Page 96 of Whirlwind
This woman is my future. She’s all that matters.
“What?” she whispers.
“What?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“You’re staring at me,” I say.
“Oh my God,” she says with an eye roll. A soft smile tries to play on her lips. It’s enough to let me know that she’s going to be okay. Whatever she learns from her father, about her mother, she’s going to be okay.
Whether we will be, or not, remains up in the air. But she’s going to be okay. And that’s all I can ask for right now. The rest…I’ll fight for.
Until the day I fucking die, I’ll fight for Kit Ashcroft.
26
Kit
Today, I see my father for the first time since I left for college.
Today, I see my father for the first time since learning he lied to me about my mother.
Today is going to be a hard day.
But at least I’ll be doing it with friends, and not as the same weak little girl he’s used to pushing around. Tyson is with me, too. He sat by me all night, after reading my grandmother’s letter. I caught him staring at me more than once. At first, I thought he might be waiting for the powder keg to explode. Like I was going to start breaking everything in the house or something. Then, I realized he was probably expecting another anxiety attack.
What I appreciated most last night was that the three of them didn’t handle me with kid gloves or try to force me to talk about it. Tyson even flirted some, like he did at the beginning.
The initial hit from that letter was hard. Devastating, really. In the back of my mind, finding her was always an option. Not a desire, but an option. There was a chance at…something. That’s gone, now.
I was up most of the night researching. I searched for my mother’s name and found few hits—a couple of news articles that mentioned she was missing, an archive from her high schoolthat had her name attached to a varsity volleyball team that went to the state championship her senior year in Massachusetts. I didn’t even know that was where she was from. Other than that, all I could find was basic vital statistics for her.
What I did find was a big, deep hole of information on missing and murdered Indigenous women. The Crow reservation, where she initially went missing from, is riddled with similar stories. Very few are ever entered into the U.S. Justice System database, and far fewer are ever solved. The numbers are terrifying—and grow too quickly because of a flawed system that lets perpetrators take advantage of jurisdictional red tape.
My mother is nothing more than a statistic, now. All but forgotten by anyone.
That breaks my heart. More than not ever getting to know her, because that’s just a selfish want I’ll never be able to fulfill. She should be remembered by someone, though. If nothing else, I could have been that for her—a person who knew she existed and mattered. He stole that from both of us.
Which brings on a slew of questions. Did he ever love her? How could he dismiss her in death so callously, if he did? Not that my father’s version of love has ever made sense to me. Is he why I’m so distrusting in love?
What even is love?
It’s not an emotion I understand. It’s not the only one, but it’s the biggest one that makes little sense to me. If I’d experienced it more in my life, perhaps I wouldn’t be so gun-shy of it. My lived experience has jaded me, I fear.
I don’t want to be fearful of anything—especially not something that brings other people so much joy. For the first time, I want to experience being in love. With Tyson, I thought I was heading there. But I’m not sure if that’s because of the sex. Was itjust a stimulation high? Is my brain addled from our physical connection? I’ve seen people do stupid things because of lust.
But lust is foreign to me, too. Not that I’m not ridiculously attracted to Tyson—just looking at him sometimes makes me blush with the things I want him to do to me. Except, I think that’s desire and curiosity, not so much lust.
Are desire and lust the same thing? I’m not sure.
What a stupid thing to be thinking about while I’m walking through the doors of a funeral home to bury my grandmother. There’s time to figure those thoughts out. There’s time to figure everything else out, later—and there is a lot of everything else.
It all falls to the wayside when I see my father waiting for me by the mausoleum wall that will be my grandmother’s final resting place. The marble block behind him has already been removed, one urn already sitting inside, just waiting for the other.
There is notill death do us part.Not for Anna Ashcroft. She never found her escape. For the first time since her death, tears well. She deserved better—if for no other reason than that she created the smallest of safe spaces for me as a child.
It wasn’t large. It was a small hope. Never underestimate how hope blooms.
