One voice, louder than the rest.

Thanks to last night, today is almost okay. I didn't think it would be.

If you've done your math or read here for any length of time, you'll remember that it was a year ago tonight that Jacob told me he was leaving us. And he never came back. Well, he came back the next day and took almost everything he owned and went very very far away and spent many days straight praying, locked in a hotel room overseas and the night before his 37th birthday he jumped off the roof.

We're not going to talk about that. I can't. I am peanut brittle and I can't handle more than the odd random memory or offhand comment. I'm so not ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Instