducked behind a group of people who were standing in the center aisle, gossiping about last night’s town meeting. Mindy tried to block out their chatter as she looked for John Phillips.

  “And that kid . . .”

  “With the lighter? Spooky, right?”

  “Parents ought to be . . .”

  Mindy thought she saw the top of John Phillips’s head poking out from beneath an army blanket. She was fairly certain it was the spot where he was sleeping last time. The room looked and felt so different, it was difficult to tell.

  She walked toward his cot with no real idea of what she was going to say, only she knew she couldn’t say it in this place, not under the scrutiny of this gang of gossips that was sure to grow if she sat there talking to John Phillips for any length of time.

  “Mr. Phillips,” she said when she got right up to him.

  He was lying on his back, the blanket tucked up to his chin, like she used to do with Angus and Carrie when they were tiny to keep the monsters at bay. He seemed off in his own world, but answered on the second call. She asked if there was somewhere they could talk in private. He pushed the covers back slowly and sat up. He was sleeping in his clothes, and he didn’t ask why Mindy wanted to speak to him as he pushed his feet into a pair of canvas shoes. Mindy felt a stab of guilt and asked him if he’d rather have breakfast first, but he waved her off. He wasn’t hungry just then.

  He walked toward the gym’s back door with the assurance of someone who’d made this place his home. They wandered the halls until they found an empty classroom whose door wasn’t locked.

  John sat behind the teacher’s desk. Mindy wasn’t sure where she should go. Take a student’s seat, or stand before him at the desk like she was awaiting punishment?

  “Why are you here?” John asked. His voice had a rasp to it that hadn’t been there before, like he hadn’t been talking much or was fighting the edge of a cold.

  Mindy still didn’t know how to say what she wanted to, but she plunged ahead anyway.

  “I’d like you to help my son.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s the one they’re saying started the fire.”

  “Well, now, seems like there isn’t much I could be doing to help him out. Besides, if’n he did it, he’s the reason I lost everything.”

  “But he didn’t do it. Angus is innocent.”

  “You’re his mother. The way I reckon, you’ve got to feel that way.”

  “But I didn’t feel that way. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I thought he had something to do with it at first. But I’ve talked to him, and he swears to me that he didn’t, and I believe him.”

  “That’s as may be. But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

  Mindy looked at the floor. It was twenty-year-old linoleum, scuffed and patterned with children’s footfalls, scraping desks, the odd piece of hardened gum.

  “You could take the blame,” she said quietly.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  Mindy looked up. “You could say you realized that you did it by accident. I know they’re saying that they’ll prosecute regardless, but I’m sure that’s not true. Not if we think of a plausible reason why it happened.”

  John watched her stumbling, blinking that slow blink of his.

  “Maybe you left some glass by the fireplace and the sun caught it? Or, I don’t know, you burned something, just quickly, not thinking because you were upset about the repossession. I mean, he’s just a boy and he’s got his whole life in front of him and . . .” Mindy trailed off helplessly, at a loss. She knew how stupid she sounded, how desperate. But that’s what she was.

  Stupid with desperation.

  “I’ve still got life in me left, yet,” John said warily.

  “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  Mindy sat down in the chair behind her. She felt awkward and ungainly, not much different than she had when she was in elementary school herself.

  “You love your son,” John said.

  “More than anything.”

  “I never felt love like that. We couldn’t have children, and my wife wasn’t the kind of person you could feel about like that, you see?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was for a long time too. But seeing you, well, that seems like a lot to carry around. Too much, maybe, for me.”

  “So you understand why I’m asking?”

  “Sure I do, but—”

  “Here you are at last,” Kate Bourne said, standing in the doorway with her hands on her slim hips. She wore cropped khakis and ballet flats, her hair pulled back the way Carrie wore hers. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Do I know you?” John asked.

  “We talked yesterday, remember? About the gala tonight. Oh, Mindy, I didn’t notice you there.”

  Mindy wiped the tears from her face. “Why are you looking for Mr. Phillips?”

  “I’m picking him up for the Fall Fling. It wasn’t supposed to be my responsibility, as I’m sure you’ll remember, but things being as they are, I thought it was best to take him in hand.”

  “But the Fling is hours from now.”

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do, haven’t we? Finding him a suit and getting a haircut and, well, just generally getting him cleaned up.”

  “You don’t need to talk about me like I’m not here,” John said.

  Kate’s face flushed. “I apologize.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “We should get going, though.”

  John looked at Mindy. “You coming with us?”

  “I don’t think so.”
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  He stood up. “I don’t hold with suits.”

  Kate’s shoulders rose and fell. The Fall Fling was a black-tie affair. Always had been and always would be, Mindy had heard Kate say more than once. “How about some nice slacks and a shirt? You want to blend in a bit, don’t you?”

  “Hard to see how I’ll be blending in.”

  “Yes, well, one can hope.”

  “Ayuh.”

  “Let’s get moving, shall we?”

  Mindy stood up as John moved from behind the desk. She wanted to reach out and stop him, but the force that had been propelling her since the day before seemed to have evaporated through her skin.

  “Thanks for speaking with me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” John said, then followed Kate out the door.

  CHAPTER 34

  Surveillance

  Elizabeth

  Ben doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either. All he says is that he needs to think about it, and we should return to the house.

  We split apart when we get back, me to the bedroom and Ben to the kitchen where his parents are anxiously awaiting the result of our fight. Dispute. Whatever’s going on between us. There is no divorce in the Jansen household—they don’t hold with it. Not that they know that this is where we were (are?) headed, but it must be obvious there’s something wrong. Why else would I keep something we’ve both wanted so much from him, or been so insistent that Grace not tell Ben?

  What’s wrong with me, really?

  What’s wrong with us?

  A wave of nausea sweeps through me, and I sit heavily on the bed. Maybe this will pass, or maybe I should be running to the bathroom in the manner of so many women I’ve seen over the years, on film, in life, in books.

  A uniquely female gesture.

  I’m part of that now. A pledge to this sorority.

  I take a few deep breaths, and the feeling retreats. Sure to return, I know, but I’ll take the momentary reprieve. My phone rattles and hums on the bedside table. Kara’s calling.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “How did you know?”

  “I sent you three e-mails, and you didn’t respond.”

  “Oh. Ha. Yes. Well. I have some news.”