Eight Years Ashes

Mia

The plane hit the tarmac hard. I pressed my forehead against the cold window, watching Pennsylvania unfold beneath me like a bruise I'd spent eight years trying to forget.

My phone had been off since I boarded the plane in London yesterday morning.

Three days ago, my mother had called, sobbing through every word as she described what Ethan had become.

She barely called. In eight years, I could count on one hand the number of times I'd heard her voice—and every single call had been about Ethan.

So when her name flashed across my screen at two in the morning London time, three days ago, I knew before I even answered.

I'd picked up on the second ring, heart already racing.

She didn't bother with pleasantries. The composure she'd spent a lifetime cultivating shattered the moment I said hello.

"Mia—" Her voice broke immediately. "Mia, please. I need you to come home. Ethan needs you."

"He's getting worse," she gasped. "The doctors say it's severe regression. He won't eat. He won't sleep. He just sits there, rocking, and the only word he says is your name. Over and over. Mia. Mia. Mia."

I'd closed my eyes, grip tightening on the phone.

The image hit me like a physical blow—Ethan at the window, small and waiting, his hands pressed against the glass. Every single morning. For eight years. My throat tightened. He'd never asked me for anything. Never blamed me, never stopped loving me. And I'd left him anyway. Left him to fade into a silence that only said my name, over and over, to an empty room. The guilt twisted in my chest, sharp and unforgiving.

"Every morning he goes to the window. Every single morning, like he's still that little boy waiting for you to come home from school. And when you don't show up, he just shuts down. He won't talk to me. He won't talk to anyone."

"Please," she whispered. "I know I have no right to ask. But he's your brother. He needs you. You're the only one who can bring him back."

I'd stood there in my Kensington flat and felt it all crumble.

Ethan had always been the one pure thing in my life—the only one in that house who'd ever treated me like real family. When we were kids, I'd been the one to feed him, to hold him through his meltdowns, to sit with him for hours. I'd been his translator, his safe harbor, his entire world.

And I'd left him. Eight years ago, I'd walked away. Now he needed me, and I had to go back.

By midnight, I'd booked a flight. By dawn, I was at the auction house, settling everything I could before the first flight to Pennsylvania.

Now, as the plane taxied toward the gate, I turned my phone back on. It vibrated immediately—emails, messages, three missed calls from Arthur. One text, also from him: Please call me when you land.

I ignored them all and stared out the window.

Pennsylvania. I hadn't been back once in eight years. Not once. I'd built an entire life on the other side of an ocean specifically so I wouldn't have to.

The seat belt sign clicked off. Around me, passengers began pulling down luggage and reaching for their phones. I stayed where I was for a moment longer, watching the ground crew move across the tarmac in the grey morning light.

Then I grabbed my bag and got off the plane.

The terminal was fluorescent lights and too many people. I shouldered my carry-on and followed the crowd toward baggage claim, heels clicking against tile.

Outside, the Pennsylvania air hit me like a slap—cold and sharp, carrying the scent of asphalt and impending snow. I slid into the back of a cab and gave the driver the hospital address.

As we pulled onto the highway, I watched the landscape roll past—strip malls where there used to be fields, new apartment complexes crowding the horizon. Eight years had changed more than I'd expected. Or maybe I just hadn't been paying attention when I left.

The cab turned into the hospital parking lot. I paid the driver and sat there for a moment, staring at the beige brick building.

I wasn't ready.

But Ethan needed me.

I got out of the car.

My mother was waiting in the lobby, perched on a vinyl chair with her hands twisted together.

Aileen Summers had always been beautiful in that fragile, porcelain-doll way. Now she just looked tired, makeup settling into fine lines.

She stood when she saw me, face crumpling. "Thank God you're here."

I let her hold me, feeling the tremor in her grip.

"How is he?"

"He won't talk to anyone. Not me, not the doctors. He just—he keeps saying your name. Over and over."

I pulled my hands free. "Take me to him."

The pediatric ward was on the third floor. The elevator muzak grated against my nerves. My mother kept talking—symptoms, doctors' recommendations, the food tray Ethan threw at a nurse—and with every word, something inside me pulled tighter. Eight years. In eight years, he hadn't gotten better. He'd gotten worse.

