Page 76 of Pieces of Ash

Behind my safety goggles, I blink my eyes in surprise. My fingers slip a little, and I mess up the perfect spiral I was making. “Oh! Oh, no! Sorry, Dad!”

“Ce n’est pas grave. Keep going,” he says, spinning the rod without a break in rhythm. “Some mistakes are good. Zis one? It will be a memory for you. It was me, Julian. It will remind you, fiston. She didn’t leave you. Only me. Not Noelle, not you. She left me.”

Opening the door to my room, my eyes fly to the vase on my dresser, which sits beside a picture of me, Noelle, and my father.The top half of the glass has a beautiful spiral design, while the bottom half has a single jagged slash, like a rogue lightning bolt crashing through a once-peaceful sky.

Missing my father is, without warning, a hit to the chest, and my breath catches from the intensity of it.

“What?” asks Noelle from her air mattress on the floor. “What happened? Jules?” It’s only the second time she’s spoken to me directly all day.

“Huh?”

“Your face. What happened?”

I take a deep breath. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I reach down for the remote on her lap and turn off the TV.

“What the?—?”

“Listen.”

Though my sister looks away from me, I assume she is listening because she doesn’t say anything else. As we share the dark silence, I can hear Ashley’s voice, far, far away. I can’t hear the words, but I can hear the same melody that my father loved so long ago.

“Do you hear it?”

“Mm,” she hums. “Yeah.”

“Do you know it?”

“But in your dreams, whatever they be…,” Noelle sings softly. “Yeah. I know this one.”

“Dad loved it,” I whisper.

“…dream a little dream of me,” she finishes, her voice following Ashley’s soft notes as the shower upstairs is turned on, muting the song.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She snatches the remote out of my hand and turns the TV back on. “For what, exactly?”

Ambient light brightens the room, and I sit down on the side of my bed, feeling like an old man. “For not telling you what happened in Washington.”

Turning to face me, her eyes widen. “You…you are?”

I nod. “If it hurts you, I am.”

She takes a deep breath and sighs, tilting her head. “I just…I don’t know. Dad’s gone. Mom’s…I mean, we haven’t seen her in years, right? It’s you and me against the world, right, Jules? I just…I don’t like secrets, I guess. Not betweenus.”

“You really want to know what happened?” I ask, wincing at the thought of telling her the whole sordid, shameful story.

She twitches her lips, looking so much like our dad for a second, I grin at her.

“What?”

“Dad used to do that with his mustache.”

She smiles back at me, doing it again.