It's the only lie he'll let me tell him and he never ever calls me on it.

His arm is tight around my waist, keeping me in close against his chest, my back pressed so hard against his ribs I expect at any moment to pushed inside his ribs and absorbed into his heart. 

What makes you think I haven't already done that? He says with a soft laugh. A shiver runs down my spine and I try to turn around to address him properly but he won't allow it. He reaches with his other hand, taking my wine glass, putting it down and then that hand slides down, from my heart to my ribs, over my stomach to rest on my hips. He pulls me in hard and it's my turn to laugh gently. 

This could be easier if you would let me turn, Dóiteán.

For my efforts, that free hand goes to my mouth. No more words will be said. It's rare to be so quiet. His head comes down next to mine, pressing hard, helping to steer me around and then I am dropped on my face into the quilts. Then he flops down beside me, facing me, grin across his face in the sunset light that is probably the most wonderful view, eclipsing the ocean by the leaps and bounds my heart now makes, loping around the room, picking up speed. Bridget zoomies. 

And he laughs out loud. I just had a vision of what you would be like as a puppy. Jumping up all excited and running around the room. I smile to myself because he's had too much wine and can't zero in on my thoughts. He is wild and affectionate and just a little bit too rough and I'm not going to give this up for anything. 

He leans forward and kisses me. Peanut. I have an idea. 

Hmmm? I'm pretty sure I know exactly what his idea is going to be.

Let's...Why don't we run away and join the carnival? Or the circus. Something. He starts to laugh out loud, and keeps laughing until tears start to run down his face. Let's just go. 

Soon. Soon we can go back. 

It's been too long of a break. I might be too weird even for them now. And you are definitely too weird for it now. 

I turn on my back and think about that. What if we did go back? What if we picked up where we left off. Not like it's full years away. We could come and go. Except that I'm not willing to go until the kids are grown and independent and part of the deal is that we settled down to give them a normal life and everyone was on board with that and we will continue to chart this course until we get to that point in time. And things have changed. The world has changed. I have changed.

Won't be too much longer, I lie, looking over at him but he is already asleep.

Inbreath outside, redux.

(UndertoneovercastInbreathoutsidegoingonalimbTearingoffthebandageUncoverfearlessnessWhen lightningstrikesIt'smetinthemiddleThere'sabone-bentriddleBemetwithariddlebefoundInbreathoutside-)

There's actually something weirdly liberating about taking my coffee way down to the far corners of the garden in the morning when it's cool, before the sun beats down on our heads, a scorching drum heralding the dog days of summer, as it feels like since the heatwave. I feel free and dangerous, adult and accomplished. I feel like I can manage walking and drinking a coffee at long last, something I've wanted to master ever since I saw Sophie walking around with the hugest Starbucks cup in hand, wearing her high boots and a perfectly-wrapped scarf around her shoulders, sunglasses perched on perfect hair because she doesn't need actual reading glasses ever and wow, it's also weird to see perfect people but honestly she's never been happy in her life and I wouldn't trade places with her for anything. 

Then I spill it. 

Ah. Lochlan laughs. Well, at least you get further every day. Maybe practice more when your hand is healed. I heard the tiny pause where he was going to say wing. They've all done it, multiple times.

He turns to move the wheelbarrow from where it was left last evening and I stop in my tracks, a practised habit as I see a hummingbird nearby. The hummingbird goes straight to the tool shed, a fairy-house if ever there was one, ten feet tall with a cedar shake roof and sides and a mirror on the door. The bird considers itself for so long my breath catches. Has it never seen its own beauty? Has it never realized how such complex beings as humans will stop from their minor, pointless travails, considering the bird the miracle in this equation?

Does it not know?

Lochlan straightens slowly, shaking his head as he sees the bird, and reads my thoughts. So loud inside my head they leak out everywhere, between my eyelashes, between my teeth, slowly dripping out of my ears, flooding his thoughts via my sudden tears. 

It doesn't, Peanut. It's a lot like you. Same heartbeat, same absolute oblivion.

Not so hot so time to work before it gets hot again. (I know you love these short pointless posts. Sorry.)

I got to stand around today in another pretty sundress, with my face obscured by a huge cup of coffee half the time and the other half I was directing garden cleanup. Weeding, reminding the boys what each plant is called, hilling the potatoes, strengthening the supports on the blooming tomatoes, tying up tall plants and bushy plants, harvesting herbs and cut flowers and putting in a path of stones where I have worn a path in the earth, walking through. 

We also raked up dried leaves from the heatwave and gave everything a thorough watering. The chickadees came to visit in the orchard, and so did the hummingbirds and bees and no, I don't have PTSD from the yellowjackets but I also didn't stray off the path. 

