Page 119 of Pieces of Ash

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 goodbye—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, hasalwaysloved—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 hasalwaysloved 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 knowexactlyhow she died, if she knew what was happening, and what she was thinking as she slipped away. Thespecific 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.