Fragments of Ash Read online

  Mosier, like many others of his generation, had ended up in a state-run orphanage, and God only knows what had happened there to turn him into the man he is today.

  “Fine.” Mr. Blanchard looks at me and nods. “The jewelry is yours, Miss Ellis.”

  I feel the heat of my stepfather’s gaze against my cheek, but I don’t look at him. I nod at the lawyer, then look down at the table. Modesty and composure are of paramount importance at school, and after five years, I project both effortlessly, my face a veneer of peace and grace, no matter what’s happening inside my head.

  “Your late wife also asked that some of her remaining assets pay for the rest of Miss Ellis’s schooling. I believe she attends . . .” He shifts some papers. “Ah, yes. The Blessed Virgin Academy? In New Paltz?”

  My stepfather sighs. “She’s eighteen. A woman. How much more school does she need?”

  I stare at the table, clenching my jaw as these two men, totally unrelated to me, decide my fate.

  “Miss Ellis,” asks Mr. Blanchard, “how much school do you have left before graduation?”

  I lift my head to look at the lawyer, who meets my steady gaze. It’s early May. “One month, sir.”

  Mr. Blanchard nods, making a note before looking up at my stepfather. “And then there’s college . . . grad schoo—”

  “No college. No grad school. Not necessary. Ashley will work for me,” says Mosier, his tone nonnegotiable. “I have plans for her.”

  Mr. Blanchard’s expression is deeply uneasy as he softly reiterates, “I believe Mrs. Răumann wanted her sister to finish high school at the very least.”

  “Fucking . . .,” Mosier mutters a string of expletives under his breath, then huffs with annoyance. “Fine. One month. What do I care? It changes nothing.”

  The lawyer looks slightly relieved and continues quickly. “Your late wife also asked that their parents be cared for.”

  I shift my eyes to my grandparents, who sit across the table from me. Despite the fact that I am their public daughter and biological granddaughter, we have never been close to one another. Whatever love they may or may not have had for my mother, they’ve had even less for me. They made no effort to hide the fact that I was Teagan’s great shame, and they certainly didn’t stop my too-young, emotionally unstable mother from taking me to live with her in Los Angeles when I was only five years old. Tig wanted to “try” being a mother. My grandparents were only too happy to get rid of me.

  My stepfather purses his lips at the lawyer, the slight gesture full of annoyance. “What will be the arrangements?”

  Mr. Blanchard turns to my grandparents. “Do you wish to remain in your home, here in New York State?”

  “Umm . . .”

  I look up, and my grandfather is staring at me, his lips tight and blue eyes beady. His gaze slides briefly to Mosier before turning to the lawyer. His Welsh accent is diluted from years in America, but I can still hear it. “No. We wish t’ return home t’ Anglesey now that our Teagan is gone.”

  The island of Anglesey, off the northern coast of Wales, is where my mother was born and where my grandparents lived before they immigrated to Ohio thirty years ago.

  I can’t help gasping softly, because if my grandparents return to Wales, I will have no blood family left here in the United States. My mother is gone, and I never knew my father. A slight panic makes my heart race. Not that we were ever close, but if they leave, I will have no one here but . . . but . . .

  Mosier places his hand on my thigh under the table, and my breath catches because, despite five years of lecherous looks, he’s never been this bold—never touched me this intimately. I try to jerk my leg away, but his fingers dig into my skin through the black fabric of my ankle-length dress. He is issuing a warning. I freeze, terrified to move a muscle.

  “Fine,” Mosier says. “I will pay for your passage to Wales, for your moving costs, a house of your choosing, and I will put a lump sum of cash in a bank account to ensure you are comfortable until you die.” Mosier’s fingers stroke me through the thin black crepe. His voice holds a sinister finality to it when he adds, “But you won’t come back.”

  Mr. Blanchard speaks up quickly, his brows knotted in confusion. “Won’t come back? But certainly they’ll want to come and visit their other daughter from time to—”

  “Agree,” demands Mosier, ignoring the lawyer, staring at my grandparents.

