The Devil has a data plan (an SMS exchange).

Will you be prompt this evening? I was planning on having the cheese toast ready when you arrive. 

No. 

Can you give me a time then? 

No. 

Bridget.

What.

Put on a pretty dress and come to me. 

No. 

Single words? From you? Who is this?

Bridget.

Prove it. 

In Vegas in 1995 you won 30k and they gave us free champagne. Worst and best collective hangover of our lives. Still surprised it didn't involve any Russian ganglords or any transvestite showgirls considering where we stayed. 

Okay it's you. And in 1995 that was a nice hotel.

Depends on your definition of nice. 

My definition of nice has a picture of you beside it. 

That isn't charming or clever. 

My apologies. I need more cheese and then I'll be at the top of my game. 

No more games, remember?

Fine. Your picture is actually filed under O. 

Wow. Crass. 

No, CHEESE. and it's O for Obsession. Mine. You win. I'll be honest. And if it makes them feel better I'll make sure to deliver you home before midnight. 

I'm not putting on a dress. It's cold and pouring rain outside right now. 

Fine, arrive naked. All my dreams will come true at once.

I'm staying home. 

OMG ITS GROUNDHOG DAY BUT WITH SMS. 

Did you know in Vegas they gave us free champagne?

Did you know the waitress that brought it to the room was a transvestite? 

NO. HOLY SHIT. 

THATS WHAT I SAID WHEN I TIPPED HIM AND HE MADE A PASS AT ME. 

You never told me that. 

I had you in my room and we were getting drunk, I wasn't about to spoil the moment. 

How would that have spoiled the moment?

I would have had to dwell on his offer.

You know what helps with dwelling on things, Caleb?

What. 

Cheese Whiz. Goodnight. 

Goodnight? What? COME OVER. 

Goodnight Diabhal. 

Do I need to order you to come to me?

Don't do that. 

Oh but I will. 

I'll send a transvestite instead. 

Can I pick who it is?

WHAT? TELL ME WHO YOU'D PICK. 

LOCH. It would be the only rejection he's ever had and I want him to feel it, just once. 

The only one, eh?

You don't reject him. 

Of course not. 

Then, yes. The only one. 

I'll dress him up and send him to you. 

I know Ben would do it but Loch probably wouldn't. 

You would be surprised. 

On second thought, keep him home. Last thing I need tonight if you're not stopping down is Pyro, in a dress and on my case. 

He's on it from here. Can't you feel it? Not the dress, I mean your case.

You're so LITERAL. 

It's the cheese. 

BUT YOU HAVEN'T HAD ANY YET BRIDGET!

The Dacryphilic and the damned.

Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold.

You see everything
You see every part
You see all my light
and you love my dark

Previous years saw Halloween come and go in a whirlwind of lights, skulls, ghosts and parties, costumes, themed and elaborate, and Caleb's legendary party, which involved hired staff and from 2007 on, an afterparty that left me unable to show my face for days for the literal shame I felt just in knowing that the others knew I had remained behind. Back when I still had a face to save, that is.

Now that the ghosts are real there are no parties, no lights and no costumes. I don't feel up to celebrating what has become a macabre display of death by people who clearly don't know that death is forever, that doing the zombie shuffle and catastrophic-injury face-painting is a crass celebration of someone else's agony. That skulls are what remain when we lose the precious features of the ones we love.

Besides, Caleb doesn't feel well enough to host a party, let alone an afterparty and I am granted a reprieve from the digressions he has come to expect. Obedience he draws power from, sucking the life right out of me as I try to put on a brave face and stand up to him as I attempt to plot his inevitable death.

Another ghost, albeit as malevolent as Cole and as passionate as Jake, or maybe he really is immortal. I would expect no less of Satan.

I would still like to see you tomorrow night after the children are settled in, if you would join me for a nightcap. 

I frown at him.

We'll have some juice and toast with Cheese Whiz. 

I burst out laughing. Classy. 

I'll use the good plates. 

Do you have bad ones?

No. 

I can't come. 

Why not? 

Lochlan won't like it. 

So don't tell him. Just like you didn't tell him you've forgiven me for failing to confirm what you already knew. 

Oh, have I forgiven you?

You're here, aren't you?

Because you won't release me. 

Because, Bridget, he stood up and walked around my chair and then brought his face down beside mine, you aren't ready to go just yet. 

I'm fine. 

You still talk to the dead, Bridget. You can't be left unattended. You devastate everything in your path and you can bring a man to his knees in under six seconds without so much as flinching when he falls. That sort of power has to be controlled and you can't manage it. 

