Capitu-early, Capitulate.

But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall

I found the envelope later than usual. Lying inside the front door on the floor where I would find it easily but no one else would look and I waited and waited forever, past dinner and tea and guitars and a short meeting with Sam and some cuddle-time with Ben and then when they had all drifted away on books, music, film and quiet talk I slipped out across the driveway to the boathouse.

The door was unlocked and I slipped in quietly. No lights on. I wondered if maybe Caleb was out but I passed his car in the drive.

I walk into the living room and I see him. He is lying on the couch, blanket bunched up around him. Not just dozing but deeply asleep. The stereo is on low, abandoned to an easy-rock station singing songs from 1983 that remain seared into my brain for how ridiculously profound they were to me when most people considered them little more than pure drivel.

I sit down on the floor close to his head and reach up one hand to stroke his cheek.

He isn't scary like this.

He isn't aging like this.

His heart is perfect, like this.

It's so incredibly rare to see Caleb sleeping, it's like a gift that helps me not be so afraid of him or so quick to condemn his motives. He can't hurt me when he's sleeping. He can't inflict the damage that leaves scars that last a lifetime when he doesn't even have his eyes open. He can't unnerve me with his insistence that he isn't evil. His unconscious soul poses no threat and in the growing darkness of the unlit room his slumbering form is a comfort to remind me that I won't be alone if I don't want to be. It's a promise of a different sort with a weight that feels different. The three decades between us stretches down a different road and is so much more painful than you could possibly understand from a few recollections on a screen, written at my kitchen table with total and utter disapproval from all sides, lest I get too close to the truth. Once you arrive there, you can never leave again.

I put my head down on the couch beside his chest and close my eyes. With half an ear exposed I can no longer hear the music but my brain is filling in the lyrics with the melody just fine, a skill I continue to work on for the inevitable day when the music stops on the outside and never returns.

Caleb's hand comes down over my hair and his thumb strokes a curved line across my ear while the song swells into the final verse in my skull.

I can make tonight forever
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn
And I can make you every promise that has ever been made
And I can make all your demons be gone

But I'm never gonna make it without you
Do you really want to see me crawl?

He is not asleep after all. Never was.

All technically roses.

Every Saturday morning, early-early when the sun came up and we made lunches with fifteen minutes to spare because there was never enough time to come all the way back out to the lot to eat, I would take the strawberries outside the camper to hull. I sat on the bottom step and carefully used Lochlan's pocket knife to flick the caps into the grass. Every town we left saw a neat little pile of strawberry stems left on the grass. Composting on the run.

Once Lochlan had washed up he would return quickly to me. I slide over so he can make it up the steps around me. He turns to tell me I might be taking off too much of the good stuff. He crouches down to sit on the top step, his legs and arms coming down around me as his hands reached out to guide my fingers with the knife. Like this, Peanut, he would say, and he would curve the knife upward just a little to scoop out just green, leaving behind red and a tiny little bit of white. Then he would let go and watch as I tried to duplicate it and when I had it he would steal a single berry from the bowl between my knees and smash a soft kiss against my ear, saying we should hurry a little, that he would go make the sandwiches.

And I would go back to chopping the tops off straight across because it was so much faster and less dangerous to my fingertips and because I didn't like strawberries the way I do now. I liked apples because I could pick them up off the ground underneath almost any tree, polish them off on the hem of my t-shirt and take a bite right where I stood. A whole one would make me feel full and still I could pick up as many as I could carry back to the trailer any time I wanted, which was actually only late at night when I could hardly keep my eyes open and even the rumblings of my belly didn't lend to wanting to carry anything home other than my body on rubbery legs.

***

We now eat strawberries every single morning because they're a treat. They're still pricey in that decadent way that says you wouldn't pay four dollars a pack for anything else that would only keep for two days and because a whole bag of apples, five pounds at least, is the same price and will go that much further.

Lochlan is in the kitchen at the sink, hulling a big bowlful for the day for everyone, because he has strawberries again after I went away and didn't buy any, and he wouldn't go buy any in some sort of solidarity move to me being away and unable to share his breakfast. When I went to the store yesterday and came home, holding them up victoriously so he would have some comfort he said póg ma thoin (which means kiss my ass) under his breath but loud enough that I caught it and fired back tóg bog é (which was a warning for him to watch himself) and Gage walks in and asks what language again and Lochlan says Romanian and laughs.

Asshole.

I frown at him and tell Gage we like to keep our Gaelic up because nothing says immaturity like a secret language used around everyone else. To me it's akin to walking right past someone to whisper in someone else's ear. Gage said he didn't mind, he's seen enough in-jokes and odd allegiances here to hardly notice. I bet. Lochlan laughs again but it's bitter. He recovers enough to offer Gage some berries and Gage accepts. He's hungry.

