Page 17 of Due North
His chest rose and fell once.
“A fire broke out at a local ranch, engulfing the barn and trapping six inside. Caleb North, sixteen, the only survivor, suffered extreme smoke inhalation and second-degree burns while attempting to rescue his siblings from the early morning fire. Police report the victims’ mother, Tami North, was also dead of a self-inflicted wound behind the barn. Further investigation is ongoing.”
His chest rose but didn’t fall. His hand did, and so did the ice pack. He opened those chestnut eyes, and they were filled with unrelenting pain.
I reached out and ran my finger over his eyebrow. His face was cold, but the eyelid was normal again. “Looks much better,” I said with a sad smile. I dropped my hand and slipped it into his. “Ten years in a few weeks, Caleb.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” he said quietly. “I know the date. I know the years. I know the minutes and the seconds and the nanoseconds of every moment of that day like it was yesterday.”
“I can’t even pretend to imagine what that was like for you, Caleb.”
“You know how you felt when you found out Allie was dead?” he asked, and I nodded. “Multiply that times five.”
“And your mother,” I said with my head cocked.
“I hope my mother is in hell—”
“Caleb!” I exclaimed, shaking my head. “You don’t mean that.”
He leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair, his fatigue prominent in the dimming light of the day. “But I do. She was the reason all five of my siblings died. I should have died with them. I didn’t, so instead, I have to suffer knowing what she did and what I didn’t do.”
He made a move to stand, but I grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about, Caleb?”
“She started the fire!” he yelled, throwing his arms up as he shot up off the couch. “She started the fire, okay? She trapped my three brothers and two tiny sisters inside a tinder box and lit it up!”
He stalked to the wall and leaned against it, his chest heaving while I sat in stunned silence on the couch. Once his words filtered down through my brain, I stood and went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my head on his chest. I didn’t say anything. Nothing needed to be said. All he needed to know was that someone was there for him. He hadn’t had anyone who’d been there for him ten years ago. Now, he had everyone on this ranch, and none of us were going to let him go through this anniversary alone.
His arms came around me, and he rested his head on mine. He felt … heavy. Maybe it was the weight of carrying those memories for the last ten years. I rubbed his back slowly, wishing I could do more for him, but knowing that the loss he suffered wasn’t consolable. Considering the excessive empathy within him, it must be torture for him every day. You can’t be that tuned into other people’s feelings and not have it take a toll on your health. Losing his five siblings must have damn near killed him. I was honestly surprised he had any empathy left at all.
“She was sick,” he explained, still holding me in his long, strong, capable arms. “Her physical illness left her with depression and anxiety. I suppose that’s why she had six kids with five different fathers. She was searching for some kind of acceptance. I don’t know. I just know it was my fault the kids were in the barn that morning.”
“Caleb, no,” I said, lifting my face to his. His was lost in the past, and the memories washed over his face in painful waves.
“But it’s true,” he whispered, running a work-roughened finger down my cheek. “My mother was nowhere to be found after partying the night before. I had to do chores and couldn’t leave them alone in the house. It was too far away from the barn. I bundled them all up and put them back to bed in one of the horse stalls. I was sixteen, and my brothers were nine, seven, and five. My twin sisters were three.”
“Caleb, I’m so sorry,” I said, resting my forehead on his chest. “You did the right thing, though. She was going to find them no matter where they were.”
His eyes told me how accurate those words were. “That’s what the counselors at the hospital said too, but it was little comfort.”
“I suppose not.”
He released me and went back to the couch to sit. “I was putting the horses out to pasture to clean the barn. By the time I got back, the stalls were already in flames. I tried, God, you don’t know how I tried,” he moaned, his head falling to his chest. “I couldn’t get to them. I always put them in the stall furthest away from the barn doors in the back, so my little sisters didn’t escape. She knew it too!” he cried, pounding the couch with his fist. “She used it to her advantage, and I signed their death warrant.”
I ran to him and fell to my knees in front of him. “Caleb, no. You took care of them when it wasn’t your job to do it. You looked out for them the only way you could when you had many other responsibilities on your shoulders. How many times had you done the same thing?” I asked, holding his hands in mine.
“Over the years? Hundreds,” he whispered. “I had to keep my granddaddy’s ranch running and take care of the kids when my mom couldn’t, which was most of the time.”
“You had no way of knowing that day was going to be any different. I can’t pretend to know how you feel, but I can see that the things you did that day if it had been any other day, were you going above and beyond for your family. Looking at it any other way is a disservice to yourself.”
His body went slack, and he flopped back against the couch, his head lolling to the side. “I should have known she was going to snap. She would go missing for days, and when she was around, she was never agreeable. I kept the kids with me all the time because I was afraid she would hurt one of them. I just didn’t realize how far she’d go.”
“You can’t predict what other people are going to do, Caleb. I know you wish you could, but that’s not how life works. All you can do is your best, which you did. According to that,” I said, pointing at the paper, “you tried to save them.”
He nodded and leaned forward, pulling up the legs of his jeans and pulling his sock off. “I tried, but the fire was so hot,” he whispered while I stared at the scarred skin across his foot and ankle almost to midcalf. The skin was tight and crisscrossed with fibrous bands of scarring. “There was so much hay in the barn that the fire didn’t spread. It just combusted everything at once. I was halfway to the stall where they were when a wall of flames went up in a giant whoosh up to the hayloft. I tried to fight through it, but it was so hot it melted my rubber boots to my feet,” he explained, motioning at the scars. “I didn’t know it at the time. I was too focused on getting to the kids. The flames finally forced me back, and that was when I realized I couldn’t walk anymore. I crawled out of the barn and waited to die.”
“But you didn’t die that day, Caleb,” I said softly, putting his sock back on the way I do for Poppy Rose.
“No, one of the neighboring ranchers saw the fire and called in the fire department. He found me with my legs in the horse trough and knew. He just knew that the kids were inside and stood helplessly staring as the barn burned to the ground before the fire department even got there. He was the one to find my mother behind the barn with a bullet in her head. She burned them alive but ended her life swiftly.”