And you can? It's a whisper. I clear my throat and he stands back up.

So far so good. 

What happened to honesty and illness and a kinder, gentler Diabhal? 

Sometimes you function better when I simply order you around.

He smiles so kindly I want to agree but I shake my head. That's a myth. 

We'll test your theory tomorrow evening. Say around ten?

Paper.

Daniel and Schuyler have been married a year yesterday. After three hundred sixty-six days of bliss, they're settling in nicely. They're very committed and old-fashioned and glorious well-dressed. They've been a lot happier living back on the point, albeit with a lot more privacy than before, being next door and they've been good to me as usual, tucking me under their arms when they are free and I need hugs and rubbing the top of my head for luck every time they leave the room. I hate that. They call me their mascot, their good luck charm, their biggest cheerleader and I remain devoted to supporting them in any way I can.

(I was disappointed that Gage left before their festivities but Gage, as you probably see by now, has a history of ducking out at the strangest moments. He missed their wedding last year. He comes and goes like the wind, actually and it's something everyone but Schuyler really needs to get used to.)

I'm very proud of them. I'm proud of all my boys but Sky and Danny deserve every happiness. They are amazing separately but even more amazing together.

Vacancy.

My ghosts have found their way back home
I have every right to kill my own
I am something now that never could exist
My anguish conquers all
Pay the price and watch me fall
My only key is broken
My broken key is only me

This is Gage's last weekend. He's heading down South and may or may not swing back around in early spring. That's okay, he's a nomad at heart where Schuyler is a true homebody, content to bake gourmet delights for Daniel and sooth his nighttime fears in a way that still makes me green with envy. While Gage and Schuyler share the same father, their mothers were two vastly different people, from what I hear, and that brings me back to even in my nature/nurture argument on child-raising. It's a whole lot of both, in the end.

I'll miss him but we never did become very close after all. I'm more mindful of Schuyler's omnipresent disappointment that Gage did not opt-it to our idyllic lifestyle here on the coast, instead choosing a harder road.

But you either fit in or you don't and while Gage is a wonderful addition to the point, I daresay it just doesn't feel as if he belongs here. Even though he left last fall too. He was here longer than the last time, maybe we'll just be lucky enough that he will come around every now and again and grace us with his smiling presence and endless patience for lightweights and fuckwits. Besides, he won't find a girl here.

I have an empty room again.

And I still hate goodbyes.

Carpe minutus.

Wage no war thou brutal sea
I laugh at you
You can't have me
You will calm and carry me

I collect lip gloss, sketchbooks and hearts.

I'm still waiting for Restaurant Day. That's the day I don't have to cook at all. Not a thing.

Rain makes people edgy and mean. That, I am learning the hard way.

***

Lochlan is a thief of opportunity and has not let me out of his arms in at least the past thirty hours, making protest grunts when I said I had to use the bathroom and demanding that I bring my plate closer at dinner so that he would not lose direct contact. Daniel moved down a little more.

Things work better this way, Loch proclaims quietly and I nod now as I sit typing at the end of his desk, my feet in his lap because he pulled another chair over close by while he does some concept stuff. I'd rather take my laptop to the couch and curl up by the fire where Andrew and Dalton are both reading but he just says maybe later.

He replaced the Rip Van Winkle I took from PJ with Glenmorangie Lasanta, a gesture that soothed the savage beast. He told everyone else that if Ben wasn't going to come up for air that I would be right where Lochlan was until further notice. Somewhere Ben has bent his head back down over the strings, earphones blocking out the world, his absenteeism and meticulously cultivated oblivion a force to be reckoned with in this life and one I do a piss-poor job in handling.

August came around. Someone told him what I wrote and told him to man the fuck up and for the first time in ages he showed up at dinner with a brief smile on his face and an offer to help clear afterwards.

Caleb is suitably disenfranchised until further notice, a lethal cat pacing in a cage of glass and designer coverings, candles lit, skylights holding back the dark weekend rain. I sent a message saying I was considering continuing as his assistant only because the pay is good but otherwise he is to stay away from me, also until further notice. He did not reply. He gave me some ground, which I needed, for I was falling into the sea. He took a hit. A big one. He stepped back far enough to concede on several points at the risk of losing his edge and lose his edge he has.

But like I said, the rain will give it back to him. This rain, it never seems to stop anymore.