The door was half-open.

Ethan was sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around his shins, rocking back and forth. His hair fell into his eyes. So thin I could see his shoulder blades through his T-shirt.

"Ethan," I said softly.

He didn't look up. Just kept rocking, lips moving soundlessly.

Then I heard it. My name, barely a whisper, repeated like a mantra.

Mia. Mia. Mia.

I crossed the room and dropped to my knees, reaching for his hands.

"Hey," I said. "Hey, it's me. I'm here."

For a moment, nothing.

Then his rocking stopped. He lifted his head, eyes—wide and dark—locking onto mine.

His eyes widened, then softened in a way that made my chest ache, as if he was trying to believe I was really there.

"Mia," he said, and this time it was a sob.

He lunged forward, arms wrapping around my neck with force that nearly knocked me over. I caught him, his whole body shaking, face pressed into my shoulder, tears soaking through my shirt.

"I'm here," I said, hand moving in circles on his back. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise."

"Don't go," Ethan choked out. "Don't go, don't go, don't go."

"I won't," I whispered. "I won't, Ethan. I'm staying."

Behind me, my mother's shaky breath. The soft click of the door closing.

I sat on the edge of the bed, holding my brother while he cried.

When Ethan finally calmed, I coaxed him to lie back down and pulled the blanket around his shoulders.

He didn't let go of my hand.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, running my thumb over his knuckles.

"You hungry?"

He nodded.

I smiled. "Okay. I'll get you something. But you have to promise me you'll eat it, all right?"

"Promise," he mumbled, then quieter: "Stay."

"I'm staying," I said.

I stayed with Ethan until his breathing evened out, his small hand relaxing in mine. I sat there, just watching him in the dim light. Eight years. He'd grown—his face had lost some of its softness, his frame no longer quite so small—but lying there, he looked exactly like the little boy I'd left behind. The nurses said he'd be stable through the night. I'd sent Mom home. The ward was quiet.

I should have left then. Should have gone straight to the hotel and collapsed.

But my feet carried me down the wrong hallway.

Past the pediatric wing. Past the nurses' station. Toward the ICU.

The fluorescent lights were the same. The smell—antiseptic and fear—was the same. Even the scuff marks on the linoleum looked familiar, like time had simply stopped here and waited.

I stopped outside the double doors.

Through the small window, I could see the rows of beds, the machines, the steady beep of monitors keeping people tethered to life.

Eight years ago, I'd stood in this exact spot. Eighteen years old, my hands still shaking, Luke's blood dried brown under my fingernails. They wouldn't let me in. Family only, the nurse had said, her voice not unkind. Are you family?

I wasn't.

I was just the girl he'd taken a knife for. The girl whose presence in his life had put him on that gurney in the first place.

His mother had arrived an hour later—Catherine Morrison, composed even in crisis, her heels clicking down this same hallway.

She'd looked at me once. Just once. But in that single glance, I saw the words she didn't need to say: *He's in the ICU because of you.

This is your fault.

She wasn't wrong.

I turned away from the ICU doors and walked back toward the elevators.

The elevator button glowed under my finger. While I waited, a mounted TV on the wall flickered to life—some late-night financial news segment, the volume low but audible in the empty corridor.

"—Luke Morrison, chief investment officer of Apex Art Capital, sent shockwaves through the art world today—"

My hand froze.

"—acquired a controlling stake in Sotheby's London—"

Sotheby's London.

The auction house where I'd worked in London.

He'd bought a controlling stake in it.

On the screen, Luke Morrison looked every inch the Wall Street predator they called him—tailored suit, confident posture, that practiced smile for the cameras.

But it was his eyes that made my breath catch.

Even through the television, even across eight years and an ocean, I could see it. They were colder now. Not the warm brown I remembered, the ones that used to look at me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world.

These eyes were ice. Calculated. Empty of everything except control.

The boy who'd held my hand in the dark was gone—the man on the screen was a stranger.

A stranger who held absolute power.

I stepped into the elevator in a daze.

I didn't know when I'd see him again.

But something deep down told me, a cold, sure feeling sinking right into my bones, that running into him again was bound to happen.