Scattered Ashes

by Dona Sarkar

Genres: Coming of Age; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Sometimes facing the future means saying goodbye to the past. A remarkable story of love and loss, Dona Sarkar’s latest novel explores the timely subject of cultural diversity and the timeless matters of trust, faith, and grief through the eyes of one extraordinary young woman. Mars Alexander is the girl who has everything—the right clothes, the perfect boyfriend, the best grades. But when her military father is declared dead, Mars refuses to believe it—and refuses to say goodbye. With no body to bury, she’s convinced her father will return from Afghanistan, and she’s determined to make him proud. But when she meets the young Middle Eastern instructor of her essay prep class, a door to a whole new world opens. Zayed Anwar has lived a life Mars can barely imagine, or understand. But as he challenges both her intellect and her emotions, she finds herself making bold new choices, and looking at everything through a new lens. Falling in love is as frightening as it is exciting, until she realizes that Zayed is keeping painful secrets from her—secrets that could shatter her all over again.

Release date: November 8, 2016

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 242

Sample

When they buried my father, they buried an empty casket. That night my mother returned to the grave site. I refused to enter the cemetery and instead watched through the midnight fog as she stood in front of the headstone that read “Mars Alexander.” She then fell to her knees and nestled his final medal in the soft earth as a symbol of his life and dedication to our country.

None of this was enough to convince me he was gone. How could someone be dead if there was no body?

“Mars, do you have something to share today?” Stephanie, my therapy group leader, blinked rapidly through her trendy black frames in tune to the heavy hammering on the floor above us. They were adding an “all-ages club” to the top floor of the Kirkland Teen Center in an effort to keep teens out of trouble at night.

No one in high school would be caught dead in an all-ages club. We would continue to do what we always did: buy fake IDs and crash parties at the University of Washington.

My best friend, Erica Esteban, tapped my foot with hers when still I said nothing. The absurd wedge heel she preferred battered my little toe like a gavel. I winced, and Erica smiled in expectation. She’d promised this session of our Military Grief Therapy group would be different: she would make sure I participated today. She said that I needed to deal with my abandonment reaction and other psychotherapy buzzwords we’d been learning in AP Psychology that semester.

“I have nothing to share today. Next time,” I announced, proud of myself for making the promise sound convincing.

Before Erica could smash my poor toe again, Stephanie tossed back her glossy brown hair and twisted the glinting sapphire earring in her new cartilage piercing. “Erica, your turn.”

Erica waited for a pause in the hammering.

“Ricardo’s better this week,” she said with a deep, tremulous sigh. She said that every week, with the same sigh. Ricardo Esteban was still not talking to anyone, except maybe silently to himself.

“How?”

Erica launched into a story about a morsel of recognition in Ricardo’s eyes after their mami had made his favorite green corn tamales for dinner the previous night. He’d eaten seven whole bites, according to Erica. More like five bites, I was pretty sure, though Gia Esteban’s tamales had ruined me for all other tamales.

I was only up to four bites per meal. I probably should have been ashamed that a legless war veteran was beating me in recovery. At least I was no longer awake all night, afraid of the nightmares that would ensue once I closed my eyes. Now I woke every night clammy and cold at three a.m., to hear only the sound of our grandfather clock ticking endlessly downstairs.

I tilted my wrist and peered at my watch. I needed to make it to the University of Washington campus to register for an SAT preparation class before the Institute closed. I hoped no one else after Erica would choose to share and the therapy session would end on time.

No such luck.

Angel, who had a face like one, started to weep during his turn in the circle. “My mother sees me and thinks I’m him. How can I tell her he’s gone?” Angel’s twin brother had been killed in Afghanistan six months before, leaving Angel to handle the aftermath. He told us once that the grief circle was the only place he felt like he could be selfish and grieve on his own without censoring himself for his large Colombian family.

“Be strong for your mother,” people had said to me at my father’s wake. I had circulated through the crowd, greeting my father’s military friends and my mother’s Rotary Club, refilling glasses of rum punch and accepting white-ribboned sympathy cards. Only Bree Nguyen, my father’s mentor, had watched me critically, questioning me with that knowing look I hated.

I’d avoided being alone with her ever since.

“She’ll have a breakdown once she realizes he’s dead,” Angel continued to grieve as if he was the only person in the room. “I know she’ll blame me. I was right there; why couldn’t I have saved him? Why couldn’t it have been someone else?” The rest of us sat in silence, not knowing what to say to that last part.

I watched the second hand on my father’s watch, now fitted for me, make its rounds until it edged toward the twelve o’clock mark.

“I need to leave. Sorry.” I already had my bag and jacket in hand, so Erica couldn’t stop me.

“See you next Tuesday, Mars,” Stephanie called behind me.

