He took a moment to take in the scene, forming a plan in his mind. There was no point rushing in blindly or they would both be killed.
But Olivia’s horrified screams could be heard echoing across the valley, and Isaac soon realized that he didn’t have a moment to spare.
The flames licked higher on the western side of the barn and they were swiftly making pace. The window was still clear, but he reasoned that if Olivia could open the window then she would have done so by now. It was obviously stuck, and despite the fear that gripped his body, a renewed determination came over him and he knew exactly what it was he needed to do.
Isaac tore back across the yard toward the house. It went against every instinct he had to leave Olivia behind, but if he wasn’t prepared then he would only be wasting precious time when she needed him the most.
His legs were moving so fast that his thighs ached and his shins burned but he didn’t dare lessen his pace, and he near stumbled clean into the brick wall when he skidded to a stop.
He ran into the mudroom at the back of the house and gathered up two metal pails and a couple of washcloths.
When the buckets were overflowing with water and the rags were thoroughly drenched, he swaggered back toward the barn, his gait lopsided from the unfamiliar weight of the spilling water.
The driving wind whipped through his hair and covered his face, forcing him to focus his eyes on each and every step, but either way, he could barely see three whole feet in front of him.
The smoke had become inescapable, and no matter how hard he tried, every breath became like torture to his burning lungs.
By the time he made it all the way back to the barn, the smoke was billowing out through the doorway and Isaac’s throat was dry and sore.
“Stand back, Olivia … I’m, I’m going to try and break the window … there’s going to be a lot of broken glass.”
He paused just a fraction of a second, waiting to hear some kind of response. Despite the deafening roar of the fire and the crashing sound of old timber catching a light, never before had the sound of silence been so terribly loud, and when Olivia didn’t answer, Isaac’s entire body was suddenly racked with fear.
Don’t let it be too late.
He peeked through the smudgy glass and caught a glimpse of Olivia’s beautiful blonde hair over in the far corner. She was curled up on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, her face covered in filthy, black streaks and she was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Olivia!” he called again, coughing and banging on the glass with the heel of his hand. The fire was growing with intensity, feeding on the hay and timber. “Olivia, don’t move. Promise me you won’t move.”
Isaac stripped off his sweatshirt and sunk it deep into the bucket of water, letting it soak there a moment until it was saturated all the way through. Then he hung it over his head and snatched the sodden cloths from his back pocket. Wrapping them tightly around his clenched fist, he used every last ounce of strength he had left to smash his fist against the window.
His muscles shuddered from the force of the blow.
Isaac lifted his fist again, swearing and grunting and groaning in a single breath as he drove his arm hard into the weakened pane, and this time the glass shattered into large shards that splintered and fell both inside and outside the barn.
Isaac didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t wait for the fear to stop him. He refused to be trapped by the horror of his childhood. Pushing the memories to the furthest crevices of his mind, he clambered up and through the window and for a moment his torso caught on the sill, teetering half in and half out, before he fell in a heap to the ground below, the broken glass piercing through his skin and ripping his side open so quickly that blood gushed from the wound and soaked straight through his clothes.
The heat was so powerful that his eyes stung and his throat closed over almost completely and if there was any pain to be felt, he certainly didn’t feel it and perhaps that was a blessing.
He took a deep breath and then tucked his head tight into his chest as he charged across the barn. The flames nipped at his sweatpants, but he rolled to the ground and brushed away the loose embers, before yanking the heavy, wet jacket from around his shoulders.
He held out his hand and waited for Olivia to reach for him.
“Olivia,” he screamed. “Take my hand… come on!”
Olivia took one tentative step forward, her entire body shaking, but when Isaac threw his sweatshirt over her head and then scooped her up in his arms, she’d never before felt such a torrent of calm wash through her.
“Keep your head down,” he warned, shielding their faces from the flying cinders. “We’re getting out of here.”
Motivated by a need to protect her, Isaac swept away the remains of the glass in the windowsill with his forearm, and then lifted Olivia up and with one smooth movement, she tumbled free of the inferno and out onto the blackened grass on the other side.
She crawled on her hands and knees to the relative safety of the feed trough and then collapsed into a heap, relieved, exhausted and desperate to be away from the flames.
But her breath caught in her scorched throat when she noticed Isaac clambering over the broken glass to free himself, and it was in that exact moment that the heavens opened up and rain began to fall.
It was only light at first, just a sprinkling of raindrops, but it quickly grew heavier, and before long it unleashed everything it had bottled up inside it and it came down in bucketfuls, drowning the barn and the yard, the fire, and Olivia too, for that matter.
But Isaac was a different story.
A story that couldn’t be untold.
He stumbled, clutched at his side and then fell, his eyes rolling into the back of his head when he hit the ground.
And he didn’t move.
He didn’t move, and despite her desperate efforts, Olivia was completely helpless to do anything for him.
Olivia screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that ripped through the air and echoed through the mountains.
