Page 23 of Poetry of Flowers

It was never me grieving a father I never had, it was the child inside me that always wanted to have a father to present as my role model in those school projects.

Theo nodded as if he understood what I meant, “Your mother wrote Illinois. He must be in his forties. Get your laptop and search his name on all social media platforms.” He walked over to the table and picked up the Polaroid photo. “We know what he looks like, picture him with a few gray hairs and his skin looser with wrinkles around the eyes.” Theo took out his phone and was quiet for a few seconds before he laid it on the table and looked back at me.

“Finding trains that lead from Seattle to Illinois isn’t so hard, we could get on a train in four hours or less.”

I looked at my friend, confused and in shock. “Why are you doing this for me?”

Theo chuckled, a rare sound for him, “You know that when my parents divorced when I was eleven, it was okay for me, but I couldn’t process this change in my father’s house. I only visited my mother every two weeks because she traveled a lot. The house seemed so different, so strange after Camilla moved in. I had panic attacks in this house because it were too many changes at once. You camped in the garden for two weeks, each night we read comics outside the house. You had patience with me Kayden, you waited until I processed the changes and was ready to sleep in the house again.”

I smiled at the memory. He didn’t like the texture of the grass under the tent, so I got his mattress from the house, and we basically moved in that little tent together. Comics, snacks, and a little music box.

I thought he would find it even worse in the garden than in the house, but the sound of the rain each night that October calmed him.

We were sick afterward, but it was worth it.

“Ride or die,” I mumbled with a small smile.

A term I connect with all of my friends, Theo, Autumn and especially Tillie. They were my ride or die.

Theo nodded slowly.

“You’re my ride or die, Kidd, so get all the info you need, and we’ll do it.”

“You would even skip school for me?”

“You do know the definition of ride or die, do you?” laughing, I jogged up to my room to get my laptop and a moment later we were both sitting on the sofa googling my new dad.

The little moment of joy had calmed my nerves and made me realize once again that I’d never be alone.

There were a ton of Clark Bressetts, great.

“Try Illinois afterward or Grand Lee.”

I first typed the name of our small town. An old photo of the basketball team popped up.

“You look a lot like him.”

Theo was right, it wasn’t only the black hair but the beauty mark under my left eye and the face shape, even our eyebrows looked similar.

As I looked where this photo came from, I noticed a link to an Instagram profile@Clark_bressett_with the captionGood ol’ times.

I clicked though to the profile. He almost looked the same in his profile picture, a little older, of course, but the smile was the same. It wasn’t my smile through, I got my smile from Mom, just like Nash and Faith. My... half siblings. It sounded weird.

I looked at his bio and my heart felt like it skipped a few beats.

Clark Bressett

Happily married

One beautiful daughter

“He has another child,” I mumbled as I looked through his posts. I remembered that my mother mentioned it in the letter, but I guess all of this was a lot to process for my brain. And now here she was, a girl with midnight black hair and brown eyes in a prom dress, next to Clark. They looked happy, it gave me hope and pain in equal measure.

I clicked on her profile in the caption.

Hope Bressett.

“Whoa, she’s the same age as you. That means-.”

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