Yes, she would. And every Tuesday until everyone agreed I was fixed.

Although I made it in record time across the floating bridge to the University of Washington, I was stalled by a river of traffic as I attempted to cross the street. As if I was in one of those not-safe-for-under-eighteen video games, I dodged police cars, traffic cones, and people pushing southward on University Avenue. Probably a half marathon gone awry or something.

An irate group of anti-war activists was ignoring everyone leaving the scene and was still demonstrating on the corner as I continued to my destination, the College Preparatory Institute.

The perky administrator with Amelie bangs assured me of a well-spent $270 for the SAT Essay Writing class. “Zayed Anwar can teach an illiterate person to write. He’s amazing! And really cute too.”

I smiled at her, not bothering to mention I was here to score a ten or higher on the SAT section, not fall in love.

“That essay section’s been so hard for everyone since it came out.”

Including me. I’d never needed professional help on a test before, but my score was too humiliating to disclose to my father’s alma mater. I had no plans to attend a community college, so my Monday and Wednesday evenings would have to be sacrificed for the next eight weeks.

“What happened out there?” I asked as I signed the receipt. “There’s so much chaos.”

The administrator did an eye-roll. “Some war protesters. They set fire to a garbage can or something around the corner. Just go across the street; there’s less smoke there.”

“Thanks.” I took a copy of the receipt, reading the refund policy. Guaranteed to raise your score by two points!

I was going to need a lot more help than that.

As I ran across the street to avoid the smoky air, I saw a slight movement, like the fluttering of a giant bird’s wing, in the window alcove of my favorite coffee shop.

I stopped. It wasn’t a bird. There was a guy sitting in my usual spot, flipping rapidly through the pages of a book.

The boy in the window seemed completely unaffected by everything going on outside. He was nineteen, twenty at the most, with hurricane-colored eyes, the most incredible I had ever seen. His knife-like cheekbones ridges were even more distinct. He was a stranger to me, yet I couldn’t stop staring at him. I stood paralyzed on the sidewalk. The crossing signal flickered, and I couldn’t persuade my feet to move.

He was reading a book with a familiar-looking burgundy cover but must have sensed someone staring and looked up. Saying that our gazes met was an understatement. In one incredible, heart-stopping second, he seemed to commit to memory every aspect of my face. His abundantly large eyes, too wide-set, seemed out of place in his sharp, tawny-colored features. The sidewalk activity seemed to dull into the background as we stared at each other. Without a smile or any other expression, he returned to his book, as if the exchange had taken place only in my mind.

I felt the ridiculous desire to knock on the window to get his attention. I wanted to see the color of those eyes again.

This was insane. The last time I’d visibly shown any interest in a guy was freshman year, when I’d smiled at Jason Moorehouse and “accidentally” trailed my fingers on his arm. By the end of the day, he was asking me to the spring formal. By the end of the week, we were walking hand in hand to the bus stop. Cut to four years later: we’d posed as “Together Forever Class Couple” for the yearbook and were immortalized in Lakeville High School’s history. But only a month ago, Jason had written me off as certifiably crazy, and we were no longer speaking.

Snapping to my senses, I crossed 45th Street and headed to my car, not daring to look back at the coffee shop.

I had taken over my father’s restored Corvette this past year. After all, no one else wanted it, and the beautiful car lay forgotten, buried in the depths of our garage.

“Cars need to be driven, Mars. Otherwise, they die,” he always said.

Now, in the quiet solitude of the convertible, I finally had a chance to make my daily check-in phone call. Dad had insisted I make my check-in phone call every day after school my whole life, no matter where in the world he was. He wanted to know where I was and what I was doing.

Keeping an eye on the stalled line of SUVs in front of me on the bridge, I sifted around in my handbag, finding my cell phone under a jumble of keys, lip gloss, and an emergency peanut butter pod. I ignored the line of missed calls from my mother and chose the first number on my speed dial.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, no longer surprised by the prompt of his voicemail. “I finally registered for that SAT class. I’ll get into the U. It’s going to happen, don’t worry. I’ll make it happen.”

Despite the fact that Dad hadn’t answered my phone calls in over a month, I never stopped believing he was listening to all my messages or would eventually. Most likely he was out in the field and would return my calls upon returning to base camp. I needed him to do that soon. As always, I closed the conversation with telling him that I was sorry for that last morning, and I wished he would come home to us before Christmas.

We’d never been one of those “camcorder” families. My parents were never the ones with an embarrassing tripod in the front row recording school plays or when I was confused by the trick candles on my fifth birthday cake. I used to think those families were cheesy and wondered who was going to spend a Saturday afternoon watching old DVDs.

