Smoke

by Meili Cady

  As I pulled out of the underground parking for the office building, I was on the verge of tears and in desperate need of some kind of comfort.

  I took out my phone and stared at it for a moment. Ben and I hadn’t spoken since he’d walked out of my apartment and left me two months ago. I called his number and held my breath as it began to ring. When there was no answer on the second ring, I wondered if I shouldn’t have called. I was strongly considering hanging up when he answered. “Hello?”

  “Ben? It’s Meili.” I prepared myself to hear an abrupt click, but he didn’t hang up. His voice didn’t sound angry or mean, the way it had when I’d seen him last. He sounded relaxed and almost happy to hear from me.

  “Hey. How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Uh, well, I’ve had better days,” I said. “Have you seen the news?”

  “For what?” he asked. When I filled him in on what had happened, he didn’t seem surprised. “I knew that bitch was crazy,” he said. I told him what my attorney said about my sentencing guidelines. “Wow,” Ben said. “That’s a long time . . . do you have a good attorney? Because if you don’t, I know someone.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I think he seems really good. He’s smart. I think if I have any chance of not going away for years and years, he’s probably my best shot at it.”

  “Okay, good,” Ben said. “Let me know if you need anything. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice too,” I said, surprised by his sudden sentiment. “Um . . . are you home? I’m downtown, not far from your place . . . I could really use a friend.” The line went silent for a moment.

  “Uh,” he said, “I’m actually not home right now, and I won’t be for a few hours. Sorry.”

  “No, no worries,” I said. “It’s fine. I know it’s been a while.”

  “Listen,” he said, “I gotta go, but I’ll call you tonight to check in on you.”

  “Thanks,” I managed to choke out before hanging up.

  Ben didn’t call to check on me. The next day he sent me a text message that read,

  LEAVE ME ALONE. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN ASSOCIATING WITH SOMEONE WHO IS BEING ACCUSED OF A FELONY.

  His cold words referred to the undeniable fact that I would likely be convicted of at least one felony, and that I’d be a felon for the rest of my life. Felon. A word that was synonymous in our society with bad, dangerous people. I wasn’t prepared to bear that scarlet letter, but my actions may have already sealed my fate.

  My parents bought me a ticket to come to Washington and speak with them in private. The phone lines weren’t safe, so I couldn’t have an open conversation with them until we were face-to-face. I shuddered to think of their faces now, the once proud parents who’d had an honor student and a student body president for a daughter, the one they supported in all her big dreams that she didn’t think our small town could fulfill. That daughter had become a drug smuggler since leaving home and was now on her way to being branded a felon.

  I didn’t tell anyone that I was going out of town except Brie. Paranoia consumed me as I waited in line for security at LAX. I kept looking over my shoulder. What I was looking for, I didn’t know. As I turned around to see behind me, I noticed a tall and hulking Hispanic man in his thirties who was covered in tattoos and wearing a sleeveless red jersey. He bore an eerie resemblance to David and his weed supplier, Jose, both of whom I’d met during my involvement in the sordid world of drug smuggling. He was waiting in the same security line as I was, but he had no luggage or personal bags with him.

  Who flies with no luggage?

  I faced forward. After I went through security, I had a fairly lengthy walk to my gate. I kept my eyes straight ahead and took quick steps. After a few minutes had passed, I gave myself permission to check over my shoulder again. The man in the jersey was about a hundred feet behind me. Still by himself, still with no luggage. Panic shortened my breath. Chills trickled down my spine. With every step I took, I wondered if it could be my last step toward home.

  Is he going to break into a sprint and grab me? He’s big enough to take on most of the security guards here. Is he working alone? Is there some thug waiting for me around the corner, ready to block my path and assist in my abduction?

  On an impulse I darted into an airport bookstore and attempted to hide myself behind a shelf. My chest rose and fell with every breath I took. I peered around the wooden shelving to watch as he began to go by. He casually slowed down in front of the store, looked around, then stopped walking entirely. He went to a nearby pay phone and dialed a number.

