When Ashes Remain

a story by J. Aaron Courts

Mike Reynolds. When Ashes Remain, 2023. Private Collection. Digital Illustration.

Adams had been driving on the shoulder of I-5 for more than a mile, thankful for so many evacuees optimistic enough to wait in their lane and not crowd the shoulder. His windows were up, and the air conditioner was turned off, as he attempted but failed to keep a blend of woodsmoke and the chemically laced world from stinging his throat. The radio cracked another emergency announcement by way of a local helicopter traffic report turned wildfire play-by-play, and he thought about the government’s chemical exposure warnings that covered everything in the state.

He had read two that very morning, before the fire began to turn and he rushed off the job. They were stamped onto the bottom of blue plastic placards. He thought it a strange combination, encouraging fast-food patrons to “Please pull forward” and “Have a wonderful day,” while informing them simultaneously that Exposure to chemicals may cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. He turned off the radio.

Flames splashed over a mountain crest on the horizon and interrupted his frustration. All the hair on his neck stood and his cheeks became cool with sweat. And though he couldn’t hear the mountain brush crackle or its green wood hiss, he imagined the flames sounded like a swell cut in half by a breakwater and not at all like the singeing of helpless animals, limbs, and leaves. But the mountain wasn’t cutting anything in half. Engulfed in red and orange, it didn’t even appear stationary but malformed into a tidal wave, unassailable, poised to crash down on Adams and his family, crash down on everyone and everything and cleanse the world with fire.

Thousands of acres had been burned, maybe tens of thousands. Lives lost. Community after community reduced to ash. His wasn’t in its path according to reports, not yet anyway, but its path was anything but predictable and there was no end in sight.

The fire was a consideration when he left a few days ago, that much was true, and he regretted taking a job so far from home during fire season, but then again, his wife, Meredith—Mayre—was supposed to be home, and they needed the money. They had a plan, and he reminded himself of it now. If the fire turned, she would take the kids and leave, and he would meet them all later. But on that morning, when the fire did turn, the babysitter had been the one to call, not his wife, and the kids were without either parent.

What’s the government warning for a utility company, he thought, and he whispered to himself, “for a failing marriage?”

He forced himself to look away from the approaching wildfire as a small maroon car pulled onto the shoulder in front of him. He swerved without touching the brakes, and his truck plunged from the shoulder into short drought-tanned grass, pelting the passenger side of the car with gravel and litter clumped about the un-swept edge of the interstate.

He struggled to regain control—for the tires to regain traction—and in that time, had one of those slow-motion moments where Death passes you by winking, and a person can recall the past and see the future, yet both remain blurred and indistinguishable from the present. He saw the backs of their heads in the car and then their faces. The driver was scratching his ear and the passenger, a woman whose braided hair reminded him of his wife, was smoking.

“Ain’t there enough goddamned smoke?” he said and hated the pair.

He regained the shoulder and saw in his rearview mirror the car’s driver throw up his hands. Adams’ phone rang as he did. He hoped it was his wife calling, finally, but when he looked at the screen, he sunk deeper into his seat. It was the babysitter, Beth, again.

Where is she? He thought and answered. “Beth. Has she come ba—"

“My dad is here,” she said. “He says the fire is too close, and we have to leave. Now.” Adams could hear him through her phone.

“Get in the car!” her father shouted. “If that woman wants to dump her kids off, that’s his problem not ours, now get in the goddamned car, Beth.”

“Take them,” Adams said.

“What?” she asked.

“Take them with you, Beth. You gotta—”

“I can’t. Dad says the car is full.”

“Beth, the car!” her father screamed louder. “Hang it the fuck up. Now!”

“Listen to me, Beth,” Adams said. “Tell Catherine to take her brother into the bathroom and fill the tub with water. Tell her to make teepees with some towels and play little Indians in the tub until I get there. Teepees. Be sure to say it. They know the game. Tell her I’ll be home before the tub is full. I promise. Do you understand, Beth?” There was no answer. He wrenched on the steering wheel with his left hand and began to punch it with his right, screaming at his missing wife until he was out of breath and his hand throbbed.

He barely slowed to run the blinking stop light where his exit met the county road. His heavy work truck bounced and clanked as he cut the corner into his neighborhood and struck the concrete curb. Police check points had been set up to stop anyone from entering but were abandoned, and ruts were left in a manicured lawn on the right side by a neighbor who’d waited too long to leave.