Isaac lay limp on the ground beneath her, lifeless and bleeding in the snow while heavy smoke still lifted in waves from the crumbling barn toward the sky above.
Fear tore through her body, buzzing and painful like beestings against her skin and her heart screamed just as loud as the desperate, painful sounds that flew from her lips.
The smell of blood was distinct and metallic, and Olivia swallowed down the sudden urge she had to empty her stomach.
Hands pressed hard against Isaac’s wound, her fingers squelched into his side, his bright red blood moving between them, seeping out faster than she could stop it.
“Help!” she screamed even louder this time, a strangled sob breaking free from her raw throat. She whimpered, hesitating ever so slightly before she turned back to him, desperate to staunch the tide of blood that was growing in an ever-widening circle around Isaac’s sagging body.
She pulled him to her, rocking back and forth and the rain poured down on them, like it too was crying and screaming and begging for something that might never come.
“Don’t you leave me. I love you. Please, Isaac, don’t you dare leave me!”
Olivia put her face next to his, inhaling him through her body. His skin was wrinkled and wet, his hair drenched, sticking to his face and Olivia cried to whoever was listening to bring him back to her.
And then she heard the sirens in the distance and she cried some more as her head fell back on her shoulders. She cried with relief that help was close, and she cried with the terrifying fear that she might have hesitated too long before she’d called them.
When red lights and blaring sirens filled Briar’s Creek, Olivia staggered backward out of the way, and she watched on as the two paramedics from the station in town worked desperately to bring Isaac back to life.
His breath was shallow being that his lungs were so filled with smoke, and because of the amount of blood he’d lost his pulse was weak. But they worked t
irelessly to get him stable, and then they loaded him into the back of the ambulance before Olivia even knew what was happening.
Her mother and father had arrived at some point, as well as Tate and Connor, but Olivia didn’t remember their cars throwing gravel behind them as they raced down the driveway toward her.
She was oblivious to the shocked looks on their faces, the reactions of people who had no idea what was happening. Nor did she remember falling into a heap on the ground again; her blood-stained hands clutching her blackened cheeks as the ambulance bounced over the bumps and took Isaac away from her.
But what she did remember was the pain.
The agonizing pain that gripped her body and froze her thoughts from anything else, especially the hushed tones of her family trying to console her.
Isaac had just saved her life.
But at what cost?
She cried his name into the pouring rain ‘Isaac, Isaac, Isaac’ and her heart screamed his name too, begging him not to leave her, begging him to stay. Their story had only just begun and their ending wasn’t yet.
But what if Isaac couldn’t choose? What if it was too late for that?
Death was in his eyes. But this couldn’t be the end.
And if it was, Olivia felt like she might just die right along with him.
Isaac was taken by ambulance to Dwyer County, a small hospital about twenty minutes south of Woodlake.
There were no details of his progress, the police hadn’t said much at all, but Sheriff Mason had escorted Olivia and her parents in their Subaru along the back roads, making the journey a little quicker.
When they rushed through the front doors of the hospital, the nursing staff asked them politely to remain in the waiting room until there was more information.
But Olivia refused to wait.
She paced, and she cursed louder than she should have—not giving a damn about her parents, or the other people in the waiting room—and she annoyed the nurses until one of them finally caved, reluctantly wandering off to try and find out what she could.
The sliding glass doors flew open again and Olivia looked up to find Abe and Caroline rushing through the doors, looking around as if they weren’t sure where to go, or where they were meant to be.
Abe let out a huge sigh of relief when he spotted Olivia standing by the nurse’s station and he hurried toward her, his big boots heavy against the linoleum floor.
Abe looked about as frantic as Olivia felt.
His eyes were bloodshot and his forehead was creased with deep lines. He asked how Isaac was doing, over and over again, getting louder and more desperate for answers each time, and he didn’t stop asking until Caroline grabbed his arm and held him back, allowing Olivia the space she needed to tell him that she really didn’t know, and that he had to settle down or he’d have them all kicked out before they did know something.
Abe ran his hands back through his hair, clutching a handful tightly between his fingers.
He exhaled slowly, as if he was deliberately trying to calm his breathing. And then he took a seat with the others and slumped into the chair like a man who had the weight of the world resting heavily on his shoulders.
Mrs. Parker touched his arm and asked how he knew Isaac was there. Abe went on to explain that he’d seen smoke billowing into the sky from all the way back in town, how he’d recognized the direction from which the smoke was coming, and then how he’d watched the ambulance fly down Main Street, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
Sheriff Mason had been in the hardware store when he got the call, and Abe hadn’t even bothered to lock up. He and Caroline were on the road within minutes, headed toward Briar’s Creek, before realizing that they would likely just be sent away again.
So they turned around, their headlights sweeping the meadows as the rain teamed down and they got to the hospital in Dwyer County as quickly as they could.
