Page 35 of Pieces of Ash

Gus nods. “Make it…palatable.”

I finally get his meaning, and my shoulders slump again, even though being unwanted is a familiar theme in my life. “He won’t want me there.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Then I’m not going,” I say. “I’ll…I’ll figure out something else. I’m not going to?—”

“Pipe down, li’l Ash,” says Gus, putting just a bit of umph into his tone to make me listen. “You’ll stay out there because it’s Jock’s place, not Julian’s. Julian can just pretend you aren’t there, baby doll, but it’s not his call who lives there and who don’t. As long as Julian has his bedroom to himself and exclusive access to the barn, Jock can rent out the top floor of the farmhouse to anyone he wants.” Gus taps the tip of my nose with his finger. “Boop. And we wantyou. We want you safe, sweet girl.”

Safe.That word again. Oh, how I hate and love it at once.

“Staying with a man who doesn’t want me there.”

“Oh, he might stomp around and give you all sorts of frowny faces, but, like I said, he’s some sorta ex-law enforcement. Hewon’t touch a hair on your head…” Gus half grins, looking saucy. “Unless you ask him to.”

I roll my eyes. “You know I’m not like that.”

“Everybody’s like that,” Gus says. “You just haven’t had a chance, what with Sisters Mary and Margaret breathing down your sweet neck for the past five years.”

“I’m not likeher,” I insist, lifting my chin a little. “I’llneverbe like her.”

Gus’s brows furrow momentarily, and it looks like he’s about to say something, but then I watch him think better of it. He takes a deep breath and nods. “That’s up to you.”

I want to change the subject. I don’t want to think about Tig, let alone chat about her. “So the plan is for me to go live out at this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with a man who doesn’t want me there? Fabulous. Then what?”

“You said that your Father Joe is going to talk to the stepmonster, right?”

“He said he would. It’s a sin for Mosier to even consider marrying me.”

“His dead wife’s sister?”

“I’mnother sister. I mean…I wasn’t.”

“Oh my.” Gus looks grave. “He didn’t know you were Tig’s kid.”

I shake my head. “Father Joseph’s going to tell him.”

Gus’s eyes are deeply troubled. “How you think that’s going to go down?”

I hold my breath and shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither, baby. But if it doesn’t go well, that demon beast will start looking for you.”

“I know.”

Gus sighs. “Jock still has some friends in the Marines. He thinks we should start looking into Mosier. Try to find something to give to the police.”

Never, not once in all the time I lived with Mosier, was he approached by the local police, and there was plenty of cause. They steered clear of him. Whether out of fear or in response to bribery, they left him alone.

“He has the local police in his pocket,” I say.

“Then the FBI,” says Gus. “You know he’s into all sorts of sordid shit, Ash. A guy like him has got to be on their radar.”

I think about his men with guns, about the times my mother and I were banished to the basement apartment for unknown reasons, about the bloody noses and split lips, about the time he unleashed his dogs on one of his own guards.

Huh. I’d forgotten about that. Come to think of it, I never saw that man again.

“There was a guard,” I say. “I think his name was…” I rack my brain. The names of Mosier’s guards are all foreign, and though my brain is good at storage and recall, it’s hard for me to remember words that I only learn phonetically. “Dragon. I think his name was Dragon. He, um, he worked for Mosier. He was a perimeter guard. One day he was there, the next day… he was gone.”