His block—every block—was veiled in a crimson and rotten yellow haze and stood all but desolate. In fact, the only sign of life was one of Ms. Letti’s cats, the fat Calico he didn’t like, lounging in a chair on her porch as if the world wasn’t on fire. He entered his driveway at an angle and drove into the front lawn. Where the fuck is she at?

He ran to the door and planted the bottom of his heavy steel-toed boot beside the deadbolt in stride. The door frame splintered, and the knob lodged in the sheetrock with a thud as the brass strike plate broke and clanged off the coffee table then skidded across the tiled kitchen floor beyond.

The room was small and separated from the kitchen by a half wall and banister rails extending to the ceiling. Tan carpet showed red Kool-Aid stains and worn paths from the kitchen to the couch and from the couch down the hall. A small television sat on a stand just beyond the door and his momentum carried him into it. His shoulder struck the television, and it crashed onto the carpeted floor and popped.

“Catherine! Charlie!”

There was a sickness in his stomach that he’d felt only once before. The years had been hard for Adams and his wife. They had moved three times for work since Catherine was born, each time farther from her family in Washington and from friends that had not been easy for her to make. Then Charlie was born, and colic replaced conversation, and intimacy was strangled by regret.

Last summer Adams had answered the phone and a man’s voice he thought he recognized asked, “Is Meredith there?”

He wanted to hang up but just said, “Yeah, one sec,” then after the longest second of his life, continued shamefully, “Mayre.” He set the receiver down and, in the end, closed his eyes and whispered. “Phone.”

He was ashamed, again, that his brain conjured the memory at a moment like this. But Mayre wasn’t answering her phone, and Adams didn’t think he—the man she was with—would risk bringing her home when fires were everywhere. He might not even be able to.

“Daddy! Daddy?” He could breathe again. “We’re in bathroom!” His gut was wrecked. He’d have preferred they didn’t answer at all, that they had already been evacuated. But how would he have known if they’d actually left, or if they’d just run to Ms. Letti’s across the street? They knew to do that. No, he thought. This was best. With him. He would get them out of here. He would be with them, and he would take care of them, and he wouldn’t leave them alone ever again. If there was an ever again, he thought then tried to shake idea from his head. “Everything is going to be okay now. Everything is going to be okay.”

Adams pushed open the door and found a wet teepee, miniature and squirming in the tub. The water was still running and pouring over the edge, flooding the bathroom and turning the carpeted hall brown. At nine, Catherine was old for her age, but she was still a young girl in so many ways, and he had promised to be there before the tub was full. He yanked the oversized towel off his children and hugged them as more water spilled from the tub and soaked his jeans.

“Thank you,” he said.

Catherine was shaking but managed to speak. “Beth told us she had to leave. She said we might be able to go with her, but her daddy was yelling at her. I didn’t want to go with her, Daddy. I wanted to wait on you and on—”

“I know sweetheart. You did real good. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you both.”

He rubbed his hand through Charlie’s wet hair then grabbed his children from the tub and carried them into their shared bedroom, still dripping, and set them down in front of Charlie’s bed.

“Listen, sweetheart. I’m going to get a few things. Help Bubba. Grab a toy for each of you then—”

Catherine was saying “okay” after every sentence, then a limb crashed in the back yard near the window and both kids ducked the great whoosh when the limb struck. Her eyes grew wide, and she cut him off.

“Where’s Mommy?”

“Mommy’s coming, sweetheart. Listen to me.” He pulled them together, knelt before them, and tussled Charlie’s walnut curls again. “We’re gonna wait on Mommy, but we gotta get ready to leave.”

He told them to grab their toys again but picked up two stuffed animals himself, a random one from Charlie’s bed and a rainbow-colored bear from Catherine’s she’d won throwing almost thirty dollars’ worth of darts at the fair the year before. He handed them both to Catherine then took a blanket from each of their beds and led them to the hall. The smoke was thick inside after pinning the front door to the living room wall. Both kids hesitated and he had to nudge them forward, before Catherine took her brother by the hand and led him into the garage.

He considered taking the work truck, but it was a single cab, and he didn’t want welding tanks strapped to their backs if the fire got worse. Mayre’s vehicle was light, but it was four-wheel drive and always had some of the kids’ clothes in the back. There was also a revolver in the glove box.