The devil's in your head
Filling in the stance
God is playing dead
So save your breath

Take me all the way to the end
Show me how you want it to end
Keep dancing with the dead
Go ahead
Keep dancing with the dead

I told Lochlan that Jake was dead and then I reached over and grabbed the forty, tearing open the tin cap with wet hands, cutting my finger, telling him he could either help me or go get someone who would. He swore and took the bottle from me, winding up and throwing it overhand right off the cliff with his good arm. Next spring I'll have some lovely pale blue seaglass to collect at low tide. We've thrown a few glass things off the cliff as an experiment to see what comes back when. So far nothing.

I am less than impressed and I swear right back and he laughs and throws up his hands.

Bridget, if I let you drink yourself into a corner then I'm not doing enough. If I stop you I'm parental. I don't know what the fuck you want from me anymore but I know I'm not going to take my cue from Ben and go disappear into a fucking job or whatever but I'll be around. I'm just not so good at soothing you. 

But you are! 

No, I WAS. I used to be. And then I could hardly touch you and everything hurt so bad and it still hurts. Every fucking time it hurts like I've burned myself but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them gain ground anymore just because I'm afraid because it seems like that's our only roadblock.

What are you afraid of?

You. Jesus. You. Your feelings are so big. I don't even know how they stuffed it all inside, you must be bursting. Half the time when I hug you hard I fear you might explode and I'll be left with pink feathers. 

What a visual. 

Tell me about it. Now, the rain is getting worse so we're going to go inside and dry off and I'll make you a proper drink if you still need one but I don't think you do. I think you know what is right and wrong and maybe it's a relief to let go of Jake just a little more because it's safe to do so.

Maybe. 

Maybe's enough, Peanut. 

Good girl.

I have a new favorite place. I like to sit on the low rock wall, which is less of a wall and more of a dividing line between the two lawns behind the houses on the point.

The wall itself is four feet high and three feet wide and the perfect place to sit, overlooking the sea, high enough that the wind will braid your hair but the rain will somehow miss you in favor of soaking the grass.

I've brought sketchbooks and picnics and headphones out here. I've been out here in my pajamas and in a dress and heels. I've been mostly out here in jeans and a hoodie because lately it's been freezing cold and rainy and damp and typical, which seems like a jaded, cynical expression for someone who has been here a scant two and a half years. I'm learning to fit in, I'm trying to let go.

Jacob never brings anything here. He said he liked the sun and the rain and so I moved him from his hiding place in the garage and when Sam made a few noises about coming down to sit with me on my wall, I almost took his head off. No one comes to spend time here because this is my time with my thoughts.

It's not a question of crazy, it's a question of Jake. Jake spends a little more time hulking around in my tiny shadow than I let on. Ben knows, and therefore Ben has now issued a few (dozen) gentle ultimatums about it being time to give Jacob up, or some ridiculous notion therein. As if you can put an expiry date on mourning. He, of all people, should understand this. No one calls him on being an oversized toddler when he can no longer bottle up rage or despair or loneliness or whatever demons haunt Ben now while he sleeps because he won't let me comfort him. And I don't ask him to change a thing. He issued a few ultimatums about giving up all kinds of things and I mostly hung on for dear life to whatever good moments we found on the farm and I left the rest on the floor, neatly swept into a small pile by the door.

Two can play this game so well that it's become a choreographed dance, set to a melancholy jazz standard, ripped from the forties from a quiet smoky club where people go to forget their troubles in the bottom of a glass of liquid gold.

I'll show you my ghosts, I challenge, changing all the words until the song becomes new, unrecognizable and heard instead of tolerated. Don't ask me to change things now, I plead.

He insists that I am ready and made sure Joel and Sam were both nearby, after yesterday's explosion when I came back across the driveway slowly, in bits and pieces and I headed straight for PJ's room where I knew he hides the good stuff and PJ made a few alarmed shouts about me being too small for fifty-proof or something  (TRAITOR) and I threw one of the bottles at his head and then Lochlan locked me in a hug while Ben called Joel and then Sam.

I don't know why, I fucking hate Joel and I don't want to ever hate Sam. Sam is practically all I have left of Jake some days, since August still hasn't come out of his shell and maybe he never will. Maybe this is where people come to self-destruct. Maybe this is hell.

I lit the cigarette while Jake watched me, the rain battering us sideways but not enough to force me back indoors. My ears are buzzing and I look at him. Can he hear the buzzing or am I just lighting up like a Christmas tree? Electrocute. Whatever.

Where did you get that stuff?

Huh? Oh, I stole the cigarette from Joel and the lighter from Loch.

Do they know?

Of course not. I place a forty on the smooth flat rock. Jake laughs uneasily and glances toward the house.


You and your pockets. (I always have my hands in people's pockets. I keep up my skills in case the opportunity ever presents itself again that I can run away and never come back. Would I? You betcha.)

