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couldn’t blow her problems away on a cloud of smoke. The stress of life had her sneaking smokes from her mom’s stash beginning during her freshman year of high school, and she hadn’t been able to stop. It was the only vice that had woven itself into the fabric of her life, other than Pinterest. She rarely drank and had only experimented with recreational drugs twice in her entire life. She ate healthy and made it a point to run at least two miles a day and lift weights at least three days a week. So why was it so damn hard to quit? She knew why. The guilt and the hurt.
    She walked over to the edge of the terrace and took in the familiar view. The wind picked up and blew wavy, brown hair into her eyes. White, pillow-like clouds drifted lazily overhead and blotted out the sun from time to time. For five minutes, she stood there, thinking and smoking and pushing hair out of her face. The past would soon be in the present, and she wasn’t sure how that would affect the future.
    “It’s a little early for the fourth cigarette,” said the man, as he stepped out of his office. “You gonna make it to six o’clock without having another one?”
    “I didn’t know you were keeping a running tally,” she said, without turning to look at him.
    Technically, he was her boss, everyone’s boss, but it was complicated.
    “You should be happy,” he said. His voice was hoarse, she noted, an early sign of his body’s betrayal.
    “Yeah, why’s that?”
    “You can begin to mitigate some of the guilt you’ve felt since, what, tenth grade. He won’t hate you; he’s always loved you, even though he has tried hard to forget about you. I’m the one that will feel the brunt of his anger.” He winced and rubbed at his neck
    “Deservedly so.”
    “No denying that. Look how long it’s taken you to forgive me,” he said, remorse in his voice.
    Some things cannot be forgiven, she didn’t say; instead she focused her attention on two brown pelicans as they circled the water and searched for their next meal. They would begin their dive any minute toward the brackish water, because that’s what pelicans did. They took the plunge, just like she would.
    “Is the neck getting worse?”
    “About a seven on a one to ten scale.”
    “You should take a pain pill.”
    “We’ll see,” he grumbled, frustrated about his circumstances.
    “I want to be the one to tell him,” she said as she finally turned to the man. “It will sound better coming from me. Well, as good as something like this can sound,” she said.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Not entirely.”
    “When?”
    “The sooner, the better. It’s time to come clean, admit that I made a deal with the devil, no offense, and ask for forgiveness.” So many devils, she thought .
    “I had so much to lose back then,” he said. “I didn’t know any other way.”
    “Yeah, it was always about you, wasn’t it,” she said, trying to keep her anger in check. Calm down. He’s dying.
    She exhaled a final lungful of smoke, dropped the cigarette, and stubbed it out with the toe of her black Louboutin pumps, before walking back inside without saying a word.

Chapter 7
     
    They came for me a few minutes after ten a.m. More specifically, it was Patterson who came for me as I was heading to lunch. Since the meeting with Schmidt two weeks ago, I lived under the fear that the plan would be nixed. Schmidt suggested I call my dad a few days after the meeting and tell him about my impending parole, but I still thought it was someone’s idea of a cruel joke. My father is normally an emotionless creature, but he seemed genuinely happy that I would be coming home. I still had my doubts until yesterday, when running on the yard, a guard whispered as I ran past that tomorrow was release day and that I should keep running. When I got back to where he had been standing, he was gone.
    We made the same walk as we had two weeks prior, except instead of turning right into medical, we turned left into