Caleb's POV
*Then*
"C'mon kiddo, we're already late. Let's hit the road, yeah?" Uncle Martin's voice rang all the way up to the house as he shut the trunk of his car.
I worked to get the scowl off my face but was probably unsuccessful as his smile turned to a frown when he looked up at me.
"What's wrong, Caleb? Have I pissed ya off in some way?"
His usually prominent southern drawl deepened even more as it always did when he was upset or concerned, and an instant shot of guilt spiked through me.
Uncle Martin had been nothing but kind and loving to me for as long as the memory served, and here I was letting my father mess with my head and our relationship again.
Ever since my parents divorced and mom moved to this tiny city, uncle Martin had become a constant in my life. He rarely missed visiting me on my birthdays and most holidays.
Sometimes, when he was not visiting his mother in New York his son Leo - who was a spitting image of his father, both in flesh and soul - would accompany him and it would always be a blast.
I only got to see my father on alternative birthdays and some special occasions, not because there were any visitation restrictions on him.
It was simply that my father preferred to have people come to him, and not the other way around.
And as the years had passed, my visits to him had dwindled to one or two times a year seeing as I loathed flying.
The thought reminded me of my impending visit to my father and another plane ride to Boston so the we can celebrate my birthday together and my irritation turned to panic.
I had no idea what was it about flying that scared me so much, but I could already feel the beads of sweat trickling down my back.
"You're fine, Martin. He's just worried about flying again." Came my mom's voice from behind me as she locked up the door. Her golden blonde hairs flew around in the wind as she walked down the steps with me, placing a gentle hand on my back.
Her presence immediately soothed me. I had no idea what kind of calming effect she had on me, but my panic attacks would almost never occur when she would accompany me to Boston.
In the initial years since their divorce, my mother was the one who'd fly me to Boston and back, but lately that responsibility had been shifted to uncle Martin as his visits had become more frequent.
"Ah, that makes more sense. But you don't need to worry, son. I'll be with you the whole time. And this time, we will try to make it all the way without any medication, yeah?"
I nodded, but his use of the word "son" brought my irritation back again.
Unbidden, my father's words and his implications about mom and uncle Martin popped into my mind.
Was it really true? Or was I reading too much into nothing again? It's not like he hasn't called me son before.
And did it matter even if it was true? My parents were divorced for years now. And uncle Martin was divorced for much longer than that. But even as I thought that, my stomach cramped up with discomfort.
The car passed over a speed bump and uncle Martin's voice brought me back to now again.
"Whoa, sorry about that," he spoke in the general direction of the backseat as he hit a particularly nasty speed bump.
"The roads are really slippery today. You guys strapped up tight back there?"
My mother rechecked her seat belt and then mine before confirming that we were. Even though I was 16 now, my mother made it a point to always sit in the backseat with me.
It wasn't ideally polite to let uncle Martin play the driver, but he never minded, or even complained.
Me, on other hand, was an entirely different story.
"I can't wait to be 18 and be free to choose to not put myself through this. Why do y'all insist I visit dad? It's not like he's got much time to spend with me anyway."
"He'll free up his schedule for you this time, I'm sure. Besides, he is your father. And we are all his family. Always remember son, we are Cross and we never betray or abandon family."
I gritted my teeth and slouched further down into the leather seat. He was the one to talk about betrayals.
If he was really having an affair with my mother - his brother's ex-wife - where was his sense of duty for his family now, huh?
My thoughts were starting to sound very much like my father but I didn't care. Right then, I didn't care about much of anything.
My father cheated on my mother, had a freaking child with someone else and then brought her into our family under the pretense of adopting her.
When my mother finally found this out, she reached her breaking point and left him, but only because it was uncle Martin who supported her.
He made sure that she had a home and job here, that my father didn't strip her of her money and my custody, and basically made sure that his brother got the short end of the stick out of all this.
And now they were apparently having an affair, and I was forcefully shipped over to my father for celebrating something he didn't even have time to celebrate.
Why were these adults so selfish? Why can they not think of me for once?
I could feel the angst and fury rise in me as uncle Martin increased the speed, despite knowing that it was dangerous to do so on a slippery road.
Of course he didn't care if we crashed. Or if I have another panic attack on the flight. All he cared about was getting his ends to meet.
Maybe dad really was right. Maybe uncle Martin was responsible for our family to break.
After all if it wasn't for his help, my mother would still be trying to make their marriage work, just like she had been all these years. She gave up because she knew she could. And that was all because of uncle Martin.
If I was any saner, any calmer, I'd have seen what an ass I sounded like. How much of my dad I was slowly becoming.
But I wasn't. I was being subjected to this torture of travelling without medication this time and I had no mood to be kind to anyone right now.
The car was going even faster now. I gazed out of the window as my mother informed uncle Martin that we only had 15 minutes before the gates closed and that he needed to hurry up, my mood building up to be as stormy as the night outside.
I wished I could lower the windows and let the cool air flow in, but that would displease my mom.
Not that I cared what displeased whom right then.
The overpowering smell of leather was suffocating, but I could still detect her faint lavender scent. It was calming. Always had been. But right then, I didn't want calm. I wanted to rage, scream.... Punish.
I crossed my arms over my chest as they shook with anger, and tried to think of some kind of strategy. Anything to get things going my way.
Anything that would help me not board that flight. Especially with uncle Martin. Especially without any tranquilizers.