  Who uses a pay phone anymore? Why isn’t he using a cell phone? What’s he doing? Is he going to try to kill me?

  As he talked, I hurried to pull my cell phone out of my purse. My hand shook uncontrollably as I held it up just around the shelf and snapped a quick picture of him. His call lasted less than a minute. He hung up and strolled on. I tried to calm myself down in the bookstore for a minute. I’d started to attract strange looks from the clerk. I suppose from an outside perspective my behavior looked odd, but people didn’t know what I was up against. I sent the picture to Brie with a message:

  I THINK THIS MAN IS FOLLOWING ME. IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO ME, PLEASE SHARE THIS PHOTO WITH THE POLICE.

  At least the authorities would have a lead if things went south and I never made it to Washington.

  After I managed to gain some semblance of composure, I left the bookstore and bolted for my gate. Hundreds of people were crowded in the boarding area. I had half an hour before I was scheduled to board. Half an hour in which anything could happen. I stood near my gate and frantically scanned the room to find the man in the jersey. I didn’t see him. I spun around. He wasn’t here. He had to be here . . . I didn’t think he’d give up that easily. Suddenly, I saw a red blur in the corner of my eye. It was the red of his sports jersey. He strolled casually into the boarding area and took a seat.

  Is he planning to fly all the way to Washington and take me once I’m there? Will he follow me off the plane and snatch me up before I’m able to get to my father? There are plenty of wooded areas around Seattle to hide a body . . .

  I tried not to make any sudden movements as I kept my head down and walked into a nearby restroom. Once I was inside, I took out my phone and called a family friend who was an attorney. After telling him everything in a breathless whisper, he told me to calm down. “Tell the airline that you’re a witness in a federal drug case and that you believe you’re being followed.” I said okay and got off the phone. I took the long way back to my gate so as not to walk directly past the man in the jersey. I approached a woman in a blue-and-white uniform behind a desk in front of where my flight would board. She was fussing with some papers in front of her. I walked up to the desk as close as I could possibly get to it. I rested both of my arms on it and leaned in to face her, anxiously awaiting a chance to get her attention. After a moment she looked up. “Hi, can I help you?” she asked me in a friendly tone.

  “Hi, yes . . .” I answered her in a shaky whisper. “I’m a passenger on the next flight to Seattle. I’m a witness in a federal drug case, and I believe that I’m being followed.” She looked at me with a grave stare and nodded.

  She leaned forward to me and lowered her voice. “Who do you believe is following you? Is the person here right now?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said very quietly. The woman moved her head in to make sure she could hear me as I went on. “He’s the man in the red jersey sitting over there.” I indicated with my now watery eyes which direction I meant.

  She looked confused. “Do you mean the man with the shaved head?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She looked sympathetically at me. “That’s Edwin,” she said. “He works here. He’s just here to pick up his son.”

  AT THE SEATAC AIRPORT IN Seattle, I got off the plane and rushed to where my father had said he’d meet me. He’d never opted to pick me up outside of the airport with a car at the c
urb, despite the convenience it could afford. He had always parked and walked in so he’d be there to greet me when I came out. I wasn’t sure if I could expect the same greeting today, after everything I’d done. As I walked out, I saw my dad. His once black hair was speckled with gray and looked fresh from a barber trim. He stood wearing a tucked-in black T-shirt I’d given him for Christmas last year and belted khaki slacks. I held my breath as he looked up and saw me. I broke into a short run and knocked hard into his comforting chest as he swallowed me in a tight hug.

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT AT MY family home in Bremerton, Washington. We were ten minutes from town, but every mile between was consumed by dense forest. Our house was up a gravel driveway, a short stretch from the highway. Here, after nightfall, there were no streetlights. It was black outside in every direction.