Lochlan absolutely loves working in the sun. He is already tanned and golden and said I need to enlist them more often instead of trying to look after most of it myself. Otherwise how would PJ know precisely when phlox blooms, or Dalton know when to stop harvesting oregano in order to let it bolt for the bees? 

After gardening I switched from coffee back to champagne. Busted fingers hurt like the dickens and no way am I taking vicodin anymore. I think I'm done with seeing unicorns on the lawn.

Trying out Batman's speech to text program and then just adding in my McCarthyistic editing. Tedious!

Coffee, bills paid, hummingbird feeders cleaned and refilled with my own very popular mix of one part white sugar to four parts water, sugar stirred into boiled water to dissolve, then cooled. I had to shake the feeders with vinegar and salt to clean out the insides as the extreme heatwave ruined the previous mix. While I was taking them down a ruby-throat came right up to within ten inches of my face. He thought I was a big flower. I'm wearing a green swing dress with cotton crocheted lace trim on the ruffles and the ties on my shoulders are too loose so I need to change before I have a wardrobe malfunction but it is easier to wear this than anything complicated. One-handedness is tough even though it's my left. Still healing a bad burn on my right. 

Ha. 

I'm not actually doing any of this though. Lochlan shook the feeders. Ben dressed me. Asher made the coffee and copied down numbers as I read them out. Caleb came down and picked a pre-coffee fight with Asher, blaming him for my stumble, as Lochlan's been adamant for the past hundred years that I don't go up the steps alone. Or down for that matter. I'm easily distracted and horribly farsighted. I don't hear you when you tell me to slow down or be careful. I saw a sea lion and was looking over my shoulder and for that Caleb feels Asher should be given a first strike. 

Don't be ridiculous, I point out. It could have happened to anyone. Besides, my Birkenstocks are a tiny bit too big but I grab them first since they're easy to kick off at the bottom and I can step into them on the way back up. 

He's supposed to protect you. 

FROM THE STAIRS?

Bridget, watch your tone-

You mind your own business! I fucking tripped. It was my own fault. Stop trying to find a villain in every moment so that you don't have to be one! 

With that Lochlan snorts coffee everywhere. 

Caleb gazes at him in amusement and then turns back to me. It shouldn't have happened, that's all. 

I say that a lot too. I feel you. 

He does not laugh. At least three of the others are now cracking up. PJ leaves the room. Lochlan has abandoned the idea of drinking coffee. Asher, to his credit, figures out how to turn his own amusement into an open grin. I see now what you mean when you say you have to be right there, next to her. It won't happen again. 

Ooh, he knows how to work the devil. Maybe he can teach me. 

Caleb seems pleased that his orders are being implemented at once. Thank you, Ash. He says it softly. I just hate seeing her in pain. 

I bet that's how they named it. 

Named what?

Champagne. It's actually Champ-Pain and it's a reward for hurting yourself. Also a mild painkiller. 

Are you saying you would like some champagne, Neamhchiontach?

Well, sure, if someone else will join me. 

It's eight in the morning. 

What does that have to do with anything?

Just laugh with me or I'll cry.

Don't mind me. I tripped coming up the steps and landed on my hands and face and broke two fingers and have a lovely road rash on my face from the anti-slip treads that held me up in the first place.

So I can't type. Or I can but it takes forever. Sorry.

Goddammit. Fun summer so far. How about you?

Cooking wine.

The casualties of the heat wave were the A/C working overtime, jacking up the power bill which will be very bad at the end of August but the alternative here was death. The condenser fan on the fridge fell off the spindle and made a godawful racket against the cooling coils and Ben fixed it, and then checked it the next day and it was fine. The wine bottles up above the kitchen cupboards on the big in-use/next up rack where I stupidly also kept the heirloom/luxury bottles all cooked and leaked past their corks, but there were only six bottles up there so it's okay. I got another job offer of ten hours a week to help organize a friend and I might take it save for this heat. And I discovered that after supper? Getting mildly drunk and watching snow-based horror movies is a great way to pass the time while waiting for the temperatures to go back to normal. The house is so warm even with the air running and I honestly have webbed and wrinkled fingers and probably chlorine poisoning by now so I have to not live in the pool. It's honestly too hot to breathe outside most of the time anyway. Even the ocean is cool but the air is so fucking hot if I can't breathe I can't swim so there you go. 

Everyone in this province is wilting like a weeks-old bouquet. Just in time for them to lift the indoor mask mandate in public. 

I'm going to cry.

The boys had their second vaccines. The kids and I will get ours in the third quarter of July. It's coming. Not sure I will ever feel comfortable again in big crowds or without a mask but I guess we'll see. 

In the meantime, I'm watching those old strange horror movies so you don't have to. First up was Arctic. It was on Netflix. I went in blind, thinking it was horror. It was survival-adventure. It was very compelling though. I rooted for the bear. And then the fish. And then the bear again. And then everyone. I felt like more could have been done to illustrate the mental taxation short of the series of strangely bad decisions taking place. It was highly satisfying with zero lead up or backstory provided. Best kind of movie. 

