Page 30 of Due North
“I’m not blowing smoke, and you are not a coward. Listen to me, what happened ten years ago was beyond your control. You were never going to save those kids.”
“I would have if I had been in the barn!” I exclaimed. “If I had been inside when the fire started, I could have gotten them out!”
He shook his head and leaned forward, his elbows on the desk while he forced eye contact with me. “No, you wouldn’t have. Your mother planned this, Caleb. At some point, she used an odorless accelerant to soak the stall where you always put the kids in the morning. There was no way for you to know that she had done that, but the second she tossed that match to the barn, the accelerant grabbed hold of it and burned hot almost instantly. She planned this, Caleb, and there was nothing you could have done to stop it.”
I slumped backward in the chair and stared at the man in front of me. “What? No. No. They told me her depression had gotten so bad that she snapped that morning.”
“Not that morning,” Nash said with a frown, “that was just the morning she picked to do it. She wanted a new life in heaven with her children. That’s what she said in the note they found.”
My head tipped to the side slowly as I tried to process his words. “The note they found? Did she leave a note? No one ever told me she left a note!”
Nash held his hand out to me as I stood. My leg didn’t hold, and I fell back to the chair, hoping it just looked like I was in shock.
“The psychiatrists at the time decided you didn't have to know about the note. The fact is, it didn’t say much other than she was going to take her babies to heaven with her where they would have a home together without pain. She rambled a lot, but she made sure to say you knew nothing about this.”
I waved my hand to cut him off. “She had a gun. Why the dramatics? She could have taken all of us out in less than a minute.”
His nod of confirmation was comforting and aggravating at the same time. My stomach churned at the idea that I was about to learn the truth. The question I had asked myself for ten years was about to be answered.
“Why didn’t she use the gun on all of us? Why did she let her babies burn to death while she died instantly?”
“She listed two reasons in the letter, Caleb. Are you sure you want to know?”
“God, Nash,” I whispered, my head in my hand as a shiver racked my body. “I’ve asked myself this question forever. Please, just tell me.”
“She didn’t want to see her babies die,” he said, his voice low and steady. “She said she wanted to be at the gates of heaven waiting with open arms for them when they arrived. If she were the last one to go, then she wouldn’t be there, and that wasn’t acceptable to her.”
I shuddered, bile rising in my throat at the thought. “My mother wasn’t going to the gates of heaven, Nash. God help me,” I said, my body trembling and my stomach swirling with acid.
I retched, and Nash slid a trash can under my head just as my stomach exploded with a fiery expulsion. All my fears. All my questions. All my demons were emptied into that can, leaving me empty and trembling.
Nash handed me a napkin, and I wiped my mouth, sitting back against the seat to catch my breath. “She wasn’t in her right mind, Caleb. We both know that. Her illness doesn’t excuse what she did. Not at all. It was just a precipitating factor in the event.”
“I tried to get her help,” I said, lifting my head to meet his gaze. “I tried, so hard, every day, but she swore her Bible was all she needed. Well, her Bible and whatever guy she happened to be sleeping with that month. She never took care of her babies. I took care of her babies,” I said, angrily poking my chest. “I took care of them every day, made sure they ate, were dressed, and went to school besides running that ranch for her!”
He nodded patiently. I’m not going to lie … it was irritating. “I know, Caleb. Is it okay if I call you Caleb?” he asked, his head tipped to the side as he folded his hands again. “I do like it better than Tex.”
“You do?” I asked in surprise. “I always thought it was a dumb name for a cowboy.”
“I understand why you dropped it, and I’ll respect that, but I think it gives you an air of realness that Tex doesn’t.”
“I don’t understand a thing you just said, Nash.”
“Let me put it to you this way. That Halloween morning in the barn, you were Caleb. You were the brother to those five little ones and you were willing to do anything, even at risk to your own life, to save them. That was real. That was Caleb. Right or wrong, that was the moment you owned your name. It means—”
“Brave,” I spat. “It’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not, Caleb,” he said pointedly. “You had fire surrounding you, beams falling to the ground around you, your boots melted to your skin, and you continued to fight on to find a way to get to those babies. The truth is, they were already gone.”
I put my hands over my ears and rocked in the chair. “Stop!” I demanded. “I can’t listen to this anymore.” I jumped up and headed for the door when my right leg gave out, and I went down to my knee. My hands were braced on the floor while my chest heaved, and my eyes filled with tears. “She had better be in hell for this!” I yelled, pushing myself to a standing position again. My leg was wobbly, and before I could take a step, Nash was there to help me back to the chair.
He sat me down and pointed at the bottle of water he’d set on the desk. I gulped it down, using the time to force back the tears that threatened to fall. This was the very reason why I didn’t spend time with people on Halloween. There was never a way to hide the emotions and tears that overtook me for the entire day.
“Regardless of where your mother is, you are here, Caleb. You are here. You have two choices. You can be Caleb, the guy in the barn that morning ten years ago who loved with so much abandon that he was willing to die for his people. Or you can be Tex, the always nice, smiling, happy-go-lucky cowboy who takes care of the ranch and does his job well but never lets his guard down around anyone.”
“That’s not fair,” I whispered, lowering the bottle to the desk. “You haven’t walked in my boots, Nash. That’s not fair.”
He held up his hand in agreement. “I apologize. You’re right. I guess what I’m trying to say is, start living like Caleb again. Is it going to hurt? Hell yes. It’s going to hurt as much as those burns did ten years ago, but then, the pain slowly starts to fade the longer you’re around people who apply the balm it needs. If you don’t, you’re always going to hurt.”
