Ashley Cooper's Arc

Chapter 28 of 37

Ashley sat in the car and stared at the mansion. The old woman's laugh still rang in her ears. Doris had called her a child. Doris had used her and thrown her away. The rejection turned hot inside Ashley's chest. She had opened herself up, and Doris had spat on it. "Take me home," Ashley said. "To my dad." Mike drove her back to the Cooper house without a word. He dropped her at the curb and left. Ashley stood on the porch and knocked. The door opened. Danny Cooper stared at her over his round glasses, a pen still tucked in his shirt pocket. His mouth trembled. Then he pulled her into a hug. "You came back," he whispered. "I don't care about any of it. You're home." He sat her at the kitchen table and made tea. His hands shook. He kept looking at her like she might vanish. Then he set his cup down and cleared his throat. "I have to tell you something," Danny said. "Since your mother left, I've learned things about myself. Ashley, I'm gay." Ashley looked at her boring, gentle father. Something in her had hardened tonight. She wanted him to understand her too. "Dad," she said. "You're not gay. You're a lesbian." Danny blinked behind his glasses. "That's not—" "It's fine," Ashley said. She patted his hand. "We're the same now." She let him believe he had his daughter back. But she couldn't sleep. She lay in her old bed and thought about Doris. Every hour, the anger grew. Doris had shown her what she was, then slammed the door. No girl would ever want her. Doris had made sure of it. Around midnight, Ashley got up. She took the gas can from the garage and a box of matches from the kitchen drawer. She walked back through the dark to the mansion. The old house stood silent. Ashley found a low window, unlatched and loose. She climbed inside. Doris slept upstairs, her breath rasping through the floorboards. Ashley poured the gasoline across the wooden floor. The smell burned her nose. Her bone hand did not shake. She struck a match at the door. The small flame trembled between her fingers. She thought of the laugh, the word child, the rejection that had cracked her open. Ashley dropped the match. The fire leaped up the walls. Heat pushed her out the window. She ran into the trees and watched the mansion burn orange against the black sky. Somewhere inside, Doris never woke. Ashley walked home through the smoke on her clothes. The person who had rejected her was gone. But the ache under her ribs stayed. She still had no one who wanted her. She had only made herself into someone harder to love.