My Ashes Beneath Your Feet

Because of severe nyctalopia, the moment the sun went down, my world shrank to absolute zero. Darkness wasn't just a lack of light for me; it was a physical wall, an impenetrable terror that left me completely paralyzed. Nicholas had once promised he would be my cane, my compass, my eyes. Until Genevieve returned from Paris. It was Labor Day weekend, and he insisted on driving the four of us out to the undeveloped ridges of the Appalachian foothills for an evening hike to watch the harvest moon. Halfway up the unpaved trail, Genevieve claimed the mountain wind was giving her a migraine and dissolved into tears, begging to go back down immediately. Panic seized my throat. I grabbed the hem of Nicholas’s windbreaker, desperately pleading with him not to abandon me in the pitch black. He only gave my hand a perfunctory pat. "Be good, June. Let me get Genevieve to the bottom first. I’ll come straight back up for you." Two hours passed. A thick, suffocating fog rolled through the pine trees, and the temperature plummeted. My limbs stiffened with cold. Alone in the fathomless dark, shivering uncontrollably, I broke down. With trembling, numb fingers, I hit the speed-dial on my phone. When the line clicked open, Genevieve’s breathy, amused laughter cut through the receiver, sharper than a razor. "What did I tell you, Nicholas?" she purred. "Leave her alone on a dark mountain path for five minutes, and she’ll call begging for attention." Beside her, my best friend—Nicholas’s own sister, Bethany—chimed in with an exasperated groan. "June, could you drop the theatrics for once? Genevieve isn’t feeling well, and here you are throwing a jealous fit." My teeth chattered so hard they ached. "Nicholas..." I managed, my voice raw and breaking. "You said you were coming back for me." Nicholas’s tone drifted through the speaker, casual, bored, utterly dismissive. "Genevieve was just teasing you, June. Besides, the moon is full tonight. It’s plenty bright. Stop using your night blindness to hold me hostage." "Face your fear and walk down yourself," he added coldly. "We’re waiting at the trailhead with fireworks." The distant sounds of their shared laughter hummed in my ear, turning my heart to ash. I looked up. Heavy storm clouds had swallowed the moon whole. There was no light. Only a suffocating, infinite void. Blindly, I reached out, trying to feel along the jagged rock face to retrace my steps. But my sneaker caught on loose gravel. The earth beneath my foot gave way with a sickening slide. As my body plummeted into the abyss, the sky above erupted in brilliant, blooming sparks of gold and crimson fireworks. Nicholas. This joke cost me my life. … "June, have you quite finished this tantrum?" "The first round of sparklers is already done. How long are you planning to play dead up there?" Nicholas stared down at his phone screen, his brow furrowing deeper with every unanswered ring. My soul hovered in the thin, frigid air above, gazing down at the broken shell of my body at the bottom of the ravine. Sharp shale had torn through my ribs. Blood pooled around me, dark and thick, seeping into the frozen dirt. My unseeing eyes were fixed wide open, staring blankly at the empty sky. Two yards away, half-buried in the undergrowth, my phone lay with its screen shattered into a spiderweb of red-stained glass. "Nicholas... is June really angry with me?" Genevieve drew Nicholas’s fleece jacket tighter around her shoulders, her eyelashes glistening with unshed tears. "It’s all my fault. I shouldn't have suggested leaving her alone on the trail. I just thought... she relies on you so much. I thought it would help her learn to be a little more independent." Bethany rolled her eyes, hurling the burnt-out wire of a sparkler onto the gravel path. "Why do you even care, Genevieve? June has always been an exhausting drama queen. She waves that stupid night blindness around like a VIP pass. Sure, this path isn't paved, but the park service put reflective trail markers every fifty feet! How hard is it to follow them down? Would it kill her?" Nicholas was quiet for a second, then exhaled a tired sigh. "Don't take the blame onto yourself, Genevieve. She’s just sulking. She’s pulled this exact stunt before." Floating above them, a dull, phantom ache tore through my chest. Just last month, when Genevieve’s flight landed, Nicholas had abandoned me in a dim underground parking garage so he wouldn't be late to pick her up. In the shadowy stairwell, I had missed a step, tumbling down an entire flight of concrete stairs until my knees were a shredded, bloody mess. When I called him, sobbing through the agony, his voice had been clipped: "June, we’ve walked that garage a hundred times together. Just find your way out like an adult. Genevieve just cleared customs; I can’t leave." That day, I had dragged myself across the oil-slicked concrete floor for half an hour on my hands and knees before I found the elevator doors. Now, my neck was snapped and my lungs were crushed, and he still believed I was staging a scene. Nicholas kept his eyes pinned to the dark trailhead for