The Light of Hidden Flowers by Jennifer Handford Read Free Book Online

childhoods, and in the process, killed our marriage.
    She never wanted me to forget that I made my own bed, and now it was time for me to lie in it.
    I turned toward Kate. Asked her if anything else happened.
    “Same as usual . . . girls laughing when I walked by.”
    “Why?” I said, like a stupid fool. Obviously she didn’t know why.
    Kate just shook her head side to side.
    Another wave of anger. Irrational thoughts poured over me, fantasies about defacing their lockers, spray-painting “Mean Girl” and “Bully” across them. Then I’d call their parents and warn them that their daughters are little brats and they might want to intervene before they grow into full-blown bitches.
    Instead, I launched into nonsense.
    “Girls who act like that . . . they live their life on the surface,” I said. “Where everything changes from day to day: their friends, their moods. A lot of waves, a lot of stormy weather. You, though—you, Kate, you run deep. Still water runs deep.” I was losing myself in this ridiculous analogy. It had sounded good in my head, but now it just sounded like I didn’t have anything better to say. What good did it do to tell her that someday she was going to be an awesome adult, that someday these foolish girls would be struggling and she would be thriving, that someday she would realize that middle school girls were just an annoying hiccup in her otherwise extraordinary life as an award-winning novelist or classics professor or Nobel prize–winning scientist? Kate could be anything she wanted. She just had to make it through this first.
    “I just wish . . .” she began, but was unable to finish. I could fill in the words for her. I just wish I fit better. I just wish Mom wasn’t in Costa Rica with her fancy lawyers . . . again. I just wish things were like they used to be.
    “Mom will be home next week,” I said.
    Kate just nodded stoically, though I could tell she was filled to the top. Next week might as well have been a year from now. Kate knew I’d walk through fire for her, but the one thing I couldn’t do was be her mother.
    “How are you doing, Dad?” she asked, burying her head into my chest.
    “We’re talking about you, not me,” I said, kissing her head. “Let me check on your brother and sister, and then I’ll come back.” I left her room and tucked in Olivia and Jake, then grabbed my cell phone from my dresser, and turned off the bedroom light. With me in the chair next to her bed, Kate fell asleep in no time. When her breathing became rhythmic, I opened my phone and clicked on Facebook.
    I wasn’t a chronic poster, but I did occasionally post pictures of the kids. For my family. They liked to see what we were up to. All told, I only had about forty friends on FB, so it didn’t take long to scroll my news feed. I got a kick out of seeing guys from my unit, now home with their families, in their new jobs, looking so clean and scrubbed, so unlike the camouflaged, dirt-caked warriors I’d spent so much time with. Bob Adams had been in my Marine Special Operations Battalion in Afghanistan, and was the most fearless guy I knew. He was on his second tour when he got hit by an IED. He lost his arm, but from the look of his posts, it wasn’t stopping him much. Somehow he managed to play hockey with his son.
    I liked to check in on my high school friends, too. Mike Marshall, a guy I played football with, had lost a ton of weight and was now an elite marathon runner. I never thought a linebacker his size could slim down so much. And Mr. LeFey, my civics teacher. He was a great guy. “Come see me after school,” he’d say, and when I’d get to his room, he’d have college packages he’d sent away for. “Let’s take a look,” he’d say. It was because of him—him and a guy named Frank Fletcher—that I ended up at Virginia Military Institute and then in the Marines Corp. They were my mentors.
    Frank Fletcher. I dated his daughter, Missy. She was my high