I shrug and take a drag. So where are you really?

What do you mean, Bridget? There is no formal purgatory, because Jesus atoned for all of our sins. Keeping me here is not for my benefit, but for yours.

What if Caleb is wrong?

About what?

You being dead after all.

Hey! A sudden yell makes us both turn and look toward the house. Lochlan is coming down across the wet grass. He looks cross. He looks rather alarmed that I am out here alone and that I'm smoking. I don't smoke. I get headaches when I smoke but for some reason it's a lesser but just as effective act of defiance as presenting to the Devil was before I wrote him off too. I'm also drunk (still) but nobody cares about that right this second.

I continue to smoke while I watch Lochlan approach. I think he might explode, the rage on his face is funny. Just what I need. A little levity. I've had some bad news, you see.

(Oh, that came out of my head in Winnie The Pooh's voice. My poor Pooh. I loved you to death.)

What the fuck, Peanut? Put that out! He takes it from my hand and takes a drag, making no move to put it out or extinguish it. I laugh and he looks at me carefully, pockets his lighter and picks up the bottle. It's still sealed. I was only considering starting a new one because there wasn't nearly enough in the other one I found. Why are you out here alone?

I look at Jake and Jake puts his finger to his lips. I look at his fingers. His huge hands that knew every inch of me and I wish he was here to look after me but he's not. Not anymore.

I was trying to think. I can't think inside right now. Everyone's freaking the fuck out and it's too loud. 

Lochlan comes right up to the wall and wraps his hands around my elbows. He presses his forehead against mine. I know, Bridge. I just don't want you to make yourself sick. Jake wouldn't want this. He wouldn't have wanted any of this pain for you.

Jake is just sitting there with a look on his face that is half-amazement that Lochlan is attempting rare comfort and half-incredulity that Lochlan is attempting to pretend he knows what Jacob would want at all. I see the look and I realize I don't know what Jacob wants either but he is fading and I have no time to ask now.

He always leaves when someone else comes around. I should take that as a hint but really I've been hoping all this time that we were having some sort of mind meld, and that he was far away, filled with regret and missing me so much he could venture into my thoughts like he used to when we lived in the castle and he was still breathing. There are things I still need to talk to him about, things I can't sort out on my own, things I need him for.

My voice comes out harsh, flat, slurred and quiet.

No one knows what Jacob wants because Jacob's dead, Lochlan. 

Between the buried and me (bring him back).

(Out of all the days I have endured, I did not expect the development that took place today. I'm drained and soon to be drunk so fuck everything and then fuck it some more.)

He threw a legal pad down in front of me and placed a fountain pen on it. The lapis lazuli one. My favorite one.

Write your own proposal. 

What? I sat up and put my wine on the table. I'm sticking close to the patient in case he starts choking again. I am assured he's fine but my head has trouble with things like promises and...words. What are you talking about? I was daydreaming, caught between the whitecaps and the clouds somewhere no one could find me. I followed his voice back. I should have stayed where I was.

Write down what you want and I'll do it. I'll either buy it or arrange it or make it or find it. 

Caleb, I-

He got down on his knees in front of me. Jesus, Bridget, I'm begging you. Do you know what this does to me? You're so close I can taste you. His thumb is rubbing against the back of my neck, his lips somewhere near my nose because he's still taller on his knees than I am sitting here on his sofa and when he says taste an electric shock kicks into my brain and gives me away.

Please. He closes his eyes. Anything you want. Just tell me and I'll give it to you. 

Since I am twelve I want to ask for a baby elephant and a candy apple but since I'm also an adult I marvel in silence at what power feels like and how sad it is in real life and I don't say anything.

He mistakes my helplessness for deep thought and looks so encouraged.

So encouraged.

I get up and scoop up the paper and pen. I write one sentence down on the page and I throw the whole pad at him in some sort of newfound rage. He is so shocked he doesn't duck and it hits him in the chest and lands on the floor. I put the pen gently down on the glass table and I watch him pick up the pad, smoothing out the pages. He orients it and reads my sentence. With incredible satisfaction and more than a little curiosity I watch as all the color drains out of his face.

There's your fucking proposal, Diabhal.

Oh, Neamhchiontach, he says.

With that my hopes are dashed. They weren't so much hopes as they were longshots. Like everyone I love. Like love itself. A fucking longshot.

It was part of the game, he whispers as he closes the distance between us in three strides, I'm so sorry.

I throw myself into his embrace and press my face against his shoulder. I hate you,  I tell him as I sag against his arms. I hate you so fucking much for everything you've put me through. 

I know you do, Bridget.

Boy on fire.

