Page 130 of Bloom

I know better, yet I fall for it anyway. I get worried anyway, spooked by his tone, forlorn and defeated and lonely, emotions Iknow all too well. I race over here and use the key I promised I would throw in the trash, to check on him because a voice in the back of my head won’t stop asking ‘what if he’s not okay?’

What if he needs you?

What if he really means it?

A loud crash in the kitchen makes me jump. As I tiptoe towards it, my keys bite into my palm, every part of me tense with anticipation—with fear, really, but I won’t let myself acknowledge it. I won’t let myself be afraid of him, of my dad, in my house, not even if passing by the stairs makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Not even if the sight of him sitting at the kitchen table next to a cardboard box labeled with my mother’s name, scrawled in the handwriting of the mourning kid who packed it up, makes itsohard to breathe. “Dad, what’re you doing?”

I flinch when his gaze swings to me, taking an instinctive step back, stumbling another when his hand lifts in a jerky movement. For a second, he brandishes the item in his grip—just long enough for me to recognize the glass rose I haven’t seen for years, to confirm who left that poppy on my doorstep if I wasn’t already positive—before it falls to the ground and smashes into smithereens.

I could almost think it was an accident, that it just slipped from his grip, if the red shards didn’t join a rainbow of other broken pieces on the floor. If he didn’t stare at me while it dropped, gauging my reaction to the destruction of the floral figurines my mother spent years collecting,cherishing. If his mouth didn’t tilt in a sardonic grin that matches a slurred, “Oops.”

I don’t move. I don’t say anything. I don’t cry either, despite the tears burning my eyes. And I don’t stop him when he reaches in the box again, plucks out another fragile flower and tosses it near my feet, close enough that a piece of shattered petal hitsthe toe of my hiking boots. The third one he retrieves, though, makes me stand a little straighter—maybe because I remember the day my mom got it, because she gave it to me. The last birthday we ever spent together, she gave me the delicate orange daisy.

He knows. I see it in his face, his cruelly twisted face, thatheknows. And when I take a feeble step towards him, the sound of glass crunching beneath my boots almost drowning out my weak plea to stop, he knew I was going to do that too, and helaughs. Devoid of humor or joy, rife with something so deeply unsettling, he laughs and slumps back in his seat, and he slurs, “I knew you’d come home.”

I’m not home, I want to say.This hasn’t been home in a while, and it’s all your fault.

Instead, I repeat, “What’re you doing?”

Another smash makes me wince. “Unpacking.”

“Where did you get those?”

I was so sure he threw them away. I waspositivehe did. I saw him throw them out, didn’t I? Or did he just tell me he did and then hide them away? I can’t remember, but seeing them, shattered and whole, makes my chest ache, melancholy andrelieffighting for dominance.

In lieu of a response, he lets another slip through his fingers.

“Dad, stop it.”

He doesn’t. He fishes a crystalline blue iris out of the box and my heart pounds, my eyes itch, I retreat until my back hits the wall as I try to breathe, because that one was my mom’s favorite. “Stop.”

“Why? It’s not like she’s coming back for them. She’sdead, Caroline. She doesn’t care about the fucking flowers.”

“Don’t you?” I find myself retorting, find myself almostyelling. “Don’t you care aboutanything?”

Dad blinks, slow and dazed. “What the fuck do I have to care about, Caroline?”

I inhale sharply as the worst thing he’s ever said to me claws its way inside me and spreads like poison. He doesn’t care about me; I knew it. I’ve never heard it, though. I’ve felt it, I’ve experienced it, but I’ve neverheardit.

The confirmation makes me shake.

“You’re pathetic,” I hear the words I’ve heard so many times before except, for once, they’re not aimed at me. For once, I’m the one saying them. I’m looking at my father, my drunk, despondent father, and I’m saying, “You arepathetic.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I’m saying too, I’mscreaming. “I didn’t take her from you. I didn’t kill her.I didn’t do anything, so why do youhate me?”

“Because youareher,” he’s yelling back, getting to his feet, clutching that damn iris—more coherent than I’ve seen him in years. “You’re a walking fucking reminder, Caroline. I can’t even look at you.”

“Fuck you.”

It all happens so fast.

It doesn’t sink in, at first. I think I start crying—I think that’s why my face is wet. And then I bring my hand to my face, I touch the weird stickiness just below my eye, and I realize it’s not tears.

When I look at my fingertips, they’re stained red.

Because that iris? He threw it at me. It shattered against my face.

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