Once, while Mayre was still pregnant with their son and Adams was on a long job, she took Catherine with her to stay at her parents’ home in Washington. She stopped for gas outside of Portland late in the evening and waited for an attendant to come out and fill up her vehicle with gas. After a minute or two of sitting idly, Catherine woke up and became restless, so Mayre got out and began to fill up the vehicle herself. A homeless man approached from the dark and robbed her. Adams thanked God that the man was satisfied with her purse and an orange prescription bottle on the dash.

“You’re getting a gun,” Adams said to her when she called later that night from his in-laws’.

“You know I don’t like—”

“Mayre, it doesn’t matter what you like. Or want. It only matters…” Adams paused. “He could have hurt you, Mayre. Could’ve stolen the truck. With Catherine still…” He couldn’t finish the words and there was a long silence.

“Imagine his disappointment when he tries to run our credit cards,” she said trying to break the tension. She chuckled lightly. “When he realizes those pills were Zyrtec.”

“Nothing about this is funny, babe. This whole fucked up ass place. We’re getting you a gun. That’s it.”

And so, he did, though he could only get her to the range twice in the years that passed, and she’d refused to fire more than a couple of rounds on the last visit. Still, he insisted she keep the little .38 in the glovebox from then on.

There won’t be any robberies with everything burning, he thought, but afterwards, when people were going without and desperate, and their reason failed in the face of necessity, he wanted to be prepared. He would’ve liked to grab his .45 too, but there wasn’t time to dig it out of the closet. They would take her vehicle and, if they needed it, the .38 would have to do.

With the kids in the garage, Adams placed a gallon jug under the kitchen faucet to fill. He didn’t bother pouring out the milk and soon white water was gargling from its mouth. Where the fuck are you, Mayre? “We gotta go, Babe. I gotta leave.”

He took the blankets to the bathroom to soak. The water was still running, and a steady stream poured over the edge of the tub and escaped the flooded room into the carpeted hallway. His feet squished and smacked as he hurried back with the sopping blankets. Rays of broken light entered the living room through the open front door and cut the gathering smoke, spreading themselves across the floor and wall. He collected the jug, overflowing and cloudy, but couldn’t find the lid. He heard tires screeching but paid little attention to the sound. Some last-minute evacuees he thought, but there was no time to help anyone else. He saw the room darken as he reached for the smooth, plain door that led to the garage. The rays of light were gone and Mayre stood in the living room beside the broken television. She glowed orange, silhouetted in flames and what sunshine was able to penetrate the vast smothering of smoke in the sky. He dropped the lidless jug and the wet blankets and ran to his wife. Mayre.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I never should have…” She was sobbing and shaking but couldn’t finish.

“It’s okay, Mayre,” he said but she wouldn’t quit crying. “It’s okay, Babe.” He could hear the milk jug chugging. “We can talk about that later, baby, but we gotta go now.”

He snatched the sideways jug and one of the blankets from the floor, his son’s, abandoning those not grasped in the swipe and ran to the garage behind his wife. As he climbed into her vehicle, the garage door creaked, and smoke and a wave of heat poured over the cracked concrete floor. Poison air billowed into the garage and before he could turn off the air conditioner, it was pumping through the vents into the cab like a party store fog machine. The garage door rose above the hood. Both of them could see what lay ahead and Mayre gasped.

There was a dense strip of ponderosa and shore pines that encircled the neighborhood. The closest stood behind the neighbors’ homes across the street, and he’d always imagined the wall of trees as a battlement of sorts. On any other day, they cast shadows across his yard and, on any given night, shielded the neighborhood from the town’s ambient light and any distant interstate noise. He loved them—on any other day. Now, absent all defense, they were torches reaching one hundred feet or more and clamoring, and his hands began to shake. Sap-filled limbs roasted and sparked and flung themselves from their heights to crash on anything below, and the neighbors’ homes across the street, with their big back yards, their wooden privacy fences, their swing sets and slides, their colored roofs and leaf-guarded gutters and faux pillared porches—those things that he was jealous of—were all ablaze. Pinecones and clumps of needles and squirrel nests and bird nests and falling things of all sorts exploded as flaming debris fell from the trees and that debris which littered the ground, yet to catch fire, lifted into the air and collided with them. Embers, large and small, whirled and were sucked into the vacuum that had been in the garage as the door continued to slowly rise, and they slipped up and over Mayre’s vehicle like rain on an afternoon drive.

