Fragments of Ash

by Katy Regnery

  I stop by the kitchen to discover the dishwasher running and the serving bowls drying beside the sink. Noelle’s finished the cleanup without me, and Ashley’s advice from earlier today circles in my head:

  Make up with Noelle. She’s your sister.

  The thing is, Noelle’s not just my sister. Our brother–sister dynamic was irrevocably impacted by my father’s death. Sure, I’m her brother, but I was also her guardian. I was her de facto parent for two years. I don’t want to tell her about the most embarrassing, most regrettable chapter in my life. I don’t want to fall from grace in her eyes. I don’t want her to be ashamed of me. My silence is as much for her protection as my own.

  That said, she’s leaving for school tomorrow, and I don’t want to leave things like they are between us, with Noelle freezing me out because she wants the truth about what happened in Washington, and me refusing to give it. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to one of us while she was away, if we were at odds when parted.

  I hear the front door open and close. Ashley’s footfalls are light on the stairs, and I can hear her singing as she heads upstairs to her attic quarters. As I walk to my bedroom, words to match the melody pop into my head, like they’d been sitting somewhere in my psyche all along.

  Stars fading but I linger on, dear,

  still craving your kiss.

  I’m longing to linger till dawn, dear,

  just saying this . . .

  I lean against the wall of the dark corridor that leads to my bedroom and close my eyes because my memories of this song go further back than tonight. Suddenly, like time has no meaning whatsoever, I hear the soft, low tone of my father’s voice singing the same song in his workshop:

  “Des souvenirs comme ça, j’en veux tout l’temps. Si par erreur la vie nous sépare, je l’sortirai d’mon tiroir.” My father sings off-key, but with gusto, spinning the rod deftly while I etch a spiral into the vase we’re making together. “Zis song, Julian. Oh, mon coeur, zis song.”

  At fourteen, I am not interested in his dopey music, and even less so when it’s in French.

  “You understand it, son? Ze words?”

  “Something about memories?” I ask, concentrating on my work, not on translating.

  Since my mom left, Noelle spends a little time with Mrs. Willis up the street every weekend, watching movies or baking cookies or other girl stuff. I think it’s because she misses our mother. As for me? I don’t miss her. She left us. Not the other way around. And anyway, sometimes while Noelle’s hanging with Mrs. Willis, my dad invites me into his workshop and teaches me how to make something cool out of glass.

  “Listen, son. She sings, ‘If we should ever be separated by mistake, you and I, I’ll take my memories from ze drawer and remember you,’” he says, a very French sigh heavy in his voice.

  My dad is the greatest man I’ve ever known, but he’s also so completely cheesy, it’s crazy.

  “Okay, Dad.” Whatever.

  “Julian,” he says, drawing out the “j,” which he pronounces with a mash-up of the “j” and “sh” sounds, “you know zat your mama, she left me, not you. You know, right?”

  Behind my safety goggles, I blink my eyes in surprise. My fingers slip a little, and I mess up the perfect spiral I was making. “Oh! Oh, no! Sorry, Dad!”

  “Ce n’est pas grave. Keep going,” he says, spinning the rod without a break in rhythm. “Some mistakes are good. Zis one? It will be a memory for you. It was me, Julian. It will remind you, fiston. She didn’t leave you. Only me. Not Noelle, not you. She left me.”

  Opening the door to my room, my eyes fly to the vase on my dresser, which sits beside a picture of me, Noelle, and my father. The top half of the glass has a beautiful spiral design, while the bottom half has a single jagged slash, like a rogue lightning bolt crashing through a once-peaceful sky.

  Missing my father is, without warning, a hit to the chest, and my breath catches from the intensity of it.

  “What?” asks Noelle from her air mattress on the floor. “What happened? Jules?”

  It’s only the second time she’s spoken to me directly all day.

  “Huh?”

  “Your face. What happened?”

  I take a deep breath. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I reach down for the remote on her lap and turn off the TV.

  “What the—?”

  “Listen.”

  Though my sister looks away from me, I assume she is listening because she doesn’t say anything else. As we share the dark silence, I can hear Ashley’s voice, far, far away. I can’t hear the words, but I can hear the same melody that my father loved so long ago.

  “Do you hear it?”

  “Mm,” she hums. “Yeah.”

  “Do you know it?”

  “But in your dreams, whatever they be . . .,” Noelle sings softly. “Yeah. I know this one.”

  “Dad loved it,” I whisper.

  “. . . dream a little dream of me,” she finishes, her voice following Ashley’s soft notes as the shower upstairs is turned on, muting the song.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She snatches the remote out of my hand and turns the TV back on. “For what, exactly?”

  Ambient light brightens the room, and I sit down on the side of my bed, feeling like an old man. “For not telling you what happened in Washington.”

  Turning to face me, her eyes widen. “You . . . you are?”

  I nod. “If it hurts you, I am.”

  She takes a deep breath and sighs, tilting her head. “I just . . . I don’t know. Dad’s gone. Mom’s . . . I mean, we haven’t seen her in years, right? It’s you and me against the world, right, Jules? I just . . . I don’t like secrets, I guess. Not between us.”

