Fragments of Ash

by Katy Regnery

  “It’s the truth!” I cry. “You . . . you can’t marry me, Mosier. I’m your stepdaughter.”

  His faces changes from amusement to anger in an instant.

  “I don’t care if you’re my daughter by blood, you pious little bitch,” he spits. “You’re still going to be my wife.”

  He reaches for the screen door handle, but before he can come inside, I push it open and sidestep out onto the porch. I look over his shoulder and see Anders standing in the driveway, at the foot of the steps. My eyes meet his, and he flinches.

  All my life I’ve been told I look like her, but I’ve never felt it more strongly than now, face-to-face with my dead mother’s lover.

  Finally—maybe when he can’t stand it anymore—Anders looks away.

  “Where’s Damon?” I ask.

  Mosier doesn’t leave his house without Damon, his second-in-command.

  “He’s dealing with your fucking fed,” says Mosier, flicking his eyes down my T-shirt and jeans and then back up to my face. He looks over my shoulder at the dark living room. “Once he’s dead, I think I’ll fuck you here. Tonight. Bareback. See if we can’t get our family started sooner than later, eh, cenuşă?”

  My skin crawls, and I inch closer to the steps, to Anders. Leaning against the railing, I remind myself that just inside the front door, Julian has a gun. He won’t let me be taken.

  “I don’t have a fed,” I say, but a second later, I’m startled by gunfire coming from the barn. Two shots are fired, and I gasp, waiting to see who walks out of the barn: Damon or Simmons.

  The barn door swings open, and at first I’m relieved, because I see Agent Simmons . . . but then I realize that his hands are laced behind his head and he’s followed by Damon, who holds a gun to his back. There’s a dark spot on Simmons’s shoulder and it’s widening and dripping. He’s been shot.

  “Good work, son!” yells Mosier.

  “I knocked out the dog. What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Bring him here,” says Mosier, staring at me. “Maybe cenuşă needs a reminder of how we handle men who dare to look at our women.”

  Simmons crosses the driveway, his eyes on mine telegraphing nothing. He must be in pain, but his face is expressionless. Maybe he’s frightened. I certainly am. Nothing is going according to plan. How is Julian supposed to take on three men?

  “He didn’t look at me,” I say, thinking fast. “He stayed in the barn. He was only there to protect me.”

  Simmons stops in front of the car, head down.

  “Protect you? Then he’s worthless,” says Mosier, darting a glance at Damon. “Fuck him up.”

  I watch as Damon takes the butt of his gun and slams it into Simmons’s temple. He gasps in pain, falling to his knees. Damon takes that opportunity to kick Simmons in the stomach, over and over. He takes the blows without a sound, lying on the ground, protecting himself by curling into a fetal position.

  Damon pauses, running a hand through his dark hair, which is mussed from his exertions. “More?”

  “Eh,” says Mosier, flicking his fingers. “He’s not screaming. It’s better when they scream.” He sighs, then turns to me. “You know who was a hell of a screamer? Your sister. Ah, forgive me. Your fucking tramp mother. She screamed like a fucking champion.”

  My stomach flips over as I remember the sound of her screams coming from his study.

  I sneer at him. “You are a monster.”

  He reaches out and grabs me by the back of the neck. “I will be your fucking husband, and you will be respectful.”

  “No!” I cry. “Fuck you!”

  “Ahhh, listen to that dirty mouth! The apple don’t fall so far from the tree, eh? Cum e mamă, e și fiică.” He pulls my face to his and licks my cheek slowly, starting at my jawline and stopping at my forehead. He whispers close to my ear. “I’m going to make you scream too.”

  I struggle, but his grip is strong, and he keeps my face close to his.

  “Your mama was one stupid bitch.” He laughs, his fingers pulling my hair, hurting. “She came out to New York, thinking I was going to make her life easy. She could take her drugs and do her stupid shit and, well, well, well, it didn’t work out like that, did it? The dumb cunt. I only wanted her for you.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Anders. He’s staring at the porch steps, his jaw twitching in anger as his father talks about Tig.

