Page 108 of Poetry of Flowers

“It was an accident; I didn’t see her when I drove on the bridge. The map had fallen out of my hand, and I was fighting with Olivia on the phone when I tried to pass her. I’m so sorry, Kayden, and, so incredibly sorry for your best friend.”

Please let this be a coincidence, this was not about Joy.

But how many bridges did we have in Grand Lee?

How many accidents had there been on the seventeenth of March?

“I was so scared, you understand, don’t you? I had Hope and Rina. I knew your mother was on her way, and that she already called for help, so I-.”

“You left her to die.”

“I thought it was already too late! I couldn’t go to jail for manslaughter, I had a family.”

“Joyelle Avril had a family too! She had a husband, a son and a daughter who didn’t deserve to lose their wife and mother!” I yelled at him. I didn’t care anymore if anyone in this house heard me.

He deserved to suffer as much as he left an entire family to suffer for his mistake.

“I knew Joyelle, she had been a friend of mine in high school. Trust me, I didn’t want this to happen, but I suffered for knowing what I did.”

Was he serious?

He made himself out to be the victim right in front of my eyes.

“I held her daughter in my arms so many times over the years, when she was crying because she didn’t see a reason in continuing to live without her mother. I saw her getting pushed into the role of a mom when she was still a little girl because her father had been drowning his grief with alcohol. I watched a little boy noticing how everyone around him had a mother and him asking his sister why theirs wasn’t playing hide and seek or reading bedtime stories like his friend’s mothers did. And now you are trying to tell me you suffered enough already? You make yourself look like the victim, when really you are the monster.”

My lungs slowly filled with air again, allowing me to breathe, to scream at him for the pain he bought upon a whole family.

“It was an accident! Your mother went to help her, how could I have known she would find her friend like this?”

Clark yelled at me the same as I had yelled at him.

The day my mother had called me home, she had been the driver who had found Joy.

She was her best friend and I had judged her and assumed it was her fault.

How could I?

“Why did you never come to see me after that?”

He looked confused for a moment why I changed the subject all of a sudden, I just needed to know this last thing before I left.

“Patrick called me the next day and told me to leave you alone; otherwise he would make sure I ended up behind bars for manslaughter. I couldn’t risk that. I had to be there for my family.” Did he think I would show him some kind of pity?

“You’re just like him. No, you’re even worse. Patrick knows his behavior is disgusting, while you’re just delusional.”

There was a knock before the door flew open and Hope stood in the doorway.

“What’s going on? Is everything okay, Dad?”

I walked past her and shook my head.

“Nothing is okay, I hope he tells you-.”

“Kayden!” he warned me, but I couldn’t care less.

“That he had an affair with my mother eighteen years ago, that you have a brother.” With that, I jumped up the stairs, but just overheard Hope asking her father what was going on and if what I had said was true.

I left the front door open as I stormed out. The world was moving in slow motion, even when I knew that my legs carried me towards the car, I felt like the ground was holding me in place.

---