  “You really want to know what happened?” I ask, wincing at the thought of telling her the whole sordid, shameful story.

  She twitches her lips, looking so much like our dad for a second, I grin at her.

  “What?”

  “Dad used to do that with his mustache.”

  She smiles back at me, doing it again.

  “I miss him,” I hear myself say.

  If we should ever be separated by mistake, you and I . . .

  “Me too,” she whispers.

  “Il nous aimait.”

  “Yes,” she agrees. “He loved us a lot.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, tamia.”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “You know what? I’d settle for the CliffsNotes version, Jules. You don’t have to tell me every detail of your secret past. I just want to understand.”

  And so, while my foundling siren, with lips like honey, showers by herself upstairs, I tell my sister the shorthand version of what happened. She is held rapt by the story of a young Secret Service agent called up from a routine detail in Annapolis to cover for a sick agent in Cartagena, Colombia. Unfortunately, however, I also have to hear her gasp with shock and sympathy as I continue the story, as I tell her the dirty details of a job gone wrong and a lapse in judgment that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  “Oh, Jules,” she sighs, and for the first time since I started talking, thirty minutes ago, I realize that it’s quiet upstairs. No more shower. No more singing.

  I lie back on my bed, looking up at the ceiling, at the tree of knowledge taunting me with its perky blossoms and shiny red apples. “Yeah.”

  “How could you—” She breaks off whatever she was about to say and sighs again. “It is what it is.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “No one died,” she says, then amends her statement. “As far as you know.”

  Except my career. Except my life.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she says. “I won’t . . . I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Great,” I say, feeling like there’s a fifty-pound block of concrete on my chest. I can’t bear it. “Tamia? Are you . . . I mean, are you, you know, disappointed in me?”

  I
hold my breath, waiting for her answer. Thankfully she doesn’t take long to say, “I’m disappointed for you. It was your dream.”

  That’s true. It was.

  Protecting the president? The vice president? What higher honor could there be in the world than giving my life for that of a great man? Even now, even here, I can think of no greater calling.

  “But,” says Noelle, and as she shares her next thought, I need to remind myself that she’s a college student in liberal Vermont, “considering the current administration, maybe it’s for the best. Would you really want to take a bullet for one of them?”

  “Hey, now,” I warn her. “Love or hate the person, you need to respect the office.”

  She snorts.

  After a while, she says, “Actually, yeah, you’re right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not really about a specific person, is it? It’s about protection. It’s about protecting someone who needs you. Hmm.” She hums softly at the foot of my bed, like she’s having a revelation. “You know what? It’s not too late for that. There are lots of ways to protect someone weaker than you, Jules. Heck, everyone’s pretty much weaker than you. It’s easy pickings.”

  Her words, so unexpected, surprise me. “What do you mean?”

  “The Secret Service is glamorous, right? Sure. Protecting a president is cool. But if your heart wants to protect someone, well, you could join the local police force, you could teach a self-defense class, you could get a job in private security. I mean, there are a million ways for you to still do good, you know?” She clucks her tongue. “Anyway, thanks for telling me.”

  I think over what my smart little sister has said and murmur, “Mm-hm.”

  “I’m all sweaty. I’m taking a shower before bed.”

  I hear her open and close the bedroom door, and a moment later, the water rushes next door.

  It’s not really about a specific person, is it? It’s about protection. It’s about protecting someone who needs you.

  Staring at the ceiling, I wonder about the girl upstairs, returning to the original questions that plagued me when she arrived: Why is she here? Why does she have no one else? And why do I have the persistent feeling that she’s in hiding?

  Except, instead of like they did before, when these questions made me want to put distance between us, now I feel just the opposite. I lean into them.

  She’s young and all alone in the world.

  Who the hell could mean her harm?

  I ask myself this question again and again, until it’s deeply embedded, until it’s an unexpected mission, and I promise myself:

  I will find out who or what is hunting her.

  And whoever or whatever it is, I will protect her.

  I swear on my life—on the wasted chances I have squandered before today—this time I will do it right.

  I will keep her safe.

  Day #22 of THE NEW YOU!

  I don’t know where else to write this.

  Where else I can share it.

  And I HAVE to share it.

  Where to begin . . . Oh, God, I don’t even know. I can tell you that my cheeks are hot and my legs are weak and my stomach . . . God, I want to throw up. But I also want to—I don’t fucking know . . . laugh or something.

  Laugh.

  Oh, my God, for the first time in two years, maybe I don’t want to die.

  How is that possible? How is it remotely possible that I can live in a nightmare and—right here RIGHT NOW—feel . . . good? Is that what this is? I mean, I don’t trust it. I almost hate it. No. I don’t. I take that back. I don’t hate it. I don’t—My God, I just don’t know what to do with it.

  I thought I was dead.

  But I’m not. I’m not dead. How can that be? Who the hell am I now?

  I was Teagan, the daughter. Then Mam, the teen mother. Then Tig, the model. Then Tig, the bad bitch. Then Tig, the junkie. And then back to Teagan, the sad sack wife of a fucking monster.

  So who am I now?

  (Fuck knows.)

  (Mae’r diafol yn gwybod.)