  “I used to dream of you while I was fucking her,” continues Mosier. “Ashley. Ashley, I’d think. One day, I’m gonna pump you with my cum and watch your belly grow huge. I’m gonna fuck you while your tits are full of milk. I’m gonna use you like a fucking cow.”

  His words are so repulsive, I swallow back a mouthful of vomit.

  I flick a glance at Anders, then back at Mosier. “She fucking hated you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, guess what. I don’t give a shit,” he says. “Good screamer, though. Real good screamer.”

  “Did she scream when you killed her?” I demand as tears stream down my face.

  “Ha! You got some spirit now, eh?” he says, his voice both admiring and disgusted. “Tsk, tsk, little beauty. That won’t work for me. I’ll have to beat that out of you, cenuşă. I raised you the way I want you. Pure. Dutiful. Ready to fuck whenever I want you.”

  “Admit it,” I sob. I fist my fingers at my sides and scream at him. “Admit you fucking killed her!”

  He leans close to me. So close, I can smell the cigar he smoked in the car on the way up here. “She didn’t scream when I put the needle in her arm. She was fucking quiet. For once.”

  My head falls forward, my shoulders shaking with the force of my sobs. “I’m sorry, Tig. I’m so sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for? I was done with that dumb fucking cunt. I was ready for—”

  A gunshot rings out, and Mosier lurches back. I stumble as he falls to the porch floor. His hand on my neck loosens, and I scramble to my feet again just as Julian bursts out of the house and grabs my arm, pulling me behind him.

  “Ash! What happened?”

  I stare at Anders, who stands at the bottom of the steps, the gun in his hand lightly smoking.

  “Anders!” I gasp.

  Julian points his gun at my stepbrother, who drops his piece to the ground.

  “He fucking killed her,” says Anders softly, as though in a trance. “He killed her.”

  “What the fuck, Anders?” screams Damon, forgetting about Simmons, who is still lying in a heap on the gravel. “You shot him! You shot our father, you crazy bastard!”

  “But . . .” A dazed Anders turns to his brother. “He killed her, Damon. He killed Tig.”

  “Who gives a shit? I don’t fucking care!”

  “You should care!” screams Anders. “You should fucking—”

  Another gunshot interrupts the brothers, and I watch in horror as Anders stumbles backward, a large bloody spot marring the crisp light blue of his dress shirt. He reaches up to his heart, then pulls his hand away, staring at the blood as he collapses to the ground.

  “Anders! No!” Damon falls to the ground beside his twin. “Fuck. Oh, Jesus. Fuck! No!”

  At my feet, Mosier is holding a gun. In a low, breathy voice, he says, “She was mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to . . .”

  Whether he passes out or dies, I’m not sure, but Julian pushes me to the side, kicking Mosier’s gun out of reach and training his own on my stepfather. Mosier’s chest doesn’t rise or fall. I think he’s dead. I think he used his last second alive to kill his child, and I’m filled with such bleakness for this twisted family, I’m weak.

  Agent Simmons staggers to his feet and takes off in the direction of the barn while Damon cradles his brother’s head in his lap, crying.

  I rush down the stairs, toward my stepbrothers, and Damon looks up at me, his cheeks wet and glistening in the moonlight. “Do s-something, Ashley. H-Help me. Help him!”

  I kneel down on Anders’s other side, looking into his face, into his eyes, which he’
s fighting to keep open. He looks at me, his face softening, relaxing.

  “Teagan,” he says softly and slowly, his lips tilting up into a smile.

  “It’s . . . Ashley,” I sob.

  “Ashley . . .,” he sighs, his smile fading. “You’re safe now . . . kid.”

  “Anders,” I say through tears. “She loved you. She loved you so much.”

  “I . . . loved her,” he says, his voice threadier by the second.

  “You can’t leave me!” says Damon, his tears falling onto his brother’s dying face. “Please, Anders! Stay with me! Stay with me!”

  “Help’s coming,” says Simmons, running from the barn. “An ambulance is on the way.”

  I hear Julian ask about Bruno and feel a small, short-lived burst of relief when Simmons says he’ll be okay. The agent reaches down and grabs Damon’s gun. “I’m taking your weapon, son.”

