"RISE FROM THE ASHES" by Sarah Ryniker

STORY LAST UPDATED ON 17/08/2002

Rise from the Ashes Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue

CHAPTER ONE

The wedding was to be a grand one. My mother was finally back in the riches she had once been in. Gerald Parish, my uncle and soon to be stepfather, had offered to marry her and bring us back into society where we belonged. Of course Mother jumped at the offer. She was tired of working for nothing. Her once beautiful hands had been ruined by years of working.
    I looked at myself in the mirror. I was a mere seventeen years old and gaining a fourteen-year-old half-sister. Of course she had always been there. But now she was in my reality, not somebody that was just brought in my mind. She was the illegitimate daughter of my father, one that shouldn't exist, but he couldn't stay faithful to one woman.
    That fourteen-year-old half-sister stood beside me in that mirror looking older than me. Her breasts were larger and filled the top half of the red strapless dress. Whereas mine were a B sized cup and had to practically be glued to the dress to keep it from falling off. She was short and curvy, while I was tall and barely had a slim waist with a slight bit of curving for my hips. I didn't have an ugly body; at one time I had thought that my body being slim was sexy. But that was before I was next to her. And compared to what she had, I had nothing.
    My mother looked glorious that day. Her red hair was swept up onto the top of her head, with ringlets framing her beautiful face. Her grey eyes sparkled with excitement. After all, she was being welcomed back into the rich world where everything could be bought and those things that couldn't be were forgotten about and put to the side for the poor who actually cared.
    "Girls!" my mother cried excitedly, spinning towards the two of us. "Isn't this a fabulous day? You both look wonderful! How do I look?" She spun around to model herself off.
    "You look beautiful, Kylie!" Rachael cried, smiling and going over to hug my mother.
    "Yes, beautiful," I said. I felt the jealousy sweep over me as Rachael slid her arms about my mother to lovingly hug her. I was such a touch-me-not, whereas Rachael was always loving to those she truly cared about.
    "Oh, come now, Ella. Be happy for today, at least. You're always so sullen. Be happy for me, if not just for the festivities! Please." Her begging was pathetic. She had changed so much after coming here. She was fake where once she had been an honest and down to earth woman. I didn't know this woman before me.
    I gave her a fake smile and that was good enough for her. She clapped her hands together as if clapping away the seriousness of the day. Not that this wedding actually was anything serious.
    I looked over to my cousin Karen. She was one of the girls in the wedding. She was the only family member of my mother's to show up that day, other than her mother Lillian. I knew why Karen had come, of course. She had a crush on my older half-brother Michael, who was nineteen years old.
    Michael had long since gone to college, having our uncle, and now my stepfather, Gerald to pay for everything. Gerald didn't have any sons of his own, and he prided himself on being a father figure to Michael. Rachael and Michael had practically grown up side by side. Both were beautiful, intelligent and had charm. They also had horrible Parish tempers.
    Neither Rachael nor Michael knew of my true Parish heritage. Michael had been too young to really remember our father. Gerald had taken him in right away, leaving my mother and myself to the world. Why he suddenly had a change of heart and wanted to take care of us was beyond me. But my mother found nothing of it suspicious. She only wanted to be coddled and spoiled as she once had been, until that fateful day she got away with murder when she found her husband and her sister-in-law having sex in the very bed she had shared with him.
    Suddenly a knock on the door pulled me from my gloomy thoughts. I went to answer it. Mother feared that it was the groom or one of his men. It was only bad luck if the groom saw her, but she told me that she refused to let any of them see her until she walked down that aisle. She had made the mistake of once letting a single man in the wedding seeing her before the wedding, and that had brought bad luck, now hadn't it?
    Rachael had gone on a rampage trying to find her shoes. She was positive that damn dog of Michael's had hidden them again. I had been trying to help her when the knock sounded through the room. We both asked Karen to answer, but since she hadn't yet fixed her hair and make up, she feared it was Michael coming to the door. And God forbid should he see her without her hair and make up done.
    Karen had been correct. I pulled the door open to see Michael standing there, looking all elegance and, not to mention, arrogance. He was positive that he had been born of the gods and then put on earth for the good of women. My half-brother disgusted me beyond words.
    "Might I see how the ladies are doing? There is only an hour until the walk down the aisle." He smiled brightly.
    "We're doing just peachy," Rachael snapped, looking under the vanity table for the millionth time. "I'd be doing better if that damn dog of yours wouldn't have hidden my shoes!" she nearly screamed at him. I had to hide a laugh.
    "How do you know it was my dog again? You can make mistakes and misplace things, Ms Perfect," Michael said, an amused grin sliding across his face smoothly. He was being nice about it, keeping his hands behind his back, while he slid into the room behind Rachael.
    Feeling uncomfortable with him being behind her while she was bent over in such a way, Rachael came up sharp, her head smacking him in the nose. She turned around at his loud curse and covered her mouth with her hands. She was laughing behind those hands, I could see it in her eyes, even while she apologised.
