Page 2 of Ashes

Why wasn’t it making me feel any better?Why didn’t anything give me relief?

“PLEASE!”I shouted as my eyes stung.“Just tell me how!Or when … when did you stop loving me?”Those words sliced through my soul.

The day he’d told me he loved me, I had thought it would always be the happiest day of my life.Thinking of it now was pure torture.

I balled my hands into fists and began pounding his chest.He should know how this felt!This complete wreckage he’d made of my heart.It wasn’t fair.If he was going to love her, why … why had he ever let me think I had a chance?That he would be mine one day?

A sob tore through me just as his hands covered mine forcefully.I tried to jerk free of his hold.I didn’t want him to touch me.Not like this.Not when the last time he had touched me, it had been perfect.

“Sylvia is pregnant.”

Those three words spoken from his mouth in a hoarse whisper caused whatever fight I’d had in me to evaporate.I blinked at the tears that broke free and ran down my cheeks, my eyes locked on his chest, unable to meet his gaze.

Her mom didn’t know.She couldn’t.Not with all the praising she had been doing over Sylvia.How pure and good girls got the reward.There was no way my dad knew.No one knew.They had to be keeping it a secret until after the wedding.My perfect stepsister—who helped her mom in the church, sang in the choir, volunteered at the food bank—had not only taken the man I loved from me, but she’d also had sex before marriage.It felt as if he had taken my throat in both his large palms and was squeezing it so hard that I couldn’t inhale.

“Yours?”I choked out, unable to believe thatmyWilder had done this.

Every time I thought it couldn’t get any worse, fate seemed to show me that it indeed could.

“Yes.”His reply was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear him.

I pulled my hands free of his and stepped back, finally lifting my eyes to meet his.There were no other words I could say.Nothing else that could be done.The reality was, Wilder had wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted me.I had thrown myself at him that night before I left for college, and all he’d wanted to do was hold me.

A life with Wilder was all that I had hoped for and dreamed of, but facing the truth that he hadn’t wanted it, too, destroyed me.

The girl I had been was gone.I would never be the same.

I

“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new.What is broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.”

—Margaret Mitchell

One

Wilder

Nine Years Later

Through the doorway, I could see my daughter packing the last of her things in a cardboard box.It was physically killing me not to go in there and help her.But she’d asked if she could do it herself.Alone.

My plan had been to stay a week here, give her time after her mother’s funeral to mourn, adjust—hell, I didn’t know.What was an eight-year-old little girl supposed to do after she saw her mother’s casket being lowered into the ground?I was so fucking lost in what it was she needed and what I should be doing.

My daughter wasn’t a normal eight-year-old.She had seen too much over the past five years.I hadn’t seen the signs, and by the time I caught on to what was happening in this house, the damage had been done.Too much darkness, and I blamed myself.I should have known.Sarah was with me every other weekend, two months every summer, and most holidays.But when she was at my place, she was happy.Or I had been too fucking blind to see the darkness she hid in her eyes.

Rubbing my hand over my chest didn’t ease the pain or regret.All I could do was make damn sure her life was picture-fucking-perfect from now on.No more leaving her with someone else.I wanted her with me.If she was with me, I could keep her safe.

Turning, I headed back down the stairs.There was little I wanted from this house.I had lived here the first two years of Sarah’s life with Sylvia, her mother.Our marriage had never been good.The only happiness that had happened here was after Sarah was born.

As my foot hit the bottom step, I glanced over at the hunter-green recliner, worn and faded, sitting in the corner of the living room.I remembered the first night Sarah had come home.

Sylvia had refused to nurse, and I’d offered to get up and do the nighttime feedings.Holding that tiny little baby in my arms, I stared at her in awe.It was a surreal moment.Seeing that face peering up at me, knowing that, only eight months ago, I had thought she was destroying my life.

I hadn’t wanted anything to do with Sylvia’s pregnancy.I stayed gone as much as possible.Worked hours that I didn’t need to.Anything to pretend that I wasn’t about to be a father.

Then, when the day had come and Sarah was placed in my arms, she had become my reason for living.All my joy revolved around her.

The slamming of the screen door jolted me out of my thoughts, and I headed to the kitchen to see who had come into the house.I expected to see Sylvia’s mother before we left.I’d called and spoken to her stepfather about Sarah’s desire to leave today.He had been more understanding than his wife was going to be.Preparing to deal with my ex-mother-in-law, I braced myself for her forthcoming lecture on why Sarah was better off staying with her.That would be a cold day in hell.My daughter was living with me.

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