a long moment. He dialed my number once more. "We're sorry. The cellular customer you have reached is turned off or not available." The recorded voice rang out hollow against the mountain breeze. Bethany’s lip curled in disgust. "Look at that. She powered off her phone on purpose to mess with your head, Nicholas. She wants you to panic, race up the ridge, and beg for her forgiveness so she can feel important." Looking down at Bethany’s sharp, spiteful features, the betrayal burned worse than the cold. This was the girl I had treated like a sister for five years. When she flunked her bar exam, I was the one who stayed awake with her until dawn, drilling flashcards night after night. When her fiancé broke her heart and she tried to slit her wrists, I grabbed the naked razor blade with my bare palm, taking seven stitches just to keep her breathing. Yet here she stood, draped over another woman’s shoulder, driving nails into my coffin. The last trace of patience vanished from Nicholas’s face. He snapped his phone into his pocket. "Fine. If she wants to sleep on a mountain, she can freeze out here until the cold knocks some sense into her head." Genevieve pressed her fingers to her lips, masking the faint triumph curving her mouth, though her voice remained sweetly concerned. "Are you sure? What if she’s genuinely terrified..." Nicholas let out a mirthless laugh. "Don't indulge her. I've spoiled her rotten. Come on, let's set off the rest of the fireworks. You told me you missed the late-summer shows while you were in Europe." The fuse sizzled. Bursts of emerald and violet lit up the sky, illuminating the radiant, laughing faces of the three people below. And, down in the pitch-black trench of the ravine, they briefly washed over my shattered, bleeding corpse. When the smoke finally cleared, the mountain returned to a tomb-like hush. The air dipped below freezing. Nicholas opened the passenger door, gently guiding Genevieve into the front seat. Bethany slid into the back, glancing lazily out the window. "Nicholas... you're really leaving her out here?" Nicholas turned the ignition. The engine roared, his hands completely steady on the wheel. "We're going back to the resort. By morning, she'll walk back on her own." I drifted in the cold slipstream as the red tail lights wound down the switchbacks and disappeared into the night. ... The next morning, in the sunlit dining room of the resort. Nicholas sat over breakfast, staring at his screen, his scowl deepening by the minute. I stood beside him, watching his messages hang in silence. "June, haven't you dragged this out long enough?" "You have thirty minutes to call me back, or there will be consequences." The last one had been sent five minutes ago: "If you think playing missing person will make me bend, you overestimate your leverage." Across the table, Bethany scooped strawberry jam onto her toast. "She’s probably holed up in some boutique hotel downtown, smirking while she waits for you to lose your mind." Genevieve, wearing an immaculate ivory sweater dress, wiped at her eyes with a linen napkin. "Please don't be mad at her, Nicholas. June grew up sheltered; it's natural she bruises easily. It’s my fault. If I had just pushed through my headache and stayed on the ridge, none of this would have happened." "Stop," Nicholas said firmly. "None of this is on you. She brought it on herself." I watched as he pushed a plate of warm, golden almond croissants—the pastry I craved every weekend—toward Genevieve. "Eat something. You've had stomach troubles since the flight. You need to rest." A slow, piercing ache hollowed out my spirit. I had chronic gastritis for years. To make sure I ate clean, Nicholas used to get up at six every morning, running to the farmers' market for organic bone broth and fresh ginger. He had never been comfortable in the kitchen; once, an enamel pot cracked under high heat, scalding the back of his hand until his skin peeled away in red blisters. I had cried over the burn, wrapping his hand in gauze, but he had smiled and kissed my forehead. "June, to keep you healthy, a little scar is nothing." Now, every ounce of that tenderness belonged to someone else. By that afternoon, Nicholas had driven Genevieve back to our modern lakefront home on the outskirts of the city. The heavy front door clicked open to absolute silence. Nicholas paused on the hardwood threshold, his gaze sweeping across the immaculate, empty foyer. "Still not back?" Genevieve slipped into my plush, rabbit-eared house slippers and drifted through the open-concept living area. "Nicholas... isn’t this place a little depressing? It’s so dark." She tapped her manicured nail against the baseboards, pointing toward the softly glowing nightlights installed along the stair treads and hallways. "Little lights everywhere... It feels so clinical. Like a hospice ward." My gaze followed her finger, my heart sinking into the shadows. Nicholas had spent three weekends on his knees installing those motion-sensor lights with his own hands. To ensure I never bruised a shin, he had measured the rise of every single stair, testing each