Now I'm watching Frozen. Not the Let It Go one, but the 2010 chairlift one. I am not finished it yet but lets just say the strangely bad decisions continue. 

Any suggestions? Googling winter horror movies is kind of a crapshoot. 

Also you really learn what makes people tick during a sustained heatwave from which there is no escape. I am learning I am positively a helpless asshole with two (count 'em-TWO) very productive hours beginning at six in the morning. Right now I am sitting between two exterior doors that are wide open and a cool breeze touches me every so often and it's so nice. The laundry is done. I emptied garbage cans and sorted the recycling out in the garage. I walked the dog up to the mailbox. I figured out dinner (will be sliced turkey breast sandwiches on rye bread and salad or raw vegetables) and I wrote here. That's enough. 

(Update: Frozen was godawful. The only person I wanted to die lived and the wolves were fucking awesome and scary though. Very uhhh gross and short on plot.)

Monday blues are the water in the pool.

Lochlan's warnings always ring true. I get too tired. Strung out. Touched out and spooled up. I get turned around, distracted and then I fall in a hole and since I insist on being surrounded by people who maybe aren't as attuned to my penchant for danger and destructiveness as they maybe should be, the hole just gets a little deeper and the longer I remain in it the crazier I get. 

In a nutshell. That is Ben's description anyway. He was the one who pulled me out, sounded the alarm and then got Lochlan who was busy with a bike, as usual and thought Caleb was paying attention. 

Caleb was paying attention but not in the right way and thought I was threatening him when I was simply trying to point out what my brain was telling me. He was changing the subject as fast as I could get the words out. He once again failed to take my massive sudden decline seriously. 

And that is not his fault. It's mine. Because I am accountable for my own behaviour and I don't put that on anyone if I can help it. 

Joel disagrees and wonders about all of the factors that cause this behaviour in the first place. He was always able to describe how it happens to Lochlan who watches for it but Lochlan isn't a machine and can't be there twenty-four hours wide awake and it shouldn't be all on him anyway, and they designed it so it isn't but shit happens and like everything maintenance and repairs are required to keep this human running properly or she simply doesn't. 

(Also the paranoia is a symptom of a greater mess and the boys are not plotting nor have they schemed. If anything they all stepped aside and let Jake in at the time in a way I didn't think they would. They did not conspire to make him leave nor is he back except within the confines of my broken stupid mind.)

In any case. I am floating on a floatie with a mister-hose for the rest of the day because it's hot and I can't swim because I have no strength after fighting my way through the weekend. Lochlan isn't leaving my side. I love that. He elbows the ghosts out of the way and then for good measure, Joel. 

Ha.

Xanax doesn't work anymore, can we maybe have something else?

But you were Support-Jesus. You sold out like the rest of them. You were ready to leave Jacob and anxious to strike out on your own and do what he taught you so it was an easy choice. 

Bridget-

I can't talk about it now, Sam. I'm tired. 

The meds? 

No, Loch lets those wear off. I'm busy trying to figure out if the only reason Ben is staying home is because of me, or if he wants to go back out. 

(Because right in the thick of this Ben got the invitation of his dreams to do a fall European run and it would only be four long miserable months and he said no without hesitation but then he told Dalton about it, and Dalton spilled the beans and now not only have they ruined my life but I have ruined theirs. 

I wasn't going to go anyway, Bee. 

Sure you are. It's a wonderful opportunity, Benjamin-

It's the same old shit and I don't go out on the road anymore. I would rather be here. I'd rather not put my hard work in jeopardy-

To babysit me some more. 

To stay sober. And I'm not babysitting. Oh, and not sure if you noticed but Jacob isn't real and he isn't here. 

Right, okay. 

Why would he stay away so long?

Caleb pays for permanence. 

Then why would Jacob show up? Also what's different now from before?

Because he changed his mind and now I believe he's real. I guess I'm tired of everyone telling me I'm crazy. Getting tired of Caleb choreographing my show. Getting tired of money talking while hearts take second place. 

Bumbleebee, you need sleep. We've gone through all of this. 

I stopped believing all of you and no one likes that. I know it. It was easier when I bought the story you all wrote for me instead of the truth. I get that. It always is. 

Where's Lochlan?

He can't save me. Though the narrative is absolutely beautiful-

Where is he? Ben is shouting now and I shrug. The dreamland of what they made is pretty much the same as the one I can dream up around them. My suspicions, sorry, my revelations are no more left-field or crazier sounding than what they've constructed here. What's the difference?

What is the difference? If you're right and he left you and took the money then it's not a fairy tale is it? It's a horror movie either way. 

Ben slams out the back door and is gone. 

