Page 109 of Pieces of Ash

“What?”

His voice is incredulous, and I twist my neck to catch his eyes. “My mother was in love with him. I think he loved her too.”

“They had an affair?”

“Yes… No… It was more than that.”

Affairsounds as tawdry and cheap ashookupand has no place between my mother and Anders, or me and Julian, for that matter.

“But she was his?—”

“Stepmother,” I say. “Yes. But she was closer in age to Anders than she was to his father.”

“How in the world did they keep it a secret?”

I lean the back of my head against his shoulder and sigh. “I don’t know if they did.”

“Do you think Raumann found out?” asks Julian.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It would be a motive for him killing her, and I’m more and more certain he did. Kill her. The same way he induced a heart attack in Father Joseph, I’m positive he injected my mother with enough heroin to kill a horse. Because she was clean, Julian. I swear.”

“Itwouldbe a motive,” said Julian.

I think of Anders at the funeral. He didn’t have a mark on him.

“No,” I murmur, deep in thought.

“No?”

“No. I don’t think Mosier found out,” I say. “He would’ve beaten Anders to within an inch of his life if he’d known. Once, a long time ago, he found me swimming with his sons and broke Damon’s nose and gave Anders a black eye. If he found out one of them was sleeping with my mother—hiswife?—Anders would have spent weeks in the intensive care unit. But he was fine. At the funeral, physically he was fine.”

“Then why did Raumann kill her?”

At some point the terrible truth must have occurred to me, and I chose not to look at it, not to examine it, not to accept it. But now? Safe as I feel in Julian’s arms? I have the strength to admit its truth.

“For me,” I whisper, the awfulness of the words making my eyes brim with tears. I am the reason for my mother’s death. “He killed her a few weeks after my birthday. Mosier killed Tig to pave the way to me.”

“Oh, baby,” he whispers, horror thick in his voice. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” I say, thinking back to the reading of my mother’s will. My grandparents weren’t surprised about the arrangements and conditions for a life of comfort. Mosier had already spoken to them. He’d planned it all, right down to his visit to my bedroom. In fact, I’d probably already be married to him now if Tig hadn’tinsisted that my education be completed. “I know. And I also know that I’d be in his clutches now if it wasn’t for Tig…for my mom.”

“How so?”

“She only had one chance to speak publicly from the grave—via her lawyer at the reading of her will. He insisted that it was her final wish for me to finish school. That’s the only reason I was allowed to go back to Blessed Virgin. Don’t you see? If I hadn’t gone back, Father Joseph wouldn’t have been able to help me.”

Tears slide down my cheeks, and I let them because I am learning that sometimes love isn’t in the words we say, but in how we give and what we sacrifice, and in the hundreds of quiet, unsung actions we make on behalf of someone else, someone we care aboutmorethan ourselves.

“He was right,” I say, closing my eyes. “Anders said that she loved me, and I didn’t believe him at the time. But now I’m starting to think, well…that she did.”

“Of course she did,” says Julian, dropping his lips to my shoulder. He rests there for a moment, and I close my eyes, taking the comfort he offers me so selflessly, letting it wash over me like a warm breeze.

There is no part of me that expects to hear what he says next.

“It was a woman,” he whispers, the words so soft, I almost miss them.

“What?” I murmur, opening my eyes.

“I lost my job over a woman.”