In any case, when Ben and I came back midweek, Lochlan was waiting nervously around the front of the house, flicking his lighter, pacing in circles, juggling rocks from the garden and then the tennis balls we throw for the dog. He walked up quickly when we pulled in, opened my door and pulled me out of the truck straight into his arms. Not a hello, not a once-over, not a word, just a crushing blow of a hug that left me breathless and I held him tight as I felt every single ounce of tension rolling out of his limbs in waves. He squeezed tighter and tighter until I saw stars in the daytime and then he let go and shook Ben's hand as if he was greeting a firing squad. Ben pulled him right in and kissed the top of Loch's head and told him he was sorry for staging such an obvious coup but we would talk with Sam maybe and get past the rough parts as a team instead of factioning off. That he made a mistake but that we had been apart for so much of the summer he kind of panicked.

Kind of, he said. Huh.

Lochlan kept his nervous relief in check. He scratched his eyebrow and looked from Ben back to me, nodding. Saying we do need a little more regular help to live this way with such strong personalities in play and so many emotions involved. We all nod. This will take work. They fight for time and we need to fix this and Boom, the switch is flipped back from temperamental, demonstrative back to practical because that's how Lochlan works. No in-between, no balance. Just always getting every bit of usable strawberry or not having any at all.

We are home. I'm sure that's obvious. Eventually I always turn into a pumpkin, for moments as a princess are fleeting and happen in dreams. I can see the glitter washing away, the rivers of water slowly clouding in with streams of dirt, mud caked into the seams of my dress as they become the ribs on the rough skin on a gourd left to rot in a field somewhere.

Ben laughs when I say this but he looks sad because he's frustrated that his charm couldn't override my stubbornness.

Someone should have warned him.

I come in and he's washing dishes again. I frown. That's my job, Jake. You don't need to do those.

I want to, Pigalet. 

Okay but when you wind up with dishpan hands you're not touching me. 

I let you touch me with your hands. 

I wear gloves when I wash pots. But that's not a fair comparison because your hand is so big it covers my whole face. You wouldn't feel mine the same way.

He smiles sadly and then I abruptly realize I have conjured up one of the most bittersweet memories we have.

Sorry, I tell him.

He shakes his head. It's okay, Pigalet. I'm just killing time while you kill everything else.

He presented a blindfold and I balked.

It's morning, I'm so tired and I don't think-

Bridget. Relax. This isn't what you think.

I wait, back against the wall, dress in my arms because I was busy finding all of my things when he walked into the room, impeccably dressed, not a hair out of place.

Would you relax? Please, babydoll? This is a good thing.

He's said that before and it was only ever good for him. Well, that might not be entirely true but I had to be broken in first. And we all know that's never a fun prospect.

We have a flight to catch, Bridget. Your things are already in the car, I had them sent over, and when we land, you will asked to put this on so that our destination remains a surprise until the moment I choose to reveal it to you. No worries, the flight crew is well-versed in discretion.

I have school and work and Cole won't-

Cole has his show. Does he ever have time for you during those? And school can be made up. I've taken care of everything.

You can't take care of my job.

What job?

You quit my job for me?

If you need things, ask me for them.

I need a job. We don't have a lot. We're trying to save for-

Just ask and I will give you what you need.

This has nothing to do with you.

If that were true we wouldn't be here. Now put your dress on. He ties the blindfold around my wrist and turns to leave but then he comes back and holds out his little mobile phone. I don't even know how to use it.

You will have to call Cole to tell him you love him. Some things I can't do on your behalf.

But then last night this happened.

This is not cooperation, Ben, I tell him from the table where I have been ignoring the dinner we made in favor of throwing out desperate half-thought-through ideas in an effort to get him to stop moving long enough to talk to me past the chit-chat of what we should cook or do or fix at any given moment.

(Us, Benjamin. Fix Us.)

He would tell me he's trying and then he'd turn and do something different.

He ignores the comment and instead asks if I want any more mashed potatoes. I look down at my full plate and give in.

Sure. Load me up, I say to his back and roll my eyes.

And I missed the smile and the wind up, and a big ball of mashed potatoes hit me in the face. I was so surprised I ate fully half of what he threw, just by virtue of where it landed and then I burst out laughing and jumped out of my seat, grabbing my plate and chasing him out the front door and down the steps where he inexplicably turned and I ran right into him, dumping my dinner against the front of his shirt.

The plate hit the ground and he's still laughing but he says Go back inside, Bridget, hurry. There's a fucking bear in the driveway. I turned and ran back up the steps and at some point I was too slow or the bear was too close because Ben grabbed me and ran the rest of the way across the front porch and inside where he closed and locked the door. We looked at each other and laughed because we're covered with potatoes. Ben has a green bean balanced at the top of his shirt pocket. When we look outside the bear is licking the plate.