Theirs was a narrow street, so the closest property on fire was maybe eighty feet away, and he could feel his knuckles warm as the glass windshield heated. He remembered firefighters coming to his elementary school when he was a kid. Their stop, drop, and rolls and the miniature home on a trailer pulled into the center of the playground and taught the kids lessons on how to escape a housefire and survive. How to use one’s hand to test if there was a fire on the other side of a door—to guide oneself beyond the flames to safety.

The garage felt like a furnace, but they weren’t in a furnace. They were at its door and his hands began to sweat so close to the windshield. He touched the back of his right hand to the glass, remembering what one fireman had said.

“Use the back,” one of the firemen said as he turned Adams’ small hand over and pressed it against a miniature door. “If you can feel heat on the back of your hand, don’t go that way.”

The windshield burnt him, and he yanked his hand back. “God dammit!” His eyes began to shrivel within their sockets and when he tried to speak but his parched tongue refused to cooperate, stifled with the taste of smoke and a simple truth; he had to go that way.

The flames produced a dull hum when they were farther away, like the last breath of a dying man that lingers beyond what is natural. But close, all around, all but on top of them, they were anything but dull and humming. They sounded like the tearing of metal. Of melting earth. Of end times.

“Close the door!” Mayre shouted, but he didn’t answer and stomped on the gas instead.

He failed to straighten the wheel and gouged the passenger side of the vehicle on the garage’s small front wall. The vehicle lurched when he overcorrected, and he smashed Ms. Letti’s other cat—the one he liked—the cat he called Gorby, with different colored eyes and a grey spot on its white head, that used to climb the tall trees and kill small birds and bring their bodies to his back door. It was seeking shelter in the open garage and turned back as the vehicle bolted from within, but it was too late. Adams hit its flank, crushing its hip and hind legs, spilling its intestines, and leaving the poor creature writhing in his drive to be burnt with everything else. There would be no more trees for birds to nest in, no more birds in the neighborhood for cats to hunt, and there would be no more cats either.

He hoped Ms. Letti’s would die before the flames reached it, but it would need to hurry, and he wished he’d run over its head. He saw his home for the last time in the rearview mirror as they turned onto the neighborhood street and fled. The roof lit up and the plain asphalt shingled roof he hated sent a stack of dark smoke into the air.

The county road was the only way out but was washed away in the conflagration, and he had to drive from memory, counting turns the kids used to squeal at and several large boulders Catherine told Charlie were sleeping trolls. The forest that lined the road had been full of awe-inspiring, evergreen giants and scenic wonders just hours before, but that was all gone now and what remained was a waking nightmare. Widow makers slapped at them and forced him to steer off the road and back on again. Windswept dirt and pieces of burning brush, both large and small, peppered one side of their vehicle before rogue gusts shook it and the winds shifted and peppered the other side as much or more. Mayre was crying, a sobbing hysteria, and the children too, and he felt their fear more intensely than the flames molesting them.

“If we can just,” Adams began but lost the thought. He knew safety was somewhere ahead. Salvation must lie ahead. But no one thinks of safety or salvation when they’ve crossed into an abyss, not really—just its monsters and an invisible threshold somewhere behind them.

Mayre was scratching her arms and clawing at her hair and shoulder. “We’re not gonna make it, Adams,” she kept bawling. Charlie was sitting in his sister’s lap, and she had buckled the pair into the seat together. Always smart, safe Catherine.

“Grab Bubba’s blanket Catherine,” he said. “It should still be wet but pour that water on it anyway. I want you to play little Indians like before.” Then, addressing Mayre, he said, “Help them baby.” But she was frozen. He reached back and pawed for the jug, but Catherine was already pouring the water on the blanket in Charlie’s lap. Sweet Catherine.

The inferno spilled before them and the path was lost. Adams slammed on the brakes and one of the tires burst and then another. He tried to reverse the way they came, but he couldn’t make it out, then smoke filled the cab, and he couldn’t make out much of anything at all.

“We’re going to be alright, Mayre. We’re going to be alright.” He was lying to her—to himself—but what else could he say. He took off his shirt and bundled it in his lap and soaked it with the cloudy water that remained. His lungs and throat burned and began to feel dizzy. “Here,” he said and began draping the wet shirt over Mayre’s head. “Breath through this.”