What I wouldn’t give to have a recording of Dad making his famous grilled PB&Js in our kitchen, giving a play-by-play Food Network style. I wanted to hear the raspy intonations of his voice from years of smoking again. According to Stephanie, it was perfectly normal to start to forget. I didn’t believe her. How was it possible to forget someone in a few short months?

Traffic finally moved, and ten minutes later, I urged the Corvette to squeal up the boulevard and into Kirkland. The Seattle suburb was almost like a coastal vacation spot, with the lovely Lake Washington beach lining one side and extravagant houses on the other. The downtown vibrated with the energy of out-of-towners with babies and dogs, trendy coffee shops with live music, and restaurants with life spans of six months or less.

I guided the car into the garage of our brick-and-stucco English Tudor house on the waterfront. The historical homes nestled there were all occupied by software and real-estate millionaires who had known each other for years and were practically family. My father, with his unconventional choice of career and sense of humor, had never fit in. However, the house, a wedding gift from my mother’s side, was too beautiful not to live in, and so Marsh Commons had been my home for the past seventeen years.

Lana Alexander, my mother, was sitting at the dining room table, her slim laptop open in front of her. Her fingers stopped tapping, and she immediately closed the lid when I slammed the door to the garage behind me. The flat-screen television suspended on the wall of the dining room replayed the commotion from the afternoon at the U. The news made it look far worse than it had been. One interviewee gasped, “It was horrible! I was terrified!”

“I’m okay,” I said in response to the relieved look in her eyes. “Nothing happened, just a bunch of traffic.”

A waft of warm, buttery chocolate greeted me as I hugged Lana. She held onto me longer than usual. Melted white chocolate-chip cookies, my favorite, were piled neatly on a serving tray, untouched as I took a seat opposite her. I didn’t know who’d made them, but I was certain it wasn’t my mother.

Lana was a socialite, a real estate agent, CEO of a nonprofit organization, or whatever else she wanted to be that week. No one would ever dare call her a housewife. She and I had always been more like sisters rather than mother-daughter. We both enjoyed spa days, a shared Christian Louboutin shoe collection, and gossip about our friends. It made Dad crazy. He said he always felt like he had two teenage daughters instead of one.

“I was worried.” She tapped her jeweled fingernails on the closed lid of the pink laptop. “What happened out there?”

“Someone set fire to a garbage can. One of those anti-war groups or something.”

“Why didn’t you answer your phone? I called five times.”

I shrugged. “The phone lines must have been crazy.” I didn’t tell her that I had been staring at some guy on the street instead of checking my voicemails or had been talking to Dad’s voicemail rather than calling her. I knew the latter would hurt her feelings since she kept telling me over and over that she wished I would talk with her the way we used to.

I could talk with her about some things: what was happening at school, what was going on with my friends, what she should wear to a benefit. But big topics like that simmering anger at my father that overcame me when I was alone? Not so much. She clearly didn’t miss Dad like I did. She never even talked about him anymore. No one did. I was the only one still waiting for him.

Lana pursued her lips and frowned. “Did you register for that class?”

Lana’s face reflected my own nowadays, or rather, mine had started to reflect hers in the past year: tapered olive-green eyes and chocolate-colored hair. But my Roman nose and naturally tan skin were inherited from my Greek father. “Sophia Loren’s love child,” he called me.

“Yup. Starts tomorrow.” I teased a single cookie crumb around the tray, and though I usually could have eaten two or three, I had no appetite and could barely look at them.

“What about Wellesley?” Lana wrapped a finger around her Bluetooth earpiece and frowned.

I shrugged.

“You’re already a shoo-in. I’ve been donating to them every year to make sure of that. They’re going to name one of the newer dorm halls ‘Alexander’ after us. And I thought you liked Boston.”

I shrugged again.

“An answer would be nice.”

“I want options.”

“Yes, we know, the U. Not that I wouldn’t love to have you around. I just think looking at other places isn’t a bad thing. What other schools would you consider?”

“I want to make sure I’m here when Dad comes back.” I knew how this was going to end. The same way it had ended every time we’d had this conversation for the past month.

That look on Lana’s face. I hated that look so much. That forlorn, my-daughter-is-crazy look.

“This is why I don’t talk to you,” I muttered. I reached over and pulled her laptop to my side of the table.

Lana didn’t hear, or didn’t want to show she had. She shook her head, as if shaking all unpleasant thoughts away. “Jason was here looking for you, by the way. He brought the cookies. You should eat at least one. Then call him.”

Jason.

I only nodded in response, still too angry with Lana to let her know how much that bit of information surprised me. Jason had broken up with me with the usual promise of “Let’s stay friends.” We hadn’t spoken since, he avoided eye contact with me in the hallways, and all of our old friends followed his lead.

“I still think you let him get away too easily. So he made a mistake. Give him another chance.”