  I sat in our living room by an unlit fireplace with my parents. We were whispering, though no one was within earshot by quite a distance. All our cell phones had the batteries out and were tucked under a pillow in my parents’ bedroom. We were all dressed in pajamas. My mother was in her favorite plaid L.L.Bean nightgown. My parents were in shock at what had happened.

  Our conversation was interrupted when an abrupt knock at the door broke the otherwise deathly quiet of our home. We exchanged alarmed glances. It was after midnight, and we weren’t expecting company. No one knew I was here. There was no logical reason for an unexpected visitor. We’d heard no sound of a car pulling into our gravel driveway. I decided that it must be my aunt. Perhaps my parents had told her I was here and hadn’t let me know. We must have been too consumed in conversation to hear her SUV coming in. I stepped quietly toward our front door to look through the peephole. My dad was close behind me, and my mom stood up white-faced in her nightgown a few paces behind him.

  I looked out through the peephole. My heart fell. A stranger stood on the other side of the door to our home. He had jet-black hair and looked Hispanic, in his midthirties, and was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. His deadpan expression offered no sense of reassurance. He held a red gas can at his side. I moved my face from the peephole and avoided my mother’s frightened eyes.

  I glanced back at my father. He looked through the peephole, then quickly leaned to the side of the door with his back to the wall. I leaned on the other side. My mom stood back. Dad called out, “Hello?”

  The stranger responded. “Hi. Yeah, I ran out of gas on the road. Wondered if I can use your phone. Sorry, I know it’s late.”

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t let you in,” my father said. “There’s a gas station up the road a quarter mile.” For a heavy moment, there was silence on the other side of the door.

  I heard the stranger’s voice say, “Do you mind if I just use your phone? I’ll be quick.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” my dad said, his back still pressed up against the wall. My mother stood behind us with her hands cupped over her mouth.

  “Is the gas station still open?” the stranger asked.

  “Yes, it should be open,” my dad said. I watched through the peephole as the man left our porch and faded away into the darkness. I rushed to grab our portable house phone and dialed 911. My father disappeared down our stairs in his bathrobe and pajamas.

  I stayed on the phone with the 911 operator while we waited for a sheriff to come check the perimeter of our house. My dad reappeared from the stairs holding his hunting rifle. He loaded it. Just in case. His movements were quick and efficient from a lifetime of hunting. He held the gun at the ready as he scanned the yard from our kitchen window. There was a breeze tonight, and as I looked outside I saw the bushes moving with the wind. I blinked, expecting to see dark figures rising out of them, ready to invade our home in arms, like in the final scene in Scarface. In the twenty-six years my parents had lived here, only one other person had broken down on the road and come to the house. It was by no means a common occurrence, and the visitor’s timing tonight was haunting. After fifteen minutes of waiting while my father held his loaded rifle, a police car pulled into our driveway. Having heard our report before his arrival, the local sheriff told us that he’d seen no car on the road and no man walking along the highway.

  THE NEXT EVENING, MY PARENTS and I were talking around our kitchen counter when my mother suddenly froze where she stood and held up a finger to hush us. My father and I exchanged startled glances. “Do you hear that?” she asked with a tight face. Before we could answer her, she stormed off in a brave fury and threw open the front door. She stepped out on our porch to peer into the darkness of our gravel driveway. The motion-detecting light on our carport flashed on and illuminated the driveway. My mother spotted three shadowy figures scurrying away toward the bushes, trying to escape the light of the motion detector. “Who’s there?” she screamed, her voice hoarse with a mix of anger and fear. “You tell me right now! Show yourselves!” My father and I hurried up behind her in defense.