  My grandfather’s cheeks flush, but he doesn’t look at me, while my grandmother keeps her steely gaze trained on the table. I sense I’m missing something. What am I missing? I wonder, the question filling me with breathless panic. It feels like my grandparents and Mosier have previously worked out an arrangement for my grandparents to abandon me and Mosier to assume all responsibility for me.

  “Mam-gu,” I say, using the Welsh word for “Grandma.” “Please don’t leave me.”

  When she looks up at me, her merciless blue eyes narrow to slits, cold as glacial ice, a frozen wall of deep and uncompromising loathing.

  “Dyma’ch bai chi,” she hisses.

  I am familiar with this Welsh expression. It means, It is your fault.

  My fault. Because I am a “child of shame.”

  By virtue of my very existence, I am to blame for my mother’s fall from grace, her addictions, her death at thirty-four. I read my grandmother’s eyes clearly and see the long list of my transgressions, beginning with my birth. What I don’t see is love . . . or compassion . . . or sympathy. My grandparents are compliant in a plan to be rid of me, and it chills my heart through.

  Swallowing back the bile in my throat, I drop her eyes. My stepfather’s hand dips slightly toward the apex of my thighs. His fingers, terrifyingly close to my womanhood, slide back and forth for a too-long moment before he removes his hand. I exhale a held breath, grateful for this small mercy, and glance up in time to see him tent his fingers in front of his face, inhaling deeply through his nose and groaning softly as though smelling something delicious.

  My skin crawls.

  Mr. Blanchard clears his throat noisily.

  “This is tedious,” Mosier says, his tone annoyed and impatient. He drops his fingers to his lap. “Are we finished?”

  “I suppose so,” says Mr. Blanchard, his jaw tight and his eyebrows deeply furrowed. He straightens up the papers on the table into a neat pile and places them into a manila folder. He seems anxious to leave, and I feel ever more alone.

  He places the file into a black leather briefcase, then looks directly into my eyes, his gaze strangely searing. It’s too intimate a glance from someone I don’t know very well. It makes me feel like his insight into my life and future are far greater than my own.

  “I’m so very sorry for your loss, Miss Ellis,” he whispers.

  After a beat, he quickly looks from me to my stepfamily and my grandparents, nodding his head in sympathy to each of them, though I sense it is more for the sake of propriety than condolence.

  His eyes return to mine for one last, lingering moment, and I cannot help the ominous chill that slithers down my spine when he repeats, “I am so very, very sorry.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ashley

  My grandparents bid me a curt and cold farewell in front of the country club before turning their backs on me and heading to their car. I watch them walk away, wondering if I will ever see them again. I don’t think so, which feels unbelievable, even though I witnessed them agree to Mosier’s terms. I have not lived with them since I was very young, and we were never close, but to be abandoned by my mother and grandparents on the same day makes me feel worthless and—I recall the feel of Mosier’s fingers on my thigh—frightened.

  A sleek black limousine arrives under the club’s portico for Mosier, Damon, Anders, and me. As is standard with all my stepfather’s employees, the chauffeur, Eddie, doesn’t look me in the eyes or speak to me as he opens the back door of the car and waits for me to slide into the backseat. As soon as I am seated beside Mosier, across from Damon and And
ers, the door shuts, and a moment later, we’re in motion.

  As we drive to Mosier’s gated and heavily guarded $8 million house in Scarsdale, I hold my rosary tightly, close my eyes, lean my head against the window, and pretend to sleep.

  What did Mosier mean when he said that I would “work” for him, and he had “plans” for me? We’ve never discussed my taking a job with him after high school. What is it he has in mind for me?

  When Tígin and I first moved in with the Răumanns five years ago, it was summertime, and I was only thirteen, but Mosier forbade me to wear anything more revealing than a T-shirt and a floor-length skirt or loose-fitting pants, no matter how warm the weather. No shorts. No short skirts. No sundresses. And further, the T-shirt couldn’t have a V or scoop neck. It had to cover me completely to the base of my neck. Having lived most of my childhood in LA, where I spent my entire summer running around in bathing suits, shorts, and tank tops, it was a difficult adjustment, but my mother insisted on my compliance, telling me that Mosier valued modesty and only wanted the best for me.

