Page 70 of Pieces of Ash

I nod at Jock. “Done. And if you need more, let me know. I can make four or five a day.”

Noelle looks up at me from where she’s sitting, her smile grudging as she speaks to me voluntarily for the first time since last night. “Dad would be proud, Jules.”

I shrug, but her words mean something to me, and my voice is warm when I thank her. “Merci, tamia.”

“French,” says Ashley. “You speak it. I knew it!”

My eyes shift from my sister, across Gus, to rest on the sparkling blue eyes of my housemate.Damn, but she’s pretty.“You did?”

Her cheeks color pink. “Well, you…sometimes you watch movies in French, and I wondered if?—”

“How do you know what I watch?”

“I can hear it,” she says, her cheeks coloring dramatically as she confesses, “through the floor.”

I take another sip of my wine. Fuck. What else has she heard? I’ve beaten-off thinking about her about a dozen times since she arrived. My cheeks are as hot when I set down my glass.

“The plot thickens,” hums Gus. He looks at me and winks. “How ’bout you help Ash take these bowls into the kitchen, tiger? I want to catch up with youradorablelittle sister.”

Gus proceeds to ask Noelle questions about her classes, while Ashley and I collect the bowls from each side of the table. My sister, Gus, and Jock are laughing companionably as I follow Ashley to the house, up the porch steps, and into the kitchen.

She places her three bowls in the sink, then turns and takes mine, her fingers sliding against mine as the bowls change hands. I’m not going to lie—I feel it everywhere, and it makes me lean a little closer to her.

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” I ask, my eyes focused on the intricate braids in her hair that start at her crown and trail to her back. Her hair is white in some places, silver in others, and gold in still others. It’s like something out of afairytale—I’d almost believe that Rumpelstiltskin spun Ashley’s hair on his wheel if she told me it was so.

There is a lavender sunset outside the window, where people we love sit at a candlelit picnic table, and for the first time in a long time, a rare peace descends over me. People. Food. A beautiful girl. An amethyst sunset. It feels good. It feels so good, I want to sink into it and find a way to hold on to it forever.

“Um, at school,” she says, her voice just a little nervous. “Service and teamwork are important parts of the, um, curriculum.”

“Service and teamwork?”

She turns on the water to rinse the bowls, and I pivot slightly so that my back is against the counter, and I’m looking at her askance instead of facing her.

“Mm-hm. Preparing meals for the homeless and elderly and taking turns in the kitchen, assisting the numeraries?—”

“What-a-raries?”

“They’re helpers. Like nuns.”

“Your school’s pretty conservative, huh?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess so, but I have nothing to compare it to.”

“It’s Catholic.”

“Yes.”

“Is it Opus Dei?”

“Yes, it is.”

Huh. Well, that explains a little more.

For the short amount of time I worked in DC, I rented an apartment in a suburb called Vienna where Hartridge, an Opus Dei all-girls prep school, was being built.

Out of curiosity, I googled “Opus Dei” and discovered that it’s a branch of Catholicism that practices strict adherence to rules and whose schools offer a traditional and conservative education. Its detractors might throw around words likemisogynisticandoppressive, while its supporters would tout its commitment to values and faith.

Personally, I was raised as a Christmas Eve and Easter morning sort of Catholic. Yeah, I made my First Communion. No, I wasn’t confirmed. And honestly, I don’t have much of an opinion on the church in which Ashley was raised but knowing that it was influenced by Opus Dei certainly answers some questions about why she seems so sheltered.