  The figures near the bushes broke into tipsy laughter. The three shadows crept into the light from the garage and revealed their identity. It was Cate, a face my mom instantly recognized after almost twenty years of my close friendship with her. She’d come with two of our shared childhood friends. They’d been tossing small pieces of gravel at my bedroom window to try to get my attention. Cate had been trying to get ahold of me for the past few days, and after I uncharacteristically ignored multiple messages from her, I finally answered her from my father’s phone, writing simply, MEILI IS OKAY. My last-minute visit home was meant to be a secret, to ensure privacy with my parents. Practically no one in town knew that I’d been arrested yet. It hadn’t been on the news much in Washington, and it was by sheer chance that my brother’s girlfriend had seen the story on Google News during the short period that it was featured. With the exception of a very few, most news outlets hadn’t used my name in their reports, only Lisette’s, so unless someone who knew my relationship to her happened to see the story and put the pieces together, it was unlikely that many people would find out right away. Cate had no idea about my arrest, but when she received my foreboding message from my father’s cell phone, she became suspicious that something was wrong and had a hunch that I was in town and hiding for some reason. After an evening of drinking at a local hub, she’d become increasingly worried and rounded up the gang to investigate. As it was late and my friends didn’t want to risk waking my parents up, they parked at the end of our gravel driveway and snuck up on foot. Cate’s suspicions that I was home were confirmed when they saw that my bedroom light was on, at which point they began to throw pebbles at it in an attempt to get my attention.

  When Cate and my friends poured in our front door, Cate threw her arms around me in a sloppy hug. “I knew you were here!” she said. “You sneaky snake!” I hadn’t seen Cate in almost a year, and her embrace, though drunken, was more comforting right now than she could have possibly imagined. I held on to her a little longer than I usually would, and she had to pry me off her. “Ha!” she remarked. “Are you drunk too?” “No,” I said with a smile. “I’m just happy to see you. But next time, please just knock.” She laughed heartily and went on to hug my parents. When my mother and father invited my friends in, we didn’t tell them why I was there. Thankfully, most of them had had enough drinks to not ask many questions. I wondered how long it would be before they found out that I’d been arrested. Soon, there would be no more secrets.

  IN THE MORNING, I AWOKE to a gentle knock at my bedroom door. I opened my eyes, and through foggy vision I tried to decipher the neon numbers on the clock beside my bed. It was about five hours earlier than I would normally get up. “Come in,” I called out in a groggy voice from underneath the covers. When the door opened, my mother appeared in lavender-and-white nursing scrubs, holding a steaming cup of coffee. She set the speckled yellow mug down at my bedside table. “I put a little cream in it,” she said as she sat on my bed. “Not too much, I hope.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I made some scrambled eggs,” she said. �
�I thought we could eat breakfast together before I leave for work.”

  At the kitchen counter, I sat on a tall wooden swivel chair between my mom and dad. I poured hot sauce over my eggs and tried to gain consciousness with a sip of coffee. A little too much cream, but I told my mom it was just right. It was Father’s Day. I would usually have at least sent my dad a card, but I didn’t have anything prepared to give to him. I had no money to get him a gift or take him to dinner. I deeply regretted not having mailed a card.

  “What are you doing today?” I asked him.

  “I’m going to do some work on one of the rentals on Fifty-Eighth Street,” he said. My family owned a half-dozen rental homes in a low-income neighborhood in Bremerton. Many of them had been vacant in the down economy, and my father was trying to fix one of them up in the hopes of renting it soon.

  “Do you want some help?” I asked him. “I can come with you if you want.”

  My father nodded before taking a bite of eggs. “That’d be real nice, sweetie,” he said. “I can’t think of a better Father’s Day gift.”

  I forced a smile.

  How about not having a daughter who has recently committed a series of felonies? That might be an okay thing to have for Father’s Day.

  I SAT IN THE PASSENGER side of my dad’s 1983 rusted yellow Toyota Tercel as he drove us through Bremerton with a wooden utility trailer full of yard tools thudding around behind us. My father had taught me how to drive in this car. Stick shift had always terrified me, but I was glad that I’d learned how to use it nonetheless. This had always been the car he used for hunting trips, and when I was sixteen, I switched out the camouflaged seat covers for Hawaiian prints and added some baby-blue dice to hang from the rearview mirror. Now there were no seat covers at all, and the original, now fading brown-and-gold plaid was exposed.