Page 1 of Pieces of Ash

Chapter 1

Ashley

Thirty-four years old is too young to die.

At least, that’s what everyone keeps telling me.

But then again…

She wasalsotoo young to get pregnant at fifteen.

Too young to become a single mom at sixteen.

Too young to be discovered at eighteen.

Too young to be an international supermodel at nineteen.

Too young to overdose at twenty-four.

Too young to be washed up by twenty-seven.

Too young to marry my forty-six-year-old stepfather at twenty-nine.

Too young to die of another overdose at thirty-four.

She wasalwaystoo young.

Consistent to the bitter end.

The thought circles around and around inside my head as I sit beside her grave with my stepfather’s heavy arm around my shoulders and more than three hundred people—photographers, magazine editors, fashion designers, and other models—weeping prettily behind me.

In an instant, I am ashamed of myself. I should be thinkingkindthoughts about her—about Tigín, my biologicalmother, whom most of the world believed was my older sister. Only three people know that I am actually her daughter: my biological grandparents, who sit stoically on my other side, and, somewhere in the crowd, my godfather, Gus, my mother’s hair and makeup artist for the five years she took the world by storm.

My heart clenches as I think of Gus’s eyes when he touched my arm earlier, offering brief condolences. Red and bloodshot. So much sadness.

I clutch the onyx rosary beads in my fist and look up at the priest, who clears his throat loudly.

“To many of you, Tigín, who was baptized Teagan Catrin-Mairwen Ellis, was nothing more than a public figure, a woman who flaunted her body for money and fame, a modern-day Mary Magdalene. But in the eyes of God, she was a child, flawed and beloved…”

Beloved.

The word makes me pause.

Was my mother beloved by God?

And if not, bywhomwas my mother beloved?

Not my conservative grandparents, who were deeply ashamed of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bastard daughter, and the endless pictures of her in bathing suits and lingerie. Their disapproval was her constant companion, and though she tried to shrug it off like it didn’t matter, I heard enough phone conversations throughout my childhood featuring a drunken Tigín begging for their forgiveness. I know for certain that they never granted it, though they did deign to live comfortably off my mother’s wealth, in the house she bought for them—first in Ohio, then in New York—with every luxury they could imagine.

Didtheylove her? I don’t know. I only know that they didn’t show it. And by withholding it, they forced her to seek it elsewhere.

Elsewhere.

I peek over my shoulder at the industry people who have turned out to mourn Tigín, pulling from my earliest memories, her first few years as America’s sweetheart.

In the beginning, when she was a natural blonde with a fresh-scrubbed face, bright blue eyes, and a winsome smile, they loved her. And my mother, starved for affection, basked in the world’s approval. But for a sheltered, religious, eighteen-year-old single mother from Loveland, Ohio, it was too much attention and too much fame. It was too much money and too much unrequited approval for a love-starved kid. And like most kids finally out from under the yoke of oppressive parents, she started acting out.

As the years rolled on, she was increasingly erratic. She’d be hours late for a shoot, arriving with heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes and ashen skin, her flat blonde hair still reeking of the cigarettes she’d smoked the night before. No amount of help from Gus could disguise the fact that Tig’s girl-next-door smile and bright, shiny, baby blues were fading under the strain of fast living. Embarrassed by her way-too-public drunken exploits and out of patience with her increasingly prima donna ways, the modeling world proved fickle in its love, abandoning her when she needed it most.