So it goes [Breakable Heaven #1]

39. Now that was anticlimactic!

I remember the first time I heard Alanis Morissette's Ironic back in 1995 I thought that it lacked a verse, and that I could have written it. Winning the lottery and dying the next day, being afraid to fly but taking a plane anyway only for it to crash, a no-smoking sign on a cigarette break... being named June, loving that month, and dying in June. That was my mom's story, the one I could have added to the song.

Today is June fifth, the twenty-eighth anniversary of my mom's death. My mom was named June, she loved the month of June, and it was the last month she saw. Isn't it ironic?

Twenty-eight years is a long time, and every year on this day I usually go one with my life like any other day, just spending a little more time in the morning to think about my mom, and then in the evening I usually light a jasmine scented candle - my mom's favorite scent - while I play Pink's Floyd 'Wish you were here' - my mom's favorite song - on vinyl, and I talk to her as if she really were here. It's my little ritual that I've had since my teenage years, my special moment with my mom.

This year, though, as soon as I wake up and I spend some time in bed thinking about the little things I remember about my mother, another thought comes into my mind, specifically another person: Keith Atkinson. I wonder if he knows that his high school sweetheart died only a few years after graduation, leaving a daughter, HIS daughter, all alone. I wonder if he cares, or if he would care. Once again, I get overwhelmed with questions without answers: if he had known, or if he had known about me, would he have taken me in? If he had known about me, maybe be wouldn't have enlisted, maybe the three of us would have lived together like a real family, and maybe my mom wouldn't have been in that car, on that crossroad on that day of June, and she would still be here with us now. Or maybe he has known all along and he has never cared, maybe he heard that my mom passed away, leaving me all alone, and washed his hands of it. Once again there are too many questions that I can't answer alone, too many questions that keep pressing me until I get an answer.

That's when I decide. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle the huge change in my life that contacting my birth father would bring, but now I'm not anymore. Changes don't always mean something negative: my relationship with Rory has changed - albeit just namely - and that change only made it better, so why can't it be the same with my birth father? Besides, even if he rejected me, at least I would know once and for all.

What a better day to decide to contact him than my mom's death anniversary? Isn't it ironic?

The problem is that I can't do it alone. I need moral support, which is why at the end of the working day I gather in my room with Rory, Jean, and Rachel on a Skype call, ready to actively search for Keith Atkinson.

It might be the tension, but Rory and Jean being in my bedroom simultaneously make me laugh. I know my best friend is wondering what the Trybrid Bitch is doing here, but luckily tonight is not about her, it's about me, and the fact that I am about to contact my father on the anniversary of my mom's death puts everything else on the back burner.

"Ready, Bee?" Rachel asks as I type my birthfather's name on Facebook - the most obvious and easiest place to find someone.

"As ready as I'll ever be," I sigh, and press the enter key.

A few results show up, so I narrow my search inserting Los Angeles as a location. I have no way of knowing if he still lives in the area, but I know he grew up there, so there might me some record of him there.

Unfortunately, there's only one Keith Atkinson in the Los Angeles area, but he's twenty-four years old, so definitely not who I am looking for.

"Now that was anticlimactic," Rory whispers, takes my hand, and squeezes it to give me comfort. "What now?"