He thought of the things he wished he’d said. I should’ve never given up on us. I should’ve never driven you into the arms of another. But it was too late, and he wished instead that she was still in that other car, screeching away in any direction but the one he had led her.

Mayre continued to cough but stopped crying. Adams didn’t notice. He was stuck in his head. He thought about every mistake he’d made with her—the woman he loved—the mother of his children. He thought about Charlie, his only son—whom he wanted to take hunting and fishing and hiding from boulder trolls in the very forest that consumed them. He thought about sweet Catherine, the tiny woman in his life that loved him the most—the best of them—who would never get to hold her own children, and he began to cry.

The heat and smoke were unbearable, and the fire was drooling over them like a starved beast waiting on its offering to scream. He could not let his children scream—would not.

He leaned over Mayre, huddled, and rocking and squeezing her head between her knees. He pulled the shirt from her head and grabbed her. “Mayre, this is bad. The flames. I gotta do something.” Adams opened the glove box, and she looked confused. He hugged her then said, “The kids Mayre. Catherine and Charlie. I can’t let this happen. Not to them. Not to you.”

The fire and snapping limbs and falling trees hammered in their ears. He didn’t think anyone would hear a thing. He was still holding Mayre when she pulled away. She stared out the window as if she could see through the smoke and beyond the ocean of flames. After some time, Mayre turned back to him, and when she did, she was an empty vessel. What will be left when all this recedes, he thought. When ashes remain?

He took the small revolver in his left hand and leaned over the center console and pulled her to himself. A large limb fell on the hood and pieces of the windshield landed in their laps and glinted orange and yellow. The windshield wouldn’t hold much longer. He thought he could smell the plastic components of the vehicle, inside and out, beginning to burn and drip. They were worse than stuck. They were unassailably fastened to the place like Roman troops quartered at Pompeii. They would never leave the vehicle, and he knew it. A mother should never…

He held her head in the crook of his neck and glanced at the back seat. The teepee. Good. He kissed her forehead and her lips, then gently pressed her face to his chest. He kissed the top of her head then he put the barrel to her temple and shot her. She went limp in his arms.

He barely heard the shot but forced himself to look at his children anyway, they hadn’t moved. He crawled into the back seat beside them and hugged the teepee. He tucked his head under the blanket and put it between them and reached around with both arms, pulling their heads to either side of his own, and hugged them again. Adams felt the pistol grip resting against Charlie’s head and almost threw up. He released his hug and said to them under their drying shelter, “I love you both so, so, much.”

He yelled so they might hear him but wasn’t sure if they could. “I found a way out guys. We’re gonna be okay.” He was beginning to cry harder, and it was difficult to speak. A limb fell on the roof of the vehicle and a large crack stretched across the back glass, but he couldn’t hear it—he couldn’t hear himself. Neither of the kids moved when the limb struck, and he was sure that Catherine and Charlie were deaf to any sound, save their own tiny prayers.

“I’ve already helped Mommy get out,” Adams continued. “Charlie, it’s time for me to help you out, son.” If they protested, he couldn’t tell. He pressed the two together knowing they would naturally cling tighter to one another. One more good hug.

He tried to pull Charlie free of his sister after the embrace, but she wouldn’t release her little brother. Adams squeezed his arm between the two and hugged Catherine tight and pressed his mouth to her ear. “It’s okay sweetheart. You did real good, but you gotta let go of Bubba. I’ve got him now and it’s his turn to get out of here.”

She relaxed her maternal grip, and he held Charlie as gently as he could while guiding him from underneath the blanket. Charlie tried to escape the smoke and heat and turned his head to Adams. He put his hand on the back of his son’s head tenderly and held it there before kissing it like he had kissed Mayre’s. Charlie’s hair was a mess of curls, and Adams’ lips were lost in them. He wished he had rubbed his hair more. He pressed Charlie’s face into his own chest and let out a moan. He switched the revolver to his right hand and pressed it to Charlie’s temple and pulled the trigger. Charlie went limp in his father’s lap, and Adams rolled him to his left so Catherine wouldn’t feel her brother and become more frightened.

Limbs were crashing everywhere, and the earth rumbled as a tree fell near. He went back under the blanket and said, “Okay, baby, it’s your turn to get out of here.”