  I didn’t mean for it to happen.

  I didn’t see it coming.

  It was an accident.

  I know that for sure.

  Over soup, Mosier reached to his right, grabbing the back of Damon’s neck and slamming his face into the full tureen of borscht. He was pissed about something. I don’t know what.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Fuck. I don’t know what came over me.

  Usually, when he gets into it with one of his boys, I stop eating. I fold my hands in my lap. I look down, wait until it’s over and he gives us permission to eat again. But last night—for no reason I can think of—I didn’t look down.

  I looked up.

  For once, I looked up.

  And Anders—18-year-old Anders, with the blackest eyes I’ve ever seen—looked back at me. At me. Into me. Through me.

  Oh, God, why did I look up?

  Something happened. Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, something happened. Between me and Anders. Something fucking happened.

  Time froze.

  It fuck—I mean, it stopped.

  Everything stopped.

  Life stopped.

  Breathing stopped.

  My heart stopped.

  Somewhere outside of me, Mosier was yelling, and Damon was drowning and grunting and I felt soup splash onto my chin, but I couldn’t look away from Anders. I couldn’t. I . . .

  HE looked away. He looked away, and I still couldn’t. I kept watching him. It was like I’d never seen him before. And maybe I hadn’t. I don’t know. I stared at his face. I watched his jaw—it clenched so hard, then relaxed, and then he looked up at me again and mouthed, “LOOK AWAY” just in time.

  I looked down as fast as I could.

  A second later, and Mosier would have caught me. Caught us.

  Us.

  No, no, no. No. NO. There is no “us.”

  It can’t happen. He’s my stepson. I am 13 years older than he is.

  Wait. Wait. Wait. I’m going too fast. Slow down, Teagan.

  After dinner, Mosier took them to his room. Damon with his head red from blood and purple from the soup, gets up and follows his father. But Anders.

  He stopped at the doorway, turned, and looked at me. Again.

  AND. TIME. STOPPED.

  AGAIN.

  And maybe it was THAT look. That second look.

  Because this is worse than coke. I feel like my heart’s going to explode because it’s beating so fucking fast.

  I don’t know.

  Yes, I fucking do. I know. I know. I know. I remember. I remember that look.

  I remember it and I can barely fucking breathe right now because I know what it means.

  Because I felt it.

  I FELT it.

  Everywhere.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ashley

  Whenever our circumstances changed, Tig was fond of saying, “This is the new normal, kid. Get used to it.”

  After that, she’d snort a line of coke, light a joint, and watch the BBC News.

  The new normal could mean her throwing a bag of kale chips at me and expecting me to eat them for dinner.

  The new normal could mean standing in our front doorway, watching our new Jaguar being repossessed.

  The new normal could be Tig showing up at my classroom one afternoon, taking me via limo to a posh private school two towns away, and enrolling me there without warning or explanation. It could also be that same school kicking me out because my tuition hadn’t been paid and Tig reenrolling me in the school I’d just left.

  It could, literally, be anything. There was no rhyme or reason to the old normal, so the new normal meant nothing. Very little about my life ever seemed normal at all.

  But it made me flexible. It made me more adaptable to the changes around me. It kept my expectations low. Nothing was permanent. Nothing was forever. And when circumstances changed, I learned how to ro
ll with the punches.

  But that entire philosophy was flipped on its head when I turned thirteen and we moved to New York. Suddenly, normal was a static thing.

  For five years, from eighth grade through twelfth, I attended the Blessed Virgin Academy, coming home at Thanksgiving for five days, Christmas for seven, Easter for three, and for two months in the summertime, which I mostly spent alone in my room, reading, except for the rare times when my mother wanted to watch TV with me. It was a regimented and predictable life, and had it not included an intimate association with the Răumann family, would have been welcome. I quickly learned that, although I had developed coping skills for chaos, I much preferred order.

  But here and now, waking up on Monday morning, I am grateful for my early education. Something shifted between me and Julian over the weekend, and I have yet to figure out the new normal. As I open my eyes, breathing in the welcome smells of freshly brewed coffee, eggs, and bacon, however, I’m suddenly eager to figure out what it is.

  “Ashley? Hey, Ashley, are you up?” I hear Julian’s voice from the foot of the stairs. “I made breakfast. Um, if you’re awake, come down.” As I sit up in bed, I hear him once more. “Ashley?”

  “I’m up,” I call, my toes curling under the covers.

  His voice surges. “Oh! You are? Great. I made breakfast.”

  “It smells good,” I say, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks. “I made enough for two.”

  My stomach is so full of butterflies, I don’t know if there’s room for food. “Thank you. I’ll, um . . . I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says, and after a second I hear his footsteps moving away from the stairs, back to the kitchen.

  Is this the new normal? I wonder, standing up and stretching my arms over my head. Because I’d love to get used to it.

  I pull my nightgown over my head, and as it falls to the floor in a soft heap, I suddenly remember Tig’s diary and the entry I read before falling asleep last night. Sitting naked on the side of my bed, I pull the diary onto my lap and flip to the last entry. I skim the words quickly, refreshing them in my mind and wondering if they mean what I think they mean.