See? He wants to be on the road. Even with the risks, it's probably easier than this. 

Sam shakes his head. Why would we do that to you, Bridget? After Cole, especially. With two small kids, all the logistics-

Because you could. Money can do anything. And because the army was never going to let someone new come in and take me away. Not in this lifetime.

Lochlan's in the doorway. Ben says you're lighting bridges on fire. Fire is my department so I'm here to put them out. He holds out a big glass of iced tea and another pill, because the fairy tale wore off too fucking fast. I think you should write this out. It's so creative. 

I am, I yell at him while I take the pill. Every. Damned. Day!

Out in the gazebo for hours this morning, wind whipping the curtains around me like funeral shrouds, sun rising unsteadily behind the clouds, cool salt air softening every rough edge it can reach. I waited and waited. They brought me coffee after coffee and would hang on the fringe until I asked them to leave, please, can't I lose my mind in peace? And then after Ben spending an inordinate amount of time standing in the center of the yard, precisely halfway between the stone wall that signals the end of the patio and then a five foot drop to the next level where the gazebo ends the formal backyard and it turns into a field, watching me sob into my coffee cup and try and hide it so casually from him even, Lochlan finally came out. 

Every visit with him ends like this. 

Not this bad. 

You don't see it from my perspective. 

His perspective is always right. Always has the answer. Always fixes everything. So I ask him and he ignores the question, instead holding out a big squared off white pill and I dutifully take it to end my own misery and then he hands me a half-glass of whiskey to wash it down. Lochlan is nothing if not fierce and decided. I wish I could be. I wish I could tell them to stop this charade. I wish they would understand that it's killing me. I wish they could see that I was a grown adult and could make my own decisions and I wish they knew that I hate them for this. That I know what they did. That they're going to pay when the time comes and it will be ugly and fresh. That things will change and the only one who will come out ahead is me. 

I wish I could sleep but I can't. I wish I could turn my brain off but it isn't working. It should have worked. Which charade belongs to who? What was the pill then? How come most of the time he's not following the script? Why haven't they noticed that? 

And where does Jake go when he isn't here?

To the death.

My eyes are burning. I stand again at the window, this time looking out over the sea. Jacob isn't on this side much anymore. I can see the fence and the telescope and the roof of the boat shed and most of the expanse of Daniel and Schuyler's backyard and my vegetable garden if I lean over and peer close left. 

God, the view. 

Oops, that part was said out loud and it wasn't by me. I turn with my coffee, elbows in tight to cover myself, underwear on but I wanted that coffee and didn't bother with anything else yet and then he took his back to bed and I said no. I can't drink coffee in bed. I'm neither coordinated enough nor large enough not to roll directly into the heaviest object on a bed, which is never me. 

The Devil wants a mirror day, wanted a full-moon night, wanted to lie in bed with his coffee and watch me look outside, well and content in knowing the ghost is not looking back but most likely knows where I am.

There's no Lochlan either, as while Lochlan can finally sleep if there is someone safe with us, as he can stop having one eye open to worry for me, he doesn't sleep much with the Devil around. 

I do, but it isn't a quality sleep, he'll say with a sad wink.

I knit my brows at Caleb briefly for the pun of a compliment and turn back toward the ocean. Jacob is sitting by the telescope now, joke's on Caleb. He waves with an irritated frown and I turn away for good. 

That's my girl. Come back to bed. 

I shake my head. 

Your annoyed expression is adorable but unwarranted. It's a warning, kindly deployed as an arrow with the tip dipped in wax.

I can't drink coffee lying down-

Not what I meant. 

My blood runs cool through my limbs. 

Do elaborate, then. I am still annoyed but definitely trying to match my blood and his tone. 

If I compliment you what do you do? 

Thank you for your generous observation. 

Good girl. Now tell me what's wrong?

I shake my head. 

Refusal is not an option. 

Wow, you're really going for monster-mode today aren't you? I yell it into his face suddenly, frustrated at the sudden fear and his turn back from tender to frightening. I hate these shifts. I hate his need to match every fucking moment, like he might not get his share, like I might fall in love with someone else and leave him in the cold. Well, boy, do I have news for him. 

Bridget, what's wrong?

It's amazing to me that the only person you couldn't charm around was Jacob. 

He wasn't strong enough, I guess. 

But he was, that's the thing. 

If he was he would still be here. Don't you think? He takes a sip of his coffee and looks smugly at me. 

He is here. He's outside. 

Caleb pales and checks his expression just long enough for me to see both. 

You need rest. Seeing ghosts all the time. Come back. We'll set an alarm and we can just doze for an hour or so more and then I'll send you back. 

Ghosts don't age. 

Sure they do. His tone is jovial and appropriately respectful. His voice is scared. Don't tell me I'm reading this into it. I'll make him crack first. That much I promise you.