  At one point, toward the end of that summer, Damon and Anders, who were sixteen at the time, were swimming in the pool on an especially hot day while my mother and stepfather attended an event in New York City. Even though Tig had warned me to stay in my room while she was gone, I got bored and lonely, and eventually found myself on the pool deck outside, looking for company.

  “Anders,” said Damon, who paused in the middle of a game of water volleyball, “look who it is: Aunt Ashley.”

  Anders flicked a glance at me. “You should go back inside.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  But Anders ignored me, gesturing for the ball. “Throw it back.”

  “No, no, no, bro,” said Damon. “Our new aunt’s finally come out of her room. We should be social. Welcoming.” He looked me up and down in my shapeless, baggy pants and high-necked blouse. “Bet you’re pretty cute under that outfit, huh? Tan all over from the California sun?”

  Damon and Anders were identical twins, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, but Damon’s eyes were flirtatious and playful, while Anders kept his gaze carefully averted from me.

  “Tată nu-i va place,” said Anders to his brother, a warning in his voice.

  “El nu este aici. Taci!” said Damon, waving his brother’s words away and still staring at me. “Hot day. Why don’t you come in? Join us!”

  I grinned at him, shrugging my shoulders. “No bathing suit.”

  “Dă-mi pace,” said Damon, clapping his hand over his heart as he winked at me. “You got underwear on under those clothes?”

  “Maybe,” I said, winking back at him.

  I’d unbuttoned my pants slowly, doing a little striptease for my stepbrothers before pulling my blouse over my head and throwing it on the pool deck. Clad in only white cotton panties and a matching bra, I’d executed a perfect dive into the deep end, joining Damon’s team for water volleyball, despite Anders’ disapproval.

  An hour later, my mother and Mosier returned to find me on Damon’s shoulders, serving the ball to Anders.

  “What the fuck is happening here?”

  Vhat d’ fuck ees happening here?

  Damon gasped, scrambling to push me off his shoulders, so I fell backward into the pool. By the time I gurgled to the surface, my stepbrothers were pulling themselves out of the water, standing side by side on the pool deck.

  “Dracu’ să vă ia!” Mosier thundered. “There is only one rule! She will be pure!”

  Standing by myself in the pool, my eyes widened with shock as his fist shot forth, breaking Damon’s nose with a loud crunch before blackening Anders’s eye with a quick jab that sent his head reeling.

  “Du-vă în pula mea!” Mosier roared. “Get out of my sight!”

  With eyes cast down, they ran into the house without a glance back at me.

  Mosier turned from their retreating forms to look at me. Dark and furious, his eyes stared at me with unveiled disgust. His nostrils flared. His cheeks were almost purple with fury.

  “Get out of the fucking pool,” he growled. “Now!” He turned to my mother. “Get her decent!”

  I lifted my body onto the side of the pool, and my mother rushed me inside to get dressed.

  “Stop squeezing me so hard!” I cried, trying to pull my arm away.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded in a tense whisper as she pulled me up the stairs. “How could you be so goddamned stupid, Ash?”

  “I was just swimming,” I said, still shocked at the sight of my bloody stepbrothers.

  “Practically naked!”

  “But Tig,” I said, “I swam all the time in LA.”

  “Teagan!” she hissed. “Not Tig!”

  “Fine!” I yelled. “I swam all the time in LA, Teagan!”

  She yanked me onto the landing and turned to face me, her eyes swimming with tears. “Mosier’s house, Mosier’s rules! How do you not understand that?” Pulling me against her with a desperate sob, she squeezed me tight, murmuring in my ear, “Grow up, Ash. Grow up fast.”

  Then she dragged me the rest of the way up the stairs to my room, where she chose my clothes: a long-sleeved white blouse with a ruffled neck and a long, flowy skirt. She told me I’d need to apologize to Mosier and promise to be better.

  “Better? In what way?” I asked, feeling scared.

  “Tell him that you’ll be more modest,” she said, nodding at me encouragingly, though her voice was laced with panic. “You’ll . . . you’ll be the little sister he never had. A good girl. Respectable.”