Wait a minute. That's it. I haven't had any medication this time. They said they were weaning me off it slowly. So it was perfectly acceptable for me to have a panic attack now just at the thought of flying.
I mean its not like that hasn't happened countless times before.
I let the suffocating leather smell get to me and felt my breath speed up. My heart was going into override and beads of sweat formed on my forehead. I let the anger take over me completely and uncrossed my arms, letting them shake violently.
"Caleb? Honey, what's wrong?" I turned to look at her and from my angle her angelic face looks stressed, her green eyes narrowed to slits as she tried to make sense of what was happening to me, her blonde hairs spilling over her shoulders in a frazzled kind of way.
"Caleb? Can you hear me? What's the matter?" She raised her voice in panic and uncle Martin turned his head partially towards us.
"What's going on back there, Audrey?"
"Martin, I think... I think Caleb is having a panic attack again. Good Lord, I thought they were finally under control."
She fumbled around in the dark looking for something.
"My bag. Where's my bag, Martin? He looks terrible, I need to give him the pills."
"Wait a second, I'm pulling over. Sure you had it when we left from home?"
"Yes I did and no, don't slow down. If we stop now, we're gonna miss the flight. Don't worry, I got this."
"We can re-book the tickets Audrey. Just-"
"There's no need, Martin. He'll be fine after he's had his meds. Now if I can just find my bag..."
She unclipped her seat belt and tried to reach down beneath her seat to look for her purse while I laid there, watching their exchange. Letting their comfortable familiarity fuel my anger and my reactions.
Dad was right. Uncle Martin was not the saint I thought he was. He was a devil. He was the reason my family broke. He was the -
"Found it!" He unclipped his seat belt too, grabbed my mother's purse from the front seat next to him and turned to hand it over to her.
"Oh, thank God. You're a life saver, Mart- Oh God, look out!"
Her startled, frightened scream snapped me out of my thoughts and play-acting as our car slid out of control over a bend on the road.
"Mom!" I tried to reach for her, but my seat belt dug deep into my skin and held me in place as I watched her get thrown around the car.
The crunching noise of metal, the crashing of glass windows and screams all mingling into one unbearable, horrendous sound.
Briefly, I lost the sense of space and time. It could have been 2 minutes or 2 years for all I knew as felt something warm slid down my head and over my face.
I opened my eyes, glad that the car had stopped rolling and spinning around. All went quiet, too quiet, except for the huge drops of rain splattering onto the concrete and bouncing off the wreckage around me.
A piece of glass was stuck into my arm and I wrenched it out before looking around. The world outside the window seemed upside down, the rainwater was pooling up on the asphalt concrete too close to my face.
The nauseating smells of burnt rubber, exhaust and several other revolting things were filling the air and I coughed to draw in a breath.
I unclipped my seat belt and got thrown headfirst down. That was when certain things started to register.
First was that it wasn't the world outside,but our car that was upside down on the bend of the road with occasional flares of fire and smoke wafting off it in huge black clouds.
And second was that there was a huge gash somewhere on my head from which warm liquid was oozing out and dripping into my eyes.
I crawled out of the broken window next to me, working on autopilot more than any conscious thought, until I was all the way out and then laid there with my face towards the onslaught of rain.
It felt nice. Soothing. And it was slowly clearing my brain. Making me remember the last few minutes before the accident.
The sounds, the smells.. The screams.... Mom.
I had no idea how my battered body plucked up enough strength to get off the road and towards the other side of the car.
I didn't even remember dropping down to my knees and pulling my mother out of her broken side of window, or checking her pulse, or trying to wake her up. I didn't even remember calling for help, or making any sound at all.
All I could remember was holding her to my chest. She didn't smell of lavender and peace right then. She smelled of leather and burnt rubber, the smells I would forever associate with anguish and pain.
I had no idea how long was it until I sat there holding her to me. But I did remember looking up as a crunching sound of glass and a deep groan rang from the front of the car.
I did remember uncle Martin's huge body, bloodied and broken laying halfway out of the windshield of the car, trying to crawl out.
I remembered this because I looked at him about the same time he looked up at me and stretched his hands out to try and reach for me. Asking for help. Clawing at the abyss black concrete that made the streaks of blood stand out all the more prominent on them.
And I remembered this because that was when I ignored the man who had loved me like a son for all these years and chose to not save him.
Chose to let him die, because what was the point of saving him, or anyone really, when the only person worth saving - the only person worth living - was gone?
I had no idea if I even replied to him, or looked back at him until distant sirens sounded and paramedics pulled me off and away from mom.
All I remembered was looking down at her angelic face, looking unbothered by all that was going around her. Her long blonde locks soaked in blood that was dribbling and getting washed away in the downpour.
*Now*
It's often said that blinking can wake you up from a nightmare. I blinked. And the blinked again. And then kept blinking, but nothing would dispel the nightmare this time.
Nothing would make it stop. Nothing would wake me up. Nothing would stop morphing those blood-soaked blonde hair into brown, or my mother's angelic face to change into Ruth's.
Nothing I could do would take the weight of her body off and away from my arms as she laid there looking pale and lifeless.
And nothing would dispel the sight of Leo standing exactly as far as where his father had lain, watching us and looking as much in pain as his father had that night.
As the blood dripped into my eye and the darkness gathered around my conscious, my last thought was that he knew.
He had always known.