Page 5 of Pieces of Ash
My stepfather purses his flabby lips at the lawyer. He’s rich as Midas but doesn’t part with his pennies cheerfully. “What will this cost me?”
“Well, let’s see.” 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 flits briefly, nervously, to Mosier before turning back 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 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 beenthisbold—never touched methisintimately. 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, for 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, “And youwon’tcome 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 younger daughter from time to?—”
“Agree,” demands Mosier, ignoring the lawyer, staring at my grandfather.
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 here alone.”
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, and ultimately, her death. 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 forever, 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 bulbous 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 hands to the table and thumps it loudly. “We are finished.”
“I suppose we are,” says Mr. Blanchard, his jaw tight and eyes deeply troubled. 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 even more alone.
He places the file into a black leather briefcase, then looks directly into my eyes, his gaze strangely searing. It’s too intimatea 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 soverysorry for your loss, Miss Ellis,” he tells me.
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 this brief gesture is more for the sake of propriety than heartfelt 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,verysorry.”
Chapter 2
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 back seat. As soon as I am seated beside Mosier, across from Damon and Anders, the door shuts, and a moment later, we’re in motion.