Caroline offered to get coffee for everyone, and when a few heads nodded in appreciation, she and Mrs. Parker wandered off down a wide corridor in search of something that might help settle everyone’s nerves.
An hour later and there was still no news.
In that time, Olivia was treated for some minor burns and a few lacerations. Her lungs had been checked by a specialist for smoke inhalation, who had given her some medicine, some ointment for her burns, as well as a few clean dressings and the all-clear to go home again whenever she was ready.
But Olivia wasn’t going anywhere.
Isaac didn’t regain consciousness before he was rushed into surgery. The nurse who’d promised them news earlier had finally returned. She had little to share, but she’d managed to find out that Isaac’s left lung had been punctured and it had filled with blood.
It needed to be repaired immediately in surgery, or he could drown from his own injuries. He needed to breathe again. More than anything else, he just needed to breathe again on his own.
Olivia was the first to break down.
She burst into tears and fell into a heap on the waiting room floor, her head buried in her hands, heavy sobs racking her chest that made her bones ache and her eyes feel like they were about to explode.
And while her parents desperately tried to console her, attempted with little success to console the un-consolable, Abe jumped to his feet and stormed toward the poor nurse, demanding more answers.
His face was white and his hands shook as he begged for more. More of anything. More of everything. He just needed to know Isaac was going to survive.
He desperately needed to hear those words. And apparently he wasn’t going to let things lie until he did.
Caroline hurried across the room and stood at Abe’s side, her hand on his back, pleading with him to take a seat again until they had more information to share.
A cluster of police officers suddenly came through the doors behind them—commanding attention in full uniform and badges glistening in the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital—and Olivia looked up when one of them said her name.
Mr. Parker asked that whatever it was they wanted with her be left until later, but apparently she needed to be questioned as quickly as possible so the details would still be fresh in her mind, and Olivia almost laughed through her tears.
The memories of that night would never leave her. They’d been singed into her mind with such clarity it was like watching reruns of a movie on a high definition TV.
Olivia didn’t mind helping the officers with their investigation though—she knew who was guilty and she planned on doing all she could to finally bring the bastard down—and as long as they didn’t ask her to leave the hospital, she would gladly give them all the information they wanted.
So, she was escorted by the police officers into a small, barely furnished room that was situated off to one side of the nurse’s station. It was painted pale blue and there was a crucifix hanging on the wall beside a framed photograph of a waterfall.
Olivia wondered if it was the same room they used to tell people that a loved one had recently passed. She suddenly felt like she was going to faint and she wanted out of that room as quickly as she could, but she swallowed down her fears and gave the officers as much information as possible.
She told them about the altercation with Kyle Mason at the Woodlake Winter Festival a couple of nights back. She recalled the shadow she’d seen in the barn, just before the first flames appeared, and then she reached into her pocket and pulled out the green lighter that she’d found on the barn floor.
One of the officers produced a plastic bag and dropped the lighter into it, promising Olivia that they’d have it finger-printed back at the station ASAP. Olivia thanked them sincerely; she spoke softly, holding back her tears. And it wasn’t until she was told that she was free to go that it suddenly dawned on her that Sheriff Mason hadn’t been invited into the room with her.
He’d been left outside in the waiting room, and as he watched Olivia return to the others—standing off to one side as he was, his arms
folded across his chest—he fell back slightly looking very ill at ease, as if he knew what was coming and had no way of stopping it.
Olivia took a seat in the corner of the waiting room, all by herself, and in hushed tones, her parents begged Tate to let her be.
She had tried to be brave, but when she could be brave no longer she hid her face in her hands and a soot-covered sweater, and she cried until she felt like she had no more tears to cry, a weightless blanket of despair that was all-consuming.
Her head felt like a cinder block balancing on her shoulders as she slouched back in the uncomfortable chair to rest her head against the wall behind.
The sound of paper crinkling caught her attention and she looked down, realizing that the sound had come from her pocket when she moved, so she reached inside and pulled out the torn page from the Bible that Isaac had put in there earlier that morning.
Olivia scoffed at the irony of it all.
The chapel was on the opposite side of the hospital, and yet it was as if she’d somehow been offered a direct line to the man upstairs right when she’d needed Him the most.
And so, Olivia sat back in the seat again and she read the words of the Lord, the words Mrs. Ackerman had left for her in that tattered old page from the Bible, and she prayed tearfully to Eleanor and to God, and to anyone else up there in Heaven, anyone who had come and gone before her with even the slightest ounce of sway, to give them more time.
Thus, they made a covenant at Beer-sheba, and called there on the names of the Lord, the everlasting God.
And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines’ land for many days.
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham: and he said, behold here I am.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of…
Olivia’s head suddenly snapped up.
She moved so fast she almost got whiplash. She felt her expression twist as she drew in a sharp breath through blunt lungs, and let the page fall from her fingers, flutter to the floor, and the words left her mouth with spinning emotion.
The Winter Before Page 23