Get away? Jason wanted out; I was not going to beg him to stay. I was, however, not going to waste the “in” he’d given me, either.

“I’ll have to call Jason’s mom to say thank you,” I said instead, hoping the promise of a standard social grace would distract her.

Lana crossed her arms and watched me. “Mars. Come on.” She sounded just like Erica.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“He wants another chance.”

“He brought cookies. For you. A neighborly gesture. Maybe he was reaching out to you.” I was, of course, completely joking. As if Lana would let an ounce of sugar pass her lips.

“You should invite him over for dinner.”

“Oh really.” I looked over the top of the laptop, knowing I was smirking. “For what? Lean Cuisines and mineral water?”

Lana glared at me, not missing the jab. Ever since Dad had left, our kitchen had been used exactly never. He had been the only chef in the house, the heart, everything. Without him around, we lived in a five-thousand-square-foot dollhouse, a professionally decorated shell that everyone admired. Yet no one could see how empty the house had become now that it was just me and Lana. She and I were like two kids who’d been left alone for a weekend.

“You’re supposed to be on my side, by the way. Jason was wrong, not me,” I retorted.

Lana didn’t respond right away. Of course, she didn’t think Jason had been in the wrong. What was he supposed to do when his girlfriend started to act crazy? Break up with her, of course.

“He made me an outcast, remember? It’s his fault I—” I stopped talking. Lana wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear the truth about how I spent my days at school.

“Looks like Jason’s finally matured. Besides, your dad really liked him, so you should have no objections.” The bitterness in Lana’s voice didn’t go unnoticed. She’d always been jealous that I’d always tried to seek out Dad’s approval, but never hers.

“Likes. Dad really likes him,” I said sharply. “And I am well aware of that. I’m sure he likes Dad too.”

“Mars—”

“Lana.” I caught my breath as the internet browser came up to the previously opened page: Matchmaker.com. “Why were you looking at a dating site?”

“Baby, absolutely do not overreact to this.”

“To what? To you cheating on my father?”

“Oh, come on! We talked about this last week, and I told you—”

There had been no talking last week; Lana had simply informed me that it was time she moved on with her life. No discussion. And this was what she’d meant. I had refused to listen then, but now there was no denying it.

“You can call it whatever you want, but you are dating while you are still married to someone. You’re having an affair! Dad is giving up—” The swelling in my throat cut me off. “He is giving up everything for us, our country, and this is what you do behind his back? We need him to come home to us. Don’t you want that?”

I was out of the chair before the end of the sentence. I couldn’t hear this again, all her reasons for why it was “time to move on.” She couldn’t be alone forever, I needed a father-figure in my life, her list of “whys” went on and on.

“Let’s talk about this, baby.”

“I am not your baby. It’s your fault he’s gone in the first place. You can at least act like you want him to come back.”

I shoved the chair against the dining table and watched it rattle Lana to her core. She turned away from me, a hand covering her mouth, and only then did I notice her bronzed skin and the fresh caramel highlights in her straightened hair. She was wearing a new outfit, a white silky dress with perfectly coordinated jewelry. Lana was a terrible shopper and couldn’t put together a decent ensemble without a team of helpers. There was no way she looked this good on her own. She looked absolutely beautiful and available.

So it was over. She was done waiting.

Why was she doing this? We had a life, a system, a plan. It wasn’t perfect, but it was all we had left. We were in waiting mode, clinging to each other, hoping for the best, waiting for some certain news.

I ran up the flight of stairs and pressed my back against the wall, hiding. I told myself it was to see if Lana would call one of her friends to complain about her “impossible” teenager, but deep down, I knew that I was waiting to see if she would come after me. I wanted her to follow me upstairs like a real mother would. I wanted her to tell me that she was making a mistake and that she was going to be strong and wait for my father to come home and would hold my hand until he did.

She didn’t.

I knew Lana wouldn’t come into my room. The number of gossip fests and impromptu fashion shows we’d had up here before was immeasurable, but all of that had stopped this past month. In theory, it was lame to be best friends with your mother, but she was different.

My friends were jealous that I could talk to her about anything, and I relished that envy. My snarky barbs with other people, my not-so-good grades, which guys I secretly had crushes on—Lana loved discussing it all. And she always told me about what was going on with her friends, their husbands, and secret boyfriends. We always joked that I was seventeen going on forty and she was the other way around.

Now, she was trying to do the parental thing and making big decisions for both of us, something she didn’t know anything about and a role she had no right to fill. Ironically, this was the main topic of all my parents’ fights, the ones I would stand on the stairs and eavesdrop on.

Dad said Lana didn’t set any boundaries for me and was too busy being my friend. He didn’t trust her to take care of me while he was gone. Every few years, Dad shipped out as a part of th. . .