Scattered Ashes

by Dona Sarkar

  “What’s happened out there?” I asked. “There’s so much chaos.”

  The woman did an eye-roll. “Some war protesters. They set fire to a garbage can or something around the corner.”

  “Thanks.”

  As I ran across the street to avoid the smoky air, I saw a slight movement, like the fluttering of a giant bird’s wing, in the window alcove of my favorite coffee shop.

  I stopped. It wasn’t a bird. There was a guy sitting in my usual spot, flipping rapidly through the pages of a book.

  The guy in the window seemed completely unaffected by everything going on outside. He was nineteen, twenty at the most, with hurricane-colored eyes, the most incredible I had ever seen. His knife-like cheekbone ridges were even more distinct.

  He was a stranger to me, yet I couldn’t stop staring at him. I stood paralyzed on the sidewalk. The crossing signal flickered, and I couldn’t persuade my feet to move.

  He was reading a book with a familiar-looking burgundy cover but must have sensed someone staring and looked up. Saying that our gazes met was an understatement. In one incredible, heart-stopping second, he seemed to commit to memory every aspect of my face. His abundantly large eyes, too wide-set, seemed out of place in his sharp, tawny-colored features.

  The sidewalk activity seemed to dull into the background as we stared at each other. Without a smile or any other expression, he returned to his book, as if the exchange had taken place only in my mind.

  I felt the ridiculous desire to knock on the window to get his attention. I wanted to see the color of those eyes again.

  This was insane. Snapping to my senses, I crossed 45th Street and headed to my car, not daring to look back at the coffee shop....

  Scattered Ashes

  Dona Sarkar

  LYRICAL PRESS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  “What’s happened out there?” I asked. “There’s so much chaos.”

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1 - The Window

  CHAPTER 2 - The Dream

  CHAPTER 3 - The Roof

  CHAPTER 4 - The Message

  CHAPTER 5 - The Tea

  CHAPTER 6 - The Choice

  CHAPTER 7 - The Confrontation

  CHAPTER 8 - The Breakfast

  CHAPTER 9 - The Status

  CHAPTER 10 - The Absence

  CHAPTER 11 - The Storm

  CHAPTER 12 - The Night

  CHAPTER 13 - The Gazebo

  CHAPTER 14 - The Rejection

  CHAPTER 15 - The Suspicion

  CHAPTER 16 - The Secret

  CHAPTER 17 - The Confrontation

  CHAPTER 18 - The Days

  CHAPTER 19 - The Scene

  CHAPTER 20 - The Trial

  CHAPTER 21 - The Faith

  CHAPTER 22 - The Acceptance

  CHAPTER 23 - The Proposal

  Teaser chapter

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Dona Sarkar

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: November 2016

  eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-899-5

  eISBN-10: 1-60183-899-9

  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3899-5

  For my muse: Every line is you.

  I love you more now than I did then.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Window

  When they buried my father, they buried an empty casket. That night my mother returned to the grave site. I refused to enter the cemetery and instead watched through the midnight fog as she stood in front of the headstone that read “Mars Alexander.” She then fell to her knees and nestled his final medal in the soft earth as a symbol of his life and dedication to our country.

  None of this was enough to convince me he was gone. How could someone be dead if there was no body?

  * * *

  “Mars, do you have something to share today?” Stephanie, my therapy group leader, blinked rapidly through her trendy black frames in tune to the heavy hammering on the floor above us. They were adding an “all-ages club” to the top floor of the Kirkland Teen Center in an effort to keep teens out of trouble at night.

  No one in high school would be caught dead in an all-ages club. We would continue to do what we always did: buy fake IDs and crash parties at the University of Washington.

  My best friend, Erica Esteban, tapped my foot with hers when still I said nothing. The absurd wedge heel she preferred battered my little toe like a gavel. I winced, and Erica smiled in expectation. She’d promised this session of our Military Grief Therapy group would be different: she would make sure I participated today. She said that I needed to deal with my abandonment reaction and other psychotherapy buzzwords we’d been learning in AP Psychology that semester.

  “I have nothing to share today. Next time,” I announced, proud of myself for making the promise sound convincing.

  Before Erica could smash my poor toe again, Stephanie tossed back her glossy brown hair and twisted the glinting sapphire earring in her new cartilage piercing. “Erica, your turn.”

  Erica waited for a pause in the hammering.

  “Ricardo’s better this week,” she said with a deep, tremulous sigh. She said that every week, with the same sigh. Ricardo Esteban was still not talking to anyone, except maybe silently to himself.

  “How?”

  Erica launched into a story about a morsel of recognition in Ricardo’s eyes after their mami had made his favorite green corn tamales for dinner the previous night. He’d eaten seven whole bites, according to Erica. More like five bites, I was pretty sure, though Gia Esteban’s tamales had ruined me for all other tamales.