bulb's lumens so they were soft enough not to glare, yet bright enough to keep me safe. He had whispered into my hair: "June, as long as I’m here, you will never have to walk through the dark." Now, Nicholas stared at the discreet little fixtures. His jaw tightened. "It is an eyesore." He raised his voice toward the kitchen, where our housekeeper was setting down a tray. "Mrs. Davis! Call an electrician and rip these guide lights out. All of them. They give me a headache." Mrs. Davis froze, a glass of water trembling in her grip. "Mr. Prescott, please... you can't mean that. Miss Hastings can't navigate at night. Without those lights, she'll take a terrible fall." Nicholas yanked loose his silk tie, his voice clipped and venomous. "Take them down. If she can't handle the house without them, she doesn't need to come back." Mrs. Davis swallowed hard, unable to defy him, and quietly went to fetch the toolbox. I watched the worker pry the gentle fixtures from the baseboards, leaving jagged, hollow gashes in the drywall. Like the empty spaces he was gouging out of my memory. When the last fixture fell, Nicholas turned back to the housekeeper. "Pack up all of June's personal things from the master suite and move them to the guest wing. Genevieve is staying for the week, and she can't stand the smell of June's perfume." I stood there, translucent and silent, watching Mrs. Davis blink back tears as she packed my life away into cardboard moving boxes. My cardigans. My rosewater toners. The matching linen pajamas I had bought for our anniversary. Shoved into brown cartons like estate sale junk. In the corner of the room, Genevieve watched the boxes fill, her lips curling in a quiet, victorious smile. Right then, Nicholas’s phone buzzed on the granite counter. Seeing an unfamiliar local number, he snatched it up with an irritated snap. "Prescott speaking." A grave, measured male voice came through the line. "Mr. Nicholas Prescott? This is Detective Briggs from the County Sheriff’s Department, Major Crimes Unit." "Yes. What is this about?" "Early this morning, search and rescue recovered a body at the base of the ridge near the old state park trails. Based on personal items found at the scene, we believe the deceased is your fiancée, June Hastings. We need you to come down to the county morgue immediately to make a formal identification." The room seemed to drop ten degrees. The air calcified. The color bled instantly from Nicholas’s face. "Identification? A... a body?" Before the detective could speak again, Genevieve gasped from the sofa. "Nicholas! Look! June just posted!" She thrust her phone into Nicholas’s face. Displayed on the screen was my verified Instagram account. A new post had gone up five minutes earlier. The location tag read: "The Peninsula Hotel, Presidential Suite." The photo showed an opulent silver tea service on a lace tablecloth, warm afternoon sunlight pouring through floor-to-ceiling windows, serene and luxurious. The caption read: "Nothing beats peace and quiet on your own. Wonder how long until a certain someone crawls back to apologize." It was Bethany’s exact cadence. Five years of being inseparable meant she knew every one of my passwords, my cloud backup codes, the cadence of my online life. Nicholas stared at the photo, the initial shock draining from his features, replaced by a dark, furious smirk. He brought the phone back to his ear. "How much did June pay you to pull this stunt?" he sneered at the detective. "To force an apology out of me, she's stooping to faking her own death? Tell her that if she keeps pulling this kind of sick nonsense, she will never set foot across my threshold again!" Without waiting for a response, he slammed the call off and immediately dialed his corporate office. "Freeze every credit card tied to June Hastings's name," he barked into the receiver. "Every account. Let's see how many nights she lasts at the Peninsula once her cards decline!" I watched his furious, self-righteous glare, an icy numbness settling deep into my spirit. Suddenly, an invisible, violent undertow seized my soul, yanking me out of the house, hurtling me through the gray afternoon until I crashed into the sterile, fluorescent glare of the county morgue. In the viewing corridor, my mother and father stood before a metal gurney draped in a heavy white sheet. The medical examiner gently drew back the fabric, revealing my battered, ruined face. My father’s breath hitched, turning ash-gray. My mother’s knees buckled; she hit the linoleum floor with a hollow thud. "June... oh god, my baby... my sweet June!" Ghostly tears streamed down my face. I threw myself to my knees, desperate to wrap my arms around them, but my hands swept uselessly through my mother’s trembling shoulders like cold vapor. "Mom, Dad... