Page 26 of Due North
“How do you feel other’s emotions, Caleb?” she asked, her hand still rubbing my back.
“Just like anyone else, I suppose.” I couldn’t get into it tonight. I would say things I shouldn’t, and she’d never look at me the same again.
“You and I both know that’s not true,” she said, leaning back on the couch. Her hand fell to her side, and I immediately wished it was still against me. Her touch grounded me, and even if that was all it could be, that was what I needed tonight more than anything. I needed to feel grounded.
I leaned back against the couch and rubbed my hands on my thighs. “Did you ever use a kaleidoscope as a kid?” I asked with my gaze on the stove instead of her. Making eye contact with her would derail my resolve not to kiss her, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Of course. Who hasn’t?”
I tipped my head in acknowledgment but shrugged at the same time. “That’s what happens inside me when someone has strong emotions. I guess what I mean is, in the morning, when I first wake up, the image is colorful, but the kaleidoscope remains still if my emotions are steady. The colors and flecks don’t start to shift until I encounter the first soul of the day. If they don’t have any strong emotions, the kaleidoscope just sways back and forth slightly.”
“And when someone you encounter is emotionally disturbed, you get a full swirl of that kaleidoscope,” she finished.
“Which isn’t always a bad thing,” I added. “Sometimes, like when Poppy Rose is happy and giggling, the colors that swirl around me are yellow, green, and red. It might sound weird, but I need the kaleidoscope to show me those colors as often as possible so that I can deal with the blacks, blues, greens, and oranges that I see from the adults in my life.”
I sighed at the way her warmth soaked into my skin when she squeezed my hand. She calmed me and brought those colors back into line again. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I know I have added to the black a lot lately.”
I swung my head no while I entwined our fingers together. It was a bad idea, but I didn’t want her to let go of me. “No, I don’t see grief as blackness. It’s hard to explain,” I said with a sigh.
“Try?” she asked. Her voice was gentle and nondemanding, but I had to be careful what I said so she didn’t get the wrong idea about our future together.
“Black is anger,” I said, biting my lip for a second. “Black surges at me like a fist. It’s always overwhelming when it happens. When Heaven gets mad, she sees me take a step back, and she takes a step forward. I take the step back to put distance between me and the black fist. I always try to avoid her anger because even though it’s understandable, it exhausts me.”
“Thank you,” she said, her head nodding. “I can picture the black fist coming out at you now. If anger is black, what is grief?”
“Blue,” I said, the word heavy. “Blue of every shade. It’s the backdrop color of my life, at least for the last ten years.” I tapped her hand on my leg and swallowed around the grief bubbling up as we spoke. The wounds were fresh after talking about the girls at the fire. “Like when you go to the watering hole on a sunny day, and the water is calm, right?” I asked, and she nodded without speaking. “That’s what I see when everything is level in my life or when I’m having a good day. But then a memory sticks its toe in the water, drawing ripples across the pond before it calms again. When I’m confronted with someone else’s grief, the water—”
“Swells and turns frothy,” she finished.
“No,” I said, turning to her because I couldn’t hold back the need to see her beautiful face a second longer. “It sways in every shade of blue there is. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I see a wall of blue. It sways and swirls from one shade of blue to the next.”
“It undulates.”
My eyes closed against the word. “Yes, that’s the exact word. It undulates, but I let it because that’s what I’m used to after all these years. I’m used to the blue.”
Her hand came up to caress my cheek, her thumb rubbing across my eyebrow. I knew she was checking the lid to see if it was drooping. It wasn’t, and I was glad. That was only an added layer of stress I didn’t need right now. “Now I understand why you need the yellows and reds of Poppy Rose.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m always torn up, Cece. I’m not. It’s just, right now, I’m—”
“Struggling,” she said. “I know you’re not always torn up. When I first started working here, you were a different person than you are now. You smiled, laughed, teased, and jumped at any chance to help. You still help anyone who needs it, but you don’t smile and laugh as easily.”
“I do,” I said, but the shake of her head quieted me again.
“You do, but not like you used to. There has been a layer of sadness under it since this summer. We understand why now, but you won’t let any of us help you. If you don’t ask for help, you can’t find a path back to Caleb again.”
I gazed into her beautiful face while my thumb rubbed across her lips in a dangerous game of dare that I was probably going to lose. Her sweetness always overpowered my willpower whenever she got too close to me. “That path was buried in an avalanche, sweetheart. That man is gone. What you see before you is the shell that remains.”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist. “No, I refuse to believe that. Maybe that’s what it feels like to you in here,” she said, tapping my chest, “but I see glimpses of him every time you play with that little girl in there.” She pointed to the bedroom and let her hand drop. “You understand her on a level I don’t, and I’m her aunt. I’m her mother now, but I have to follow your lead sometimes just to know what she needs or wants. Those are the moments I see the Caleb I met when I first started working at Heavenly Lane. I know you feel like you’ll never find that man again, but you will if you let us help you.”
“I don’t know how to let you help me,” I admitted, my eyes closing against the truth. “I don’t, Cece. I wish I could just tell you what I need, but I don’t know.”
“I do,” she whispered, stroking my cheek with her finger. It was soft and smelled of shea butter and honey. I inhaled her scent and let it settle inside me to soothe the rough spots that I left open after the discussion at the fire. I needed her to soothe those parts of me more than I realized. “You do what you did tonight. You talk about them. You let the love, hatred, pain, joy, anger, and happiness out so we can all absorb a little bit of it for you.”
“Hell, no,” I said, jumping up and stumbling my way to the opposite wall. “No, never again,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t speak of her, and I never will.”
She stood but didn’t approach me. She was standing there like a sponge, absorbing all the fear, anxiety, and anger rolling off me. I could feel it seeping out, and I glanced at the floor, colors of blue, black, and orange like smoke moving toward her. I wanted to lunge forward and stop them. Grab them up, so they couldn’t reach her and poison her soul too. I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare in fascination at the swirling mist of beautiful colors.
“I didn’t say of her, Caleb. I said them. Malachi, Adam, Isaiah, Naomi, and Miriam. We know their names now. We know you loved them. Share them with us. Tell us who they were and what they meant to you, so we can all love them. We want to love them because you did, but first, we need to know who they were on this earth.”