  “I don’t want it,” murmurs Damon, his attention focused on his twin.

  “You’ll . . . be . . . okay,” says Anders to his brother, his voice a whisper now. “Go home. Leave . . . America and go . . . home.” His eyes, barely able to focus, look up at the starry Vermont sky. “She’s safe . . . Tea . . . gan. She’s . . . free.” He wheezes softly, a dying gasp. “I love you . . . I’m coming . . .”

  Damon reaches under Anders’s shoulders, pulling his brother onto his lap and rocking him. Through tears of disbelief and agony, he sings a haunting lullaby: “Hai Luluțu, dormi un picu’ . . . Dragul mamii, puiuț micu’ . . .”

  On the porch, Julian keeps his gun trained on Mosier’s lifeless body.

  In the driveway, Damon sings softly as his twin brother passes from this life to the next.

  And in the distance, I can hear sirens, coming closer and closer.

  She’s safe, Teagan. She’s free.

  “Thank you, Mam,” I breathe, looking up at the heavens, where Tig and Anders are finally together. “Thank you.”

  Day #50 of THE NEW YOU!

  We are leaving tomorrow.

  It’s a month earlier than I wanted.

  I wanted Ashley to finish high school. But Anders insists that tomorrow—when M and Damon leave for their weekly trip to Newark—must be the day. And after learning what he knows, I agree. We need to get the fuck out of here because if Anders’s suspicions are correct, M has been making plans. Plans I knew nothing about. Plans that I must stop.

  Anders told me that just after Easter his father started acting strange—saying things about me, about Ashley, about how one sister is just as good as another. For a while now, I’ve felt the distance between me and M. I’ve felt him pulling away from me. I’ve wondered what happens in a marriage likes ours, when a husband like M decides he’s done with a wife like me.

  Is it possible that he means to replace me with Ash?

  Divorce me and marry her?

  HELL NO.

  FUCK NO.

  NEVER.

  I’d die first.

  He can’t have her. No. Never. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t know that this was his plan. Maybe it was even his plan all along. It makes me sick to think about my baby ending up with him. It makes me want to kill him.

  Thank God for Anders. He has a plan.

  He’s given me ex-lax to put in Grosavu’s morning tea. The amount I’m going to give her will keep her shitting for hours.

  An hour after M and D leave the house, Anders and I will leave too.

  Forever.

  The plan is for me to dress warmly and take nothing. I will sneak into the garage and get into Anders’s car, behind the passenger seat, under a black tarp he’ll leave on the floor.

  When he leaves for Albany as usual, it won’t appear that anyone or anything is in the back of the car. Nothing will appear amiss as he drives out the front gate, waving good-bye—FOR-fucking-EVER—to M’s dogs.

  I’m staying under the tarp the whole way to Ashley’s school. Anders will sign her out for a dentist appointment and she’ll get into the car.

  Anders has three fake passports for the Cerne family. I am Marie Cerne. Ashley is Pauline. Anders is Jacques. We are three siblings from Vermont, visiting family in Montreal.

  And then? And then? (Oh, my God . . . I can barely write because my hand is shaking. We are so close. We are so fucking close to happiness, to freedom.)

  We’ll drive north. To the ends of the earth. So far north that no one will ever find us again.

  On an island of our own, in the coldest place in the world, we will keep each other warm.

  Far, far away from this terrible place, we will keep each other safe.

  Me and my love and my kid.

  A woman who loves a man.

  A man who loves a woman.

  A mother who loves—who, in her own fucked-up way, has always loved—her daughter.

  And for the rest of this sweet life, I’ll be free.

  I’ll finally be free.

  Someone is coming . . . .Shit . . .

  EPILOGUE

  Ashley

  I close my mother’s diary, but hold it in my lap, shutting my eyes and turning my face to the late-afternoon sun, which warms my cheeks. This spot on the back porch is still my favorite place to relax, and Tig’s journal, especially the last few chapters, is my favorite thing to read.

  A mother who has always loved her daughter.