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you have to see me like this." A deputy walked up quietly, holding out a clear evidence bag containing a shattered iPhone. "The coroner determined she lay at the base of the cliff in sub-zero temperatures for over two hours before succumbing to internal injuries. Before she passed... she placed one outgoing call." The ten-digit number was Nicholas’s. Blood rushed into my father’s eyes. He dragged my mother to her feet, his voice shaking with a feral, ragged fury. "Get up, Mary. We're going to find that bastard." They burst out of the hospital, hailing a cab in the gathering twilight. At that exact hour, Nicholas was sitting at the center table of the city’s most exclusive revolving rooftop restaurant. He had bought out the entire floor for Genevieve’s welcome-back party. "Crash!" The heavy double doors were kicked open. The live cello quartet faltered and stopped. Every guest at the linen-draped tables turned toward the entrance. My mother, her face wet with tears and her coat disheveled, lunged toward Nicholas’s table. "Nicholas Prescott! Give me back my daughter! You killed her!" Two private security guards intercepted her instantly, pinning her arms. Nicholas set down his crystal champagne flute, his forehead creasing with icy displeasure. "Mr. and Mrs. Hastings. What is the meaning of this scene?" My father’s hand shook violently as he pointed a finger directly between Nicholas’s eyes. "June is dead! She's lying on a steel slab in the morgue!" Nicholas paused for half a beat, then let out a low, patronizing chuckle. "Dead? She posted from the Peninsula's high tea two hours ago. Sir, go home and tell June that if she continues this embarrassing charade, the engagement is off tomorrow." "Tell her to come here herself, get on her knees, and apologize to Genevieve. Then—and only then—will I consider letting this go." Genevieve delicately dabbed the corner of her eyes with a silk handkerchief. "Mr. Hastings, please don't blame Nicholas. June is probably just throwing a tantrum. Once she calms down, she'll come home. But wishing death upon your own daughter... isn't that taking things too far?" Bethany stepped forward, crossing her arms, her mouth twisted in sneering disgust. "You think June deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Genevieve? Genevieve was Nicholas’s first love. What is June? A charity case." My mother trembled from head to toe. She broke free from the guard and rushed at Bethany. "You ungrateful snake! June gave you everything! She nursed you, she defended you, and now you help this woman destroy her?!" In the scuffle, Bethany shoved my mother back with sharp, vicious force. My mother lost her footing on the polished hardwood, stumbling backward. Her temple cracked hard against the sharp brass corner of an accent table. Blood welled instantly, dripping down her pale cheek. "Mary!" my father screamed, dropping beside her. Bethany smoothed her dress, smirking down at them. "Like father, like daughter. A family of con artists. June fakes her death, and you two come here begging for a payout. You ought to be in theater." My father pressed his trembling sleeve against my mother’s bleeding temple, his eyes wide and bloodshot, glaring at the room. "Monsters... you're all monsters! My little girl is dead, and you feel nothing!" Nicholas’s patience snapped entirely. He raised two fingers toward the house security team. "Throw them out into the street. And ensure no one with the last name Hastings is ever admitted to this building again." Four burly guards dragged my parents out like common vagrants, dumping them on the curb. My father fell to his knees on the concrete, weeping brokenly. "An ambulance... somebody call an ambulance, please!" My spirit hovered over them, curling in agonizing helplessness. "Mom, Dad, forgive me. I was blind. I gave my love to a monster, and brought this hell upon you." ... Emergency room, St. Jude’s Memorial. The trauma surgeon pushed through the swinging doors, stripping off his bloodied gloves. "She has severe intracranial hemorrhaging. We need to take her into emergency surgery right this second. We need a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit before we can prep the theater!" My father frantically pulled out the debit card from his wallet—the account containing my parents' entire retirement fund, which they had linked to my wedding preparations. The intake nurse ran the magnetic strip, then shook her head with a grimace. "Declined. The issuing bank shows a freeze placed on this account." My father froze, the breath knocked entirely out of him. The realization hit him like an electric shock. He scrambled for his phone, dialing Nicholas’s number with shaking thumbs. "Nicholas! Who authorized you to freeze June's cards?!" he roared into the mic. "Lift the freeze! Right now! That money is for Mary’s emergency brain surgery!" Through the phone, Nicholas’s voice was like dry ice. "Still playing the game, Mr. Hastings? June's juvenile theatrics were bad enough, but having her father play along is pathetic. This routine won't work on me. Tell June to show up on my doorstep and apologize in person." "Click." When my father redialed, the automated operator informed him the phone was powered down. Thirty minutes later, the surgeon stepped out of the OR. He pulled down his surgical mask, his head bowed. "The delay in treatment was too long. The bleed expanded too quickly