We have not gone back outdoors since. Which is fine by me, because we finally started talking. About bears and elephants and the future, too.

Memories play through while I sleep now and I can't make it stop.

His fingers trailed down my hair, tracing my ears, lips, and chin. Collarbone. Elbows. Fingers. Breasts. I'm breathing shallowly, evenly, flat on my back in the quilts, having invoked my non-slip grip, as they call it, goosebumps on top of goosebumps. He is all eyelashes and desire and yet he's made no move to change position. He finally puts his head down in frustration against my ice-cold skin.

I can't make you warm, Bridget. Why can't I make you warm? 

***

In my dreams Jacob and Ben have squared off in the snow again. Ben is not as strong or as emotional but he has so much more to lose. His pride. His stake in our friendship. His place in my life.

You fight like a girl, Preacher, he laughs and gives Jake a shove. Jake returns the favor with a roundhouse and Ben hits the ice, crumpling like paper, unable to defend. But the smile never leaves his face. Why don't you take some of this enthusiasm out on him? He points into the house where Lochlan sits in the center of the couch, one arm flung out wide, the other flipping the zippo half-strength so he doesn't ignite it, and I am curled up in that open arm, watching a movie from the thirties, parroting the dialogue while he tries not to smile at how I sound in my starlet voice.

Jake looks at the window just long enough to miss Ben's return throw and takes one right on the jaw. He staggers and goes down on one knee and the opposite hand, putting up his other hand in a motion to stop.

I don't need to be able to fight, Benjamin. I only need to know how to love. And that, he points back through the window, is something I don't even think I could begin to challenge.

Dress/Code.

For my next item on my bucket list I want Ben to twist my waves into a funnel shape and then roll me vertically between his hands until my hair fans out like a troll doll.

I never stood by the logic that a bucket list need only be populated with lofty aspirations or magnificent achievements, because I also want to pee-write my name in the snow someday, like the boys can do. I just can't figure out how.

In any case, I did get my clothes back because it's very incredibly stupidly-cold here, as one expects in the Prairies in October. Stupidly stupid cold. When I was finished my motorcycle ride I could have etched a lovely design in the glass doors. I might still have that ability because I haven't warmed up at all and blue lips and rock-hard nipples really isn't a great look for me, in spite of what you might think.

Trust me.

We finally went shopping. Ben is gigantic and we needed groceries that Nolan doesn't keep here, living alone. I think he lives on coffee and instant oatmeal and we tried that and I was okay but Ben ran out of energy quickly. He has new callouses on his hands from splitting wood and sore muscles from working hard after living such a soft life in the studio. He loves this. I think if we didn't have obligations he would stay here forever.

We called home. Spoke with the kids, and all the boys. All is well. They wanted to know how we were doing. Ben ignored the question after I fumbled an answer because we haven't addressed anything past getting the chores up to date and being together.

I made chicken pot pies and tea and we didn't talk, we just ate. I yawned and we went to bed and slept and slept and slept and Ben woke up smiling and I threw my arms around him and he said he liked being alone with me but I had cold skin and he was going to get my clothes for me.

I did not have the heart to point out that my usual heat is from convection from Loch, or that there's an elephant here in the room with us and we haven't fed or walked it yet.

But he does not need to be told these things. He already knows.

She stood in the doorway, the ghost of a smile
Haunting her face like a cheap hotel sign.
Her cold eyes imploring the men in their macs
For the gold in their bags or the knives in their backs.
Stepping up boldly one put out his hand.
He said, "I was just a child then, now I'm only a man.
Do you remember me? How we used to be?
Do you think we should be closer?"

Update.

We found a dirtbike in the barn.

GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT.

Banishing Point.

An hour away from home,
The lights come on.
Standing at the side of the road,
I am in awe.
Amongst the snow and trees,
The freezing cold,
I thrive on each sorrowful note.
For the moment, all is still,
A tranquil pace.
The ease of being stranded,
In this compassionate place
Amongst the snow and trees,
The air is cold and clean,
and for the moment, I am at peace.

I would have helped with the farm chores today. I would have stacked wood and fed and watered the horses and mucked out the stalls and cleaned up the gardens, harvesting the remainder of the pumpkins and squash. I would have gone for a ride maybe to picnic rock and brought a thermos of hot chocolate and maybe we would have gone and bought some groceries since we don't have much here. I would have helped spread manure (yes, me, I can do these things) and I would have washed curtains and done some fall cleaning chores inside while Ben was winterizing the tractor and the trailers into the waning afternoon light today.

I would have done all kinds of things but Ben hid all my clothes.

Bring me the motorcycle.

I need to ride around the yard.