“My house is on fire!”
Twenty-Three
Taco Tuesday sends a terrible message to our children. They need to know that tacos are acceptable any day of the week.
—Calli to Jasper
CALLIOPE
I watched in horror as my house burned down to the ground for forty-five minutes.
Jasper stayed outside, bundled completely up, as it burned.
I stayed inside seeing as the only clothes I had on my body were a pair of panties and a camisole that barely covered me.
I could’ve put something of Jasper’s on, but honestly, I didn’t want to see it from closer up.
Jasper wasn’t the only one outside, either.
There were several other men neighbors who were also outside, watching right along with him.
The fire department was approximately four and a half miles away, and they’d been trying to get to my house for the entire duration that it took for my house to burn.
They were currently stuck halfway, unable to get up a hill with the biggest truck they had filled with water.
Since they couldn’t tap into the fire hydrants due to the extreme cold—what were the odds that my house would burn down when the cold kept the firefighters from doing something like tapping into a hydrant?—they’d done the next best thing.
Only, that truck hadn’t been able to make it.
We did have several police officers watching the house burn as well, as well as the fire chief in his personal vehicle who lived, surprisingly, right down the road from us.
He was the only reason we knew that the firefighters wouldn’t be making it.
The only thing that saved Jasper’s house and the one on the other side of me was the snow and ice.
The fire had burned so hot that it’d melted the snow and ice that was nearest my house, and had kept it from getting out of control.
Jasper walked over to the fire chief that’d been checking out my truck for some reason—it’d also burned down completely—and spoke with him several minutes before turning around and coming my way.
He waited for me to back up before he pushed the door to his carport open and came inside.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Jasper asked once he’d breached his house.
“The bad,” I said simply.
He pulled off his gloves, then cupped my face with his cold hands.
A violent shiver shot through me, but I didn’t make him stop.
“Your house is unsalvageable.”
That I knew.
“Everything is a total loss,” he continued.
I looked over at the large man and shook my head. “I think that I’m capable of figuring that out on my own, Jas.”
“But there’s still good news,” he said.