  I was only up to four bites per meal. I probably should have been ashamed that a legless war veteran was beating me in recovery. At least I was no longer awake all night, afraid of the nightmares that would ensue once I closed my eyes. Now I woke every night clammy and cold at three a.m., to hear only the sound of our grandfather clock ticking endlessly downstairs.

  I tilted my wrist and peered at my watch. I needed to make it to the University of Washington campus to register for an SAT preparation class before the Institute closed. I hoped no one else after Erica would choose to share and the therapy session would end on time.

  No such luck.

  Angel, who had a face like one, started to weep during his turn in the circle. “My mother sees me and thinks I’m him. How can I tell her he’s gone?” Angel’s twin brother had been killed in Afghanistan six months before, leaving Angel to handle the aftermath. He told us once that the grief circle was the only place he felt like he could be selfish and grieve on his own without censoring himself for his large Colombian family.

  “Be strong for your mother,” people had said to me at my father’s wake. I had circulated through the crowd, greeting my father’s military friends and my mother’s Rotary Club, refilling glasses of rum punch and accepting white-ribboned sympathy cards. Only Bree Nguyen, my father’s mentor, had watched me critically, questioning me with that knowing look I hated.

  I’d avoided being alon
e with her ever since.

  “She’ll have a breakdown once she realizes he’s dead,” Angel continued to grieve as if he was the only person in the room. “I know she’ll blame me. I was right there; why couldn’t I have saved him? Why couldn’t it have been someone else?” The rest of us sat in silence, not knowing what to say to that last part.

  I watched the second hand on my father’s watch, now fitted for me, make its rounds until it edged toward the twelve o’clock mark.

  “I need to leave. Sorry.” I already had my bag and jacket in hand, so Erica couldn’t stop me.

  “See you next Tuesday, Mars,” Stephanie called behind me.

  Yes, she would. And every Tuesday until everyone agreed I was fixed.

  * * *

  Although I made it in record time across the floating bridge to the University of Washington, I was stalled by a river of traffic as I attempted to cross the street. As if I was in one of those not-safe-for-under-eighteen video games, I dodged police cars, traffic cones, and people pushing southward on University Avenue. Probably a half marathon gone awry or something.

  An irate group of anti-war activists was ignoring everyone leaving the scene and was still demonstrating on the corner as I continued to my destination, the College Preparatory Institute.

  The perky administrator with Amelie bangs assured me of a well-spent $270 for the SAT Essay Writing class. “Zayed Anwar can teach an illiterate person to write. He’s amazing! And really cute too.”

  I smiled at her, not bothering to mention I was here to score a ten or higher on the SAT section, not fall in love.

  “That essay section’s been so hard for everyone since it came out.”

  Including me. I’d never needed professional help on a test before, but my score was too humiliating to disclose to my father’s alma mater. I had no plans to attend a community college, so my Monday and Wednesday evenings would have to be sacrificed for the next eight weeks.

  “What happened out there?” I asked as I signed the receipt. “There’s so much chaos.”

  The administrator did an eye-roll. “Some war protesters. They set fire to a garbage can or something around the corner. Just go across the street; there’s less smoke there.”

  “Thanks.” I took a copy of the receipt, reading the refund policy. Guaranteed to raise your score by two points!

  I was going to need a lot more help than that.

  As I ran across the street to avoid the smoky air, I saw a slight movement, like the fluttering of a giant bird’s wing, in the window alcove of my favorite coffee shop.

  I stopped. It wasn’t a bird. There was a guy sitting in my usual spot, flipping rapidly through the pages of a book.

  The boy in the window seemed completely unaffected by everything going on outside. He was nineteen, twenty at the most, with hurricane-colored eyes, the most incredible I had ever seen. His knife-like cheekbones ridges were even more distinct. He was a stranger to me, yet I couldn’t stop staring at him. I stood paralyzed on the sidewalk. The crossing signal flickered, and I couldn’t persuade my feet to move.

  He was reading a book with a familiar-looking burgundy cover but must have sensed someone staring and looked up. Saying that our gazes met was an understatement. In one incredible, heart-stopping second, he seemed to commit to memory every aspect of my face. His abundantly large eyes, too wide-set, seemed out of place in his sharp, tawny-colored features. The sidewalk activity seemed to dull into the background as we stared at each other. Without a smile or any other expression, he returned to his book, as if the exchange had taken place only in my mind.

  I felt the ridiculous desire to knock on the window to get his attention. I wanted to see the color of those eyes again.

  This was insane. The last time I’d visibly shown any interest in a guy was freshman year, when I’d smiled at Jason Moorehouse and “accidentally” trailed my fingers on his arm. By the end of the day, he was asking me to the spring formal. By the end of the week, we were walking hand in hand to the bus stop. Cut to four years later: we’d posed as “Together Forever Class Couple” for the yearbook and were immortalized in Lakeville High School’s history. But only a month ago, Jason had written me off as certifiably crazy, and we were no longer speaking.