  Until I read those words, I didn’t realize how badly I needed them. And now that I have them, I grieve her loss in a different way. But I also celebrate the mother I never knew I had. She loved me. She didn’t know Mosier’s plans for me, and she would have given her life to stop them. There is such peace in knowing that—in knowing that my mother loved me.

  A cold breeze picks up from the north, and I open my eyes, wondering what life would have been like for her on the little island Anders had purchased for their new life together.

  Julian drove me up there a few weeks ago, just to see it. We took a boat from Waskaganish to the small island, and as the cold wind whipped my hair, I spoke to Tig, telling her she would have been happy there, wishing she’d made it.

  I still don’t know exactly how she died, if she knew what was happening, and what she was thinking as she slipped away. The specific details of her death died with Mosier, but that night—the night of her last diary entry when she wrote that someone was coming—was him getting rid of her. I imagine her shoving the diary under the mattress and pretending to be asleep. My hope is that he used a small needle that didn’t hurt and that she died quickly and without pain. I think of her journal—under the mattress where she breathed her last—filled with hope, filled with second chances, filled with love, filled with sweet dreams for a life she’d never get to live.

  My heart bleeds when I think of how close she came to escaping him.

  I take a deep breath of the crisp fall air and sigh.

  Thinking about it will only make me sad. And I don’t want to be sad. By finding her diary, she was returned to me. Finding out that she loved and protected me in her own way has given me more quiet contentment than I’ve ever known.

  I can smell a fire in the distance—burning leaves, like a campfire—and it makes me smile.

  It’s pumpkin season.

  Apple season.

  Thanksgiving is coming, and Noelle, Gus, and Jock will be spending it here with us. Sometimes I remember that spring evening when Gus and I set the table for dinner while Jock, Noelle, and Julian played cornhole on the lawn nearby. I remember wishing that we five could be a family. I can still feel that longing in my heart some days . . . and then I remind myself that dreams can come true. Gus isn’t the only man with a Prince Charming. I have one too.

  When Julian drove me to New Paltz to visit the grave of Father Joseph two weeks after the shoot-out at the farmhouse, he said he wanted to talk to me on the ride home. I stressed out about that, wondering what was on his mind, wondering if our relationship was coming to an end. Realistically speaking, we’d only been together for a few
weeks, and under duress. Now that Mosier and Anders were dead, and Damon had been extradited to Bucharest to answer for the Răumann family’s crimes in Eastern Europe, I didn’t need Julian’s protection anymore. My mother’s jewelry fetched a decent price at auction, leaving me solvent. Maybe he wanted to tell me that it was time for us to go our separate ways.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  As we drove up the New York State Thruway toward home, he took a deep breath, and said, “You have your whole life ahead of you now, Ashley.”

  I gulped and nodded, bracing myself for his rejection—for him to set me free, even though the only freedom I craved included the space and permission to love him.

  “I just . . . I just wanted to say that if you choose to go . . . if you’re ready to move on, I won’t stop you.”

  “You won’t?”

  “No. I don’t have the right to keep you with me if you want to be free.”

  I turned to him, staring at his handsome profile. “You don’t love me?”

  He took a deep breath, his voice lowering with emotion. “I love you with everything I am. That’s why I’d never stand in your way. You don’t owe me anything, baby. It’s your life. Whatever comes next, it’s your choice.”

  “What if I want to stay with you? What if I want to live my life with you?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed, a giveaway that he was nervous. When he spoke, his voice was raspy, like he was desperately trying to stay calm and reserved. “That would be your choice too.”

  It was glorious on one hand, to make a major life decision for myself . . . but maddening on the other, because I didn’t want to stay unless he wanted me with him. I didn’t want to impose myself on him. For the first time in my life, I was free. I needed to be somewhere that I was wanted.

  “Julian,” I said. “What do you want?”

  He jerked the steering wheel, the tires shrieking as he skidded onto the side of the highway. After putting the car in park, he turned to look at me.

  “What do you think I want?” he demanded, his voice thick with emotion. “But I was fired from my job. I failed at it. I rent a house in the middle of nowhere. I blow glass for a pretty pitiful living. I’m not good enough for you, Ashley. I’m not—”