Page 64 of Pieces of Ash

“The silent treatment.”

“She’s good at it,” I say, thinking that she learned from the master, our mother. “Are you surprised?”

“A little. She’s younger.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s in charge.”

“But she’s so small, and you’re so…” Her words have tumbled out, but now she lets them trail off.

“I’m so…what?”

“…much bigger,” she murmurs, a pink bloom coloring her cheek. “Why, um, why are you, uh,cagey?”

I shrug. I know why, of course, but I’m not anxious to tell her the sad story of my destroyed career. I fall back on an easier story instead. “Our mom left us when we were young. It affected me, I guess.”

“I’m sorry. She passed away?”

“No. She physicallyleft. Took off. She moved from Vermont to Florida, divorced my dad, married Greg fucking Kellerman, and started a new life.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Noelle was eight,” she figures out quickly. “That’s young.”

“I think it fucks you up,” I say, articulating something I haven’t said aloud in a long time.

She nods. “It’s hard to trust other people when the one who was supposed to love you most lets you down. It’s a betrayal. I don’t know if you ever get over it.”

“Sounds like you have experience with this.”

“My mother…” She pauses. “My mother let me down too.”

“She pawned you off on your older sister,” I say.

“It’s more complicated than that,” she answers, and I feel her closing up again. But then she surprises me. “Make up with Noelle. She’s your sister. She’s all you have. You never know when…”

You might lose her.

The unspoken words are heavy between us as the pond comes into view. Ashley moves toward it without me as I stand at the end of the path, watching her. For whatever reason, her own mother abandoned her too—left her with her junkie sister in LA and returned to Wales after that sister died. Why didn’t they take Ashley with them? Because she was enrolled in school here? Why didn’t her parents offer her a decent life with them instead of mayhem with her sister? And where are they now when she, arguably, needs them more than ever?

I catch up with her at the pond.

“I don’t know what happened to estrange you from your parents, but maybe you should take your own advice and reach out to them. Now that your sister’s gone, they’re all you have too, aren’t they?”

When she looks up at me, her eyes are so heavy, so sad, I instantly regret my words and the heavy-handed way I’ve given her unsolicited advice on something I know nothing about.

“I have no one,” she says softly, turning back to the pond and ending our conversation.

Day #17 of THE NEW YOU!

It’s been a year.

A year since I married Mosier, since I wrote in this diary, since I chose thisfuckinglife.

(Since I chose this slow and painful death.)

I have learned the rules to this life.