  Snapping to my senses, I crossed 45th Street and headed to my car, not daring to look back at the coffee shop.

  * * *

  I had taken over my father’s restored Corvette this past year. After all, no one else wanted it, and the beautiful car lay forgotten, buried in the depths of our garage.

  “Cars need to be driven, Mars. Otherwise, they die,” he always said.

  Now, in the quiet solitude of the convertible, I finally had a chance to make my daily check-in phone call. Dad had insisted I make my check-in phone call every day after school my whole life, no matter where in the world he was. He wanted to know where I was and what I was doing.

  Keeping an eye on the stalled line of SUVs in front of me on the bridge, I sifted around in my handbag, finding my cell phone under a jumble of keys, lip gloss, and an emergency peanut butter pod. I ignored the line of missed calls from my mother and chose the first number on my speed dial.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said, no longer surprised by the prompt of his voicemail. “I finally registered for that SAT class. I’ll get into the U. It’s going to happen, don’t worry. I’ll make it happen.”

  Despite the fact that Dad hadn’t answered my phone calls in over a month, I never stopped believing he was listening to all my messages or would eventually. Most likely he was out in the field and would return my calls upon returning to base camp. I needed him to do that soon. As always, I closed the conversation with telling him that I was sorry for that last morning, and I wished he would come home to us before Christmas.

  We’d never been one of those “camcorder” families. My parents were never the ones with an embarrassing tripod in the front row recording school plays or when I was confused by the trick candles on my fifth birthday cake. I used to think those families were cheesy and wondered who was going to spend a Saturday afternoon watching old DVDs.

  What I wouldn’t give to have a recording of Dad making his famous grilled PB&Js in our kitchen, giving a play-by-play Food Network style. I wanted to hear the raspy intonations of his voice from years of smoking again. According to Stephanie, it was perfectly normal to start to forget. I didn’t believe her. How was it possible to forget someone in a few short months?

  Traffic finally moved, and ten minutes later, I urged the Corvette to squeal up the boulevard and into Kirkland. The Seattle suburb was almost like a coastal vacation spot, with the lovely Lake Washington beach lining one side and extravagant houses on the other. The downtown vibrated with the energy of out-of-towners with babies and dogs, trendy coffee shops with live music, and restaurants with life spans of six months or less.

  I guided the car into the garage of our brick-and-stucco English Tudor house on the waterfront. The historical homes nestled there were all occupied by software and real-estate millionaires who had known each other for years and were practically family. My father, with his unconventional choice of career and sense of humor, had never fit in. However, the house, a wedding gift from my mother’s side, was too beautiful not to live in, and so Marsh Commons had been my home for the past seventeen years.

  Lana Alexander, my mother, was sitting at the dining room table, her slim laptop open in front of her. Her fingers stopped tapping, and she immediately closed the lid when I slammed the door to the garage behind me. The flat-screen television suspended on the wall of the dining room replayed the commotion from the afternoon at the U. The news made it look far worse than it had been. One interviewee gasped, “It was horrible! I was terrified!”

  “I’m okay,” I said in response to the relieved look in her eyes. “Nothing happened, just a bunch of traffic.”

  A waft of warm, buttery chocolate greeted me as I hugged Lana. She held onto me longer than usual. Melted white chocolate-chip cookies, my
favorite, were piled neatly on a serving tray, untouched as I took a seat opposite her. I didn’t know who’d made them, but I was certain it wasn’t my mother.

  Lana was a socialite, a real estate agent, CEO of a nonprofit organization, or whatever else she wanted to be that week. No one would ever dare call her a housewife. She and I had always been more like sisters rather than mother-daughter. We both enjoyed spa days, a shared Christian Louboutin shoe collection, and gossip about our friends. It made Dad crazy. He said he always felt like he had two teenage daughters instead of one.

  “I was worried.” She tapped her jeweled fingernails on the closed lid of the pink laptop. “What happened out there?”

  “Someone set fire to a garbage can. One of those anti-war groups or something.”

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone? I called five times.”

  I shrugged. “The phone lines must have been crazy.” I didn’t tell her that I had been staring at some guy on the street instead of checking my voicemails or had been talking to Dad’s voicemail rather than calling her. I knew the latter would hurt her feelings since she kept telling me over and over that she wished I would talk with her the way we used to.

  I could talk with her about some things: what was happening at school, what was going on with my friends, what she should wear to a benefit. But big topics like that simmering anger at my father that overcame me when I was alone? Not so much. She clearly didn’t miss Dad like I did. She never even talked about him anymore. No one did. I was the only one still waiting for him.

  Lana pursued her lips and frowned. “Did you register for that class?”

  Lana’s face reflected my own nowadays, or rather, mine had started to reflect hers in the past year: tapered olive-green eyes and chocolate-colored hair. But my Roman nose and naturally tan skin were inherited from my Greek father. “Sophia Loren’s love child,” he called me.