Page 80 of Pieces of Ash

Because I felt it.

I FELT it.

Everywhere.

Chapter 15

Ashley

Whenever our circumstances changed, Tig was fond of saying, “This is the new normal, kid. Get used to it.”

After that, she’d snort a line of coke, light a joint, and watch the BBC News.

The new normal could mean her throwing a bag of kale chips at me and expecting me to eat them for dinner.

The new normal could mean standing in our front doorway, watching our new Jaguar being repossessed.

The new normal could be Tig showing up at my classroom one afternoon, taking me via limo to a posh private school two towns away, and enrolling me there without warning or explanation. It could also be that same school kicking me out because my tuition hadn’t been paid and Tig re-enrolling me in the school I’d just left.

It could, literally, be anything. There was no rhyme or reason to the old normal, so the new normal meant nothing. Very little about my life ever seemed normal at all.

But it made me flexible. It made me more adaptable to the changes around me. It kept my expectations low. Nothing was permanent. Nothing was forever. And when circumstances changed, I learned how to roll with the punches.

But that entire philosophy was flipped on its head when I turned thirteen and we moved to New York. Suddenly, normalwasa static thing.

For five years, from eighth grade through twelfth, I attended the Blessed Virgin Academy, coming home at Thanksgiving for five days, Christmas for seven, Easter for three, and for two months in the summertime, which I mostly spent alone in my room, reading, except for the rare times when my mother wanted to watch TV with me. It was a regimented and predictable life, and had it not included an intimate association with the Raumann family, would have been welcome. I quickly learned that, although I had developed coping skills for chaos, I much preferred order.

But here and now, waking up on Monday morning, I am grateful for my early education. Something shifted between me and Julian over the weekend, and I have yet to figure out the new normal. As I open my eyes, breathing in the welcome smells of freshly brewed coffee, eggs, and bacon, however, I’m suddenly eager to figure out what it is.

“Ashley? Hey, Ashley, are you up?” I hear Julian’s voice from the foot of the stairs. “I made breakfast. Um, if you’re awake, come down.” As I sit up in bed, I hear him once more. “Ashley?”

“I’m up,” I call, my toes curling under the covers.

His voice surges. “Oh! You are? Great. I made breakfast.”

“It smells good,” I say, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I made enough for two.”

My stomach is so full of butterflies, I don’t know if there’s room for food. “Thank you. I’ll, um…I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and after a second I hear his footsteps moving away from the stairs, back to the kitchen.

Isthisthe new normal?I wonder, standing up and stretching my arms over my head.Because I’d love to get used to it.

I pull my nightgown over my head, and as it falls to the floor in a soft heap, I suddenly remember Tig’s diary and the entry I read before falling asleep last night. Sitting naked on the side of my bed, I pull the diary onto my lap and flip to the last entry. I skim the words quickly, refreshing them in my mind and wondering if they mean what Ithinkthey mean.

Deep down—deep in my heart, where I am becoming a woman—I understand them. I knowexactlywhat they mean.

I know because Julian looked at me that way beforeandafter our kiss. He looked—how did Tig put it?—at me, into me, and through me. And like Tig, I felt it everywhere.

So…Anders had feelings for my mother? Romantic feelings? Did she return them?

I remember back to finding Anders in my mother’s bedroom the day after her funeral. I can picture him clearly, sitting on the edge of her bed, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with soft sobs.

She loved you.

His words, muttered so angrily, so fiercely, in the car ride back to school, resonate in my head, and…oh, my god…