  “He’s not my keeper!” I huffed, scratching at the itchy neckline of the fussy blouse.

  “Yes,” Tígin grated out, grabbing my upper arms harshly as she stared into my eyes, “that’s exactly what he is now.”

  We walked down the stairs together in silence, hand in hand, then headed to Mosier’s private office. My mother knocked, and we heard him shout, “Come!”

  I looked up to see her jaw tense before she lifted her chin and pulled me into the room.

  Mosier’s study was the most intimidating room in the house. Sinister, too, with its smell of stale cigars and whiskey, its dark wood and leather furniture. A dagger with a sharp, shiny point was displayed on a credenza, and crossed swords intersected over a massive black marble fireplace. Underneath the sword was a plaque that read, Christus remittit. Nos non oblivisci.

  Years later, I would learn the meaning of those Latin words: Christ forgives. We don’t forget.

  “Mosier,” said my mother, her voice high-pitched and placating, “Ashley has something she wants to say.”

  His eyes, dark brown and disgusted, slid from my mother to me. Flicking them down my form, his face softened slightly at my modest appearance.

  “So, cenuşă,” he said, staring at me from behind his massive desk, “you act like a whore and make me hurt my sons . . . and now you want to talk to me?”

  Cenuşă means “ashes” in his language, and it’s what he’s always called me. Never Ashley. Always cenuşă.

  My mother’s voice is tentative. “She’s just a kid, Mo—”

  “Shut up,” he spat without looking away from me. “Not another word from you.” He lifted his chin a fraction of an inch, his eyes searing. “You come to me dressed like an angel now. But I seen you before . . .” His eyes lowered to my breasts, and he held them there. “Your tits on display. An ispită. Teasing. Sinful. Dirty. Naked in the pool with two grown men—”

  “With your sons! And they weren’t naked. Mosier, they were just swim—”

  “You speak again,” he said, lifting his eyes to my mother, “and you’ll need a doctor. Mă înțelegi?”

  She gasped softly and nodded, looking down at her feet as she squeezed my hand.

  “So, little cenuşă, little whore in training, what do you have to say to me?”

  My heart was racing and my entire body trembling. “I . . . I am so sorry. S-so sorry that I broke your rules.”

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p; “My rules?” he repeated softly, leaning forward and planting his elbows on his desk. He sniffed, then grimaced, as if what he’d smelled was distasteful.

  “I d-didn’t mean to upset you,” I managed to say, gripping my mother’s hand for dear life.

  My stepfather stood up behind his desk, raising a shaking fist. “Upset me? You upset God, you cheap târfă!”

  I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, but I wasn’t saying the right things. I was making him angrier. I glanced up at my mother to find the color in her face draining as she jerked me closer to her side, taking a step back and pulling me with her.

  “Little whores who flaunt their bodies should be treated like the sluts they are!” he said, reaching for his belt buckle. “You have to pay for your sins!”

  Coming around the desk, he advanced on us, his face dark red with fury as he jerked his belt from the loops of his trousers with a whipping sound.

  My mother yanked me behind her back, shaking her head. “No! No! She’s only thirteen! She’s just a kid!” She was breathing so hard and so fast, I didn’t know how she could speak. “Do it to me! Whatever you want to do to Ash, do it to me! I’m a bad example! I will pay! Please!”

  He paused in front of my mother, his belt doubled into a loop, fisted in his hand. “You? You’ll fucking pay?”

  Her breathing was loud and shallow as I rested my cheek on her back, my arms clasped tightly around her waist.

  “Mosy,” she begged, “she is still pure. I promise you. She’s pure. She is. She’s pure as snow.” Reaching for my hands, she loosened them so she could step toward my stepfather without me. “But I’m not pure. Not at all. I’m . . . bad. I’m . . . dirty.” Her breath hitched as she stepped closer to him, one hand appearing behind her back to shoo me from the room. I backed up to the door, watching her, listening to her words and trying to process them, but I didn’t understand what was happening. “Take it out on me. I deserve it.”