    "Damn it, Rachael! Can't you be more careful?" he growled.
    I looked onto the ground beside him and noticed the two red shoes lying there. I went quickly to pick them up. I handed the shoes to Rachael. "Here. He obviously needed a pathetic excuse to come in here. He probably took your shoes."
    "Oh, leave him alone, you two. You're so mean to him. I bet Rachael meant to hurt him!" Karen cried, rushing to Michael's side to hold him, pathetically, to her bosom. She cooed words of comfort.
    "Watch out, Karen, he might bleed all over your dress," I snapped, annoyed. Why did everything have to be of the male gender when you were a teenage girl?
    She simply glared up at me. I smiled back and left the room, feeling suffocated. I couldn't stand to be in there anymore. They were all so annoying and pathetic. Karen hadn't been brought up in her home rich, but coming here had spoilt her. Evidently, she knew Rachael and Michael better than she knew me, having spent every summer here since early childhood.
    I walked out into the miles and miles of yard that lay in the back of the house. The reception's decorations went on for miles and miles. That wasn't counting the decorations that led up to the gazebo for the ceremony. Chairs sat all around, but they were placed so far back, I was sure that the people in the last three rows wouldn't be able to see, nor hear, a thing. I didn't think Gerald, and especially my mother, knew that many people. They probably didn't, I thought later, they probably just invited anyone who was anyone in society.
    People were still setting up the white and red decorations. How conveniently my mother insisted on lots of roses. Roses were set all over the place. There was a bridge that crossed from the small pond to the gazebo that my mother would walk over, and it had been covered in white and red roses. The gift given to the guests was a bottle of wine with either a white or red rose attached to it with a ribbon of the opposite colour with their names and the date of their wedding on it.
    It truly was beautiful. Even I had to admit that. I was just so bitter towards the rich world. Most everyone assumed that I was happy-go-lucky and I saw the world just as everyone else in the family; through rose-tinted glasses. Of course it was an act to make my mother happy. Rachael knew otherwise. So did Karen and my mother. Sometimes I liked being around them because it was easier to be myself. Other times annoyance and jealousy couldn't help but take over my feelings of security around them.
    I walked onto the bridge that had a red carpet laid across it all the way to the gazebo. I stood there, leaning on the little bit of wood still showing through all of the roses, looking down at the water below. I had to admit that the estate was beautiful. I was kind of happy to be spoiled in such a manner to live in a place like this. But then again I felt I shouldn't be happy. I felt like I was taking this all for granted while friends I'd had before we had come here sat still in poverty, something I had also been used to my entire life. But I was almost positive that none of my friends had rich relatives.
    Suddenly my thoughts were broken by a voice. "A penny for your thoughts?" the deep voice asked.
    I looked up to see beautiful blue violet eyes looking down at me, a smile upon his lips. "I was just thinking about how different living here will be from where I used to live," I admitted, looking away from his eyes. He was so very handsome.
    "Guess I owe you a penny now, huh?" He laughed. It was a laugh that held humour and, a little too much for comfort, sex appeal.
    "Guess you do," I said, willing my voice not to go out on me as it so often did when I was attracted to someone of the opposite sex.
    "I'm Brendan Wilcott. May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?" He politely stuck out his hand to, I had assumed shake but instead, kiss my hand. I was sure I would faint then. Not only did he have good looks and a sexy laugh, but good manners and charm as well.
    "I am Ella Parish." I had taken my father's last name, though Rachael and Michael had assumed that Gerald had adopted me after we had moved here six months ago.
    "How old are you?" he asked. He made it seem as if he was making polite conversation, but he obviously was very interested.
    I blushed. "I'm seventeen. How old are you?" I asked back, not hiding my interest anymore.
    "Oh, you're simply jailbait!" He laughed. "I'm eighteen. I'm a college friend of Michael's." He smiled arrogantly. But somehow his self-assurance made him all that more appealing.
    "You're a mere year older than me. I am hardly jailbait." I laughed. "Are you in the wedding?"
    He nodded. "Yes, I am. I get to walk one of you lovely ladies down the aisle."
    "Which one of us?" I was hoping that it was me, but felt dread when I heard the name spill from his beautifully shaped lips.
    "Rachael. Haven't met her yet, but according to Michael she's a real knockout," he said, though seemingly uncomfortable to find out that Rachael was Michael's cousin and he was talking about her in such a manner. I had to admit, it was discomforting to me, too.
    "She is. She's also fourteen." I was holding onto hope that he would stay and talk to me and maybe dance with me after he saw Rachael. Somehow, I doubted it. I felt disappointment setting in, in spite of not knowing his reaction to her yet.
    "Well, then she really is jailbait." His smile made my knees go weak. "Might I ask if I can walk you down the aisle instead of my cousin, Roger Branch?"
    "Yes. But let's see if you still want to after you see her." I walked away, jealousy giving way to bitterness.
    He didn't chase after me. I knew I would probably never see him approach me again with such interest. Not after he saw Rachael. But of course, what man would want me after he saw her?

Rise from the Ashes Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue

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