Oh, what a delicate balance I hold today on my rope as one side of the tent features a red-headed nightmare, loathe to embrace the new tenderness of my attempts to care for Satan. Yes, why do we fortify him so that he will become stronger than the rest of us once again?

That's a very good question, Lochlan.

On the other side of the tent rests Mr. Convalescence, who did in fact return to his side of the drive late this morning, and assures me that his medication was simply fucked up and too strong and no, he did not have a heart attack, even though I wondered if I was being protected, jaded in my acceptance of just about everything they ever tell me, keeping my childhood view of the world because it was safer there, for a time.

Caleb is being forthcoming. If anything, had this been more serious he might have proclaimed he could be dead before he turns fifty, thus opening the door for me to hesitate at the center of the tightrope just briefly enough for everyone to gasp with anticipation.

(That was for show, by the way. The redhead never would have let me off the ground if he thought for even a moment that I couldn't pull it off.)

Anyway, the Devil said he is feeling a million times better today (see what he did there? No? Argh.) and isn't that devilish at all right now. He's humbled, grateful and appropriate and I even went ahead and cancelled his upcoming meetings, rescheduling them for next week and I paid his bills listed on the ledger and I made a couple of phone calls on his behalf to explain he would be indisposed at least for next week to people expecting his schedule. I shopped for some groceries for him and cleaned up the boathouse. He was very pleased.

So pleased he put me back on the payroll.

Cue more redheaded indignation right there but really beyond, oh, saving Caleb's life, Lochlan's being a creep about this.  He's conflicted, surprised and shocked by how quickly he jumped in and took over the whole situation as if he does it every day.

He doesn't. He was never a volunteer firefighter with the others. He's never had any first aid training past laughing and telling me that what to do when he burns himself is swear because 'it bloody well hurts' and we all know his ability to Be There in an emergency is staggeringly lacking.

And yet there he was. Making sure Henry doesn't lose any more fathers. Making sure Bridget doesn't lose anything either because it would be too much. Too soon. Again.

So back to my leisurely unpacking of clothes I didn't wear on our break at the farm, waiting for Gage to decide if he is going to stay on past the end of next week, since Halloween was his departure date, planning for upcoming anniversaries and listening to Loch talk about how glad he is that the devil is out of his house, our makeshift circus tent, our sideshow stage, my highwire so far up you can't actually see it until the lights come on.

Your house, Lochlan? 

Oh, the look.

Shiver like a chickadee.

(It seems the only dull moments around here are the ones in which I blink. Also, I'll now be playing the role of Personal Assistant to Satan. Again. Indefinitely as requested. Sorry.)

Caleb's thumb continued to trace my ear for two more songs and then he sort of tapped my face and I looked up at him and he asked for help.

Help because he felt so sick and he didn't know what to do. And it's not like I knew what to do. Just because I'm a mother doesn't make me a general practitioner but it seems as if I'm the expert most of the time on all these things.

He said he felt as if he would throw up and I managed to get him up and was leading him to the bathroom when he fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway, taking me down with him and he threw up on the floor.

The first thing I thought was, so he really is sick and the second thing I thought was OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. And then I slipped and fell because his weight was incredible on my shoulder and he just kept on dry heaving. He couldn't catch his breath. He was struggling and I just started to scream.

For the record, I have an epic horror-movie-calibre scream.

Loch was the first one there and by now I had Caleb on his side, propped up against me and I'm trying to hold him there. The rest of the boys show up and within moments Caleb has color again. I was sent back to the main house to clean up and I stood in the shower and cried and cried and cried.

And then I couldn't cry anymore and the water got cold and I realized Ben was sitting on the other side of the shower door holding a towel for me. I realized I am paper-thin, water-soaked and torn. Fragile like a little bird with too many choices. Eat? Fly? Hunker down in the nest and ride out the storm? I don't know, for my brain is the size of a pea, my lifespan a whopping two years, if I'm lucky.

Caleb is sleeping now. Here, in the main house because I'm loathe to leave him alone and Henry is worried too but we have assured him that Caleb is okay. It was a reaction to some of the medication they keep changing to try and circumvent the headaches he's been having, which was already a bad reaction to the medication. And the bourbon he keeps drinking, even though he said he wouldn't. He'll be okay. You know, for now. Whatever that means. He's mildly dehydrated and exhausted but I know just what to do for both of those.

He will be livid that I wrote about this at all. I don't think he minds being viewed as evil, but he would never want to be seen as weak. But I had to put it somewhere or I might have exploded from the tension and from the strange turn of events that saw me go over there on a night where normally I would have chosen not to go at all.