into the brainstem. Her vitals flatlined five minutes ago." "I am so very sorry for your loss." My scream tore through the sterile hallway, silent and unheard. My mother was gone. ... In the basement mortuary, my mother’s gurney was wheeled in beside mine. With fingers that could barely hold a pen, my father signed two cremation consent forms. When the pale morning sun broke over the horizon, an old man with hair that had turned snowy white overnight walked out the front gates of the crematorium, cradling two ceramic urns against his chest. Back at our old brick family home, he cleared the dining table in the living room, setting up a makeshift memorial. He knelt by a small iron brazier on the floor, feeding paper currency into the flames, one sheet at a time. "Mary... don't walk too fast over that bridge. Wait for our June." "She’s afraid of the dark. Hold her hand tight, won't you? Don't let our girl get lost again." I knelt beside him, my spectral head resting on his trembling knee, my heart shattered into dust. Suddenly, the front door was kicked off its latch with a splintering crash. Nicholas strode in, trailed closely by Genevieve and Bethany. His eyes swept past my father, locking onto the framed black-and-white portraits sitting on the table. One of me. One of my mother. And between them, two polished ceramic urns. Nicholas blinked, then let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "June Hastings, you really outdid yourself." "To force me to bend the knee, you even staged your mother's funeral? Rented props and ordered urns?" My father slowly raised his head, his hollow eyes veined with red. "What did you say?" Bethany sauntered into the room, arms crossed, surveying the peeling wallpaper with contempt. "Did my brother stutter, old man? Your whole family is a pack of parasites. Staging a wake to run an extortion scam—have you no shame at all? Where's June hiding? Tell her to get out here and apologize to Genevieve!" Nicholas stepped closer, his jaw working furiously. "Have June get down here right now! Pulling a morbid stunt like this... isn't she afraid she'll actually curse herself to death? What kind of vile woman stoops this low just to spite Genevieve?!" "Smack!" With every ounce of strength left in his aging frame, my father brought his open palm hard across Nicholas’s face. The force snapped Nicholas’s head sideways. Blood welled at the corner of his lip. "You dare hit me?" Nicholas hissed. My father stood trembling, his voice a jagged rasp. "I should have killed you, you soulless beast! June was blind to ever look at you! Her ashes are barely cold, and you drag these two whores into her wake to desecrate her memory!" Nicholas wiped the crimson from his lip, his eyes turning glacial. "Ashes? Really? Where's the body then? Show me the autopsy report! Let's see how she supposedly died!" He reached out, his hand lunging toward the lids of the urns. "Don't you touch them!" A terrifying burst of adrenaline surged through my father. He threw himself forward, shoving Nicholas back. "Keep your filthy hands off my family!" He wrapped his body over the table, trying to shield the urns, but Nicholas, young and athletic, grabbed the old man by the shoulder and hurled him violently to the floor. Bethany laughed from the doorway. "Smash them, Nicholas! Let's see how she keeps up the act when her cheap props are broken!" Nicholas grabbed the white linen cloth covering the table and yanked it with all his might. The two heavy ceramic urns tipped, sliding off the edge. "CRASH." The ceramic shattered into hundreds of jagged shards across the floorboards. A heavy cloud of bone fragments and gray ash billowed up, scattering across the room. My father stared at the dust on the floor, and a sound tore from his chest—a sound so hollow and agonized it didn't belong to a human being. He dropped to his knees, heedless of the razor-sharp porcelain slicing open the palms of his hands. Sobbing uncontrollably, he swept the gray dust together with his bleeding fingers, desperately trying to scoop the ashes back toward his chest. "June... my little June..." His chest heaved erratically, gasping for air that wouldn't come. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed face-down into the scattered ashes of his wife and child. "Dad!" I screamed, lunging to catch him, but my arms passed straight through his limp torso. Genevieve pinched her nose in theatrical disgust, using the toe of her designer flat to kick aside the pile of gray powder, grinding it into the wood. "Honestly, Nicholas, June really went all out for this performance. She even bought five pounds of baking flour." Nicholas looked down at the motionless old man sprawled across the floor, the cruel smirk on his face slowly freezing. "Mr. Hastings...?" Outside, the shrill wail of police sirens tore through the quiet neighborhood. "Nobody move!" Four uniformed officers and two detectives kicked through the splintered door frame, guns drawn, swarming the living room. "Nicholas Prescott! You are under arrest for involuntary manslaughter and depraved indifference. Hands where we can see them!"