It isn't a good memory, your brain is just constantly searching for sugar with which to coat everything. It's a coping response. Makes you think he's not that bad, that there are good things too. It's completely natural but it's also a step back, something you shouldn't be entertaining.
He holds our hands up to the light, fingers laced together. The sun went down an hour ago but twilight persists in the form of fairy lights around the skylights in their room. It's just enough to accentuate the lighter night sky of summer without obfuscating it completely. Too bad Caleb isn't into these lights. They absolutely work and it never would have crossed my mind to put them up there. Not even sure how they got them up there, truth be told. Matt probably just stood on a chair. He's tall.
I sleep with a clear conscience, my memory thief spending the night sitting on the floor, files like vinyl records spread around him and he plays them and then categorizes them in the sparkling new cabinets that Lochlan built after Sam burned the whole thing down years ago.
This is for new, good ones, he told Sam. And Sam nodded and said it was maybe a good idea but we'll keep the fires burning for the old ones that I keep finding everywhere, tucked back on shelves in old forbidden rooms in this giant old castle inside my brain. It's centuries old. It's a Winchester house. I keep adding rooms and walling old ones off. I don't have a map anymore and there's no electricity and the part that Lochlan built tacked itself on to the end and from the outside you can't even tell.
What if I want to keep it out anyway? You're subjective on this-
Bridget, I'm not.
Oh, but you are.
What do I have to lose?
This.
This is a dream. A fugue state. A Christmas wish I can imagine until the ends of time but it never happens.
I'm here right now.
You don't belong to us.
Pretend I do.
But you don't.
What if you did? Matt entertains me. Matt will do whatever I say sometimes. He is the best. What would that look like? He asks Sam in all curiosity.
She would be spoiled and cuddled around the clock. She would never worry. She would never be cold or be without someone to hold, or someone to hold her. She would have her spirituality nourished, her spirit raised and her fears drowned in the sea.
Matt nods toward Sam but I see the holes. These are like bullet holes in a black-walled room, letting in all of the light.
You don't think I have that?
There's a history that functions almost like an unwelcome visitor in the room with what you have now.
But I would still be me, with my history being my shadow if I were here, I remind him.
That's why you're not here, he says so gently and gives me one last kiss. The spell is broken, the night is over and the boys will throw on clothes and walk me home where I step into the day with more questions than answers, as always.
My favourite part of all of this is how instead of Matt being jealous, he just joins in, and plays Devil's advocate the whole damn time. He's smart, that one.