He felt Catherine lean into him and he thought for a second he wouldn’t be able to do it. He held her face, much like he’d held his wife’s, and kissed her on the forehead and left cheek and drew back salty lips.

“I love you, sweetheart. I want you to know, Catherine, that you are the best of us. That I loved you the most.”

“I love you, Daddy,” she said through tiny coughs, but Adams didn’t hear her. He kissed her on the other cheek and then said, “Okay, sweetheart. Let’s go now. It’s gonna be okay.”

Adams left her wrapped in the blanket and pulled her close to him and he hugged her for a long time. He felt for the back of her head and pulled her forehead to his chest as he had done with Mayre and Charlie and kissed the top of her small head.

“I love you, Catherine, and I’ll see you soon.” He pressed the gun to her temple.

When it was done, he dropped the revolver and sat motionless, holding both his children’s heads in his lap, and regretted that the last thing he would ever feel would be their warm blood on his hands. A broken voice escaped his lips.

“How may I be cleansed of this?”

He leaned forward and rested his head against Mayre’s, which was slumped against the seatback and felt her blood on his face.

“Forgive me.”

He quieted himself as he pulled Charlie onto his lap and Catherine on top of her brother, and then he leaned over them both and rested his head on his wife again. He ignored how the metal door handle burned his palm and fingers. How the door burned the back of his hand.

“Together,” he said, and he opened the door.

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A Note on the illustration:

The illustration is original art by Major Mike Reynolds, USMC. We served together in the Corps. He’s a long-time reader and friend and one hell of an artist! He sent me the art after reading an early draft of the story, and they have become intertwined in my head when I think about the piece. I have commissioned several original works by Mike, and they hang in my home now, along with a couple of his limited prints. You can see some of Mike’s work, order prints, and inquire about commissions at Forty Mike Mike Art and be sure to follow him on Instagram at @forty_mike_mike_art.

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Editorial Note:

This is awork of fiction and though it was inspired by real events, it is not based on any real persons or specific places. Any similarities are coincidence and products of my imagination.

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A word from the Author:

This is a tough story, style and narrative execution notwithstanding. It was tough to write. It’s gone through several extensive revisions and all of that after its journey to existence. It had to move from observational experience to my subconsciousness, and then from my subconscious mind to my waking, imaginative thoughts, before finally finding its way onto a page. At each phase it consumed me.

I was stationed in Southern California, but my wife and kids lived near Seattle, so I made the long haul from Camp Pendleton to Washington frequently. One such occasion came after a particularly destructive and deadly wildfire season in California, and the images and smells I was witness to as I drove through blackened communities and stretches of razed wilderness stuck with me. I wouldn’t say I was haunted by them, but I did dream about them continuously. And every time I sat down to write, my mind pulled itself back to those images and smells and a burgeoning story. I couldn’t think about or write about anything else, so I decided I had to write it. If for no other reason than to free up my mind to dream of other things. To write other stories.

I finished it, clicked submit, and within a few days the terrible fires in Hawaii wrought destruction. The story was a semi-finalist at the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards in 2023, which I am naturally proud of, but much of the feedback I received from readers and publications was that it felt too raw—too close to real world events. “The timing just isn’t ideal for publishing,” one honest reader offered with their rejection.

I’ve chewed on this a lot and delayed its publication several times since writing the early draft. It was set for publication here last month, January 2025. I happened to be in California at that time, when the most recent fires destroyed so much. I considered delaying its release again. Maybe just kick the can down the road with another year of submissions. But I thought about the feedback I received. Timing… And I reject it.

There’s no good time to tell this story. In my humble opinion, it’s past time. For the record, it is not a commentary on policy, practice, or any other politicizing aspect of a disaster. It is a response to my own observations, in part, and a response to a character in one of my favorite stories, Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road. In McCarthy’s novel, Papa is faced with situations, not unlike Adams, and struggles with what decision he will—should—and ultimately is even capable of making. I think The Road should be required reading for fathers. I do not dare suggest my story is as necessary. In fact, I don’t think it’s necessary at all for people to read. But it does ask some of the same questions McCarthy’s Papa asks himself and answers them. “When Ashes Remain” was simply necessary for me to write.

I love Papa. I am heartbroken for Adams. And when I read either story, I can’t help but ask myself, which one am I?

If there is a reason for you to read my story, I think it is to ask yourself the same question and pray, as I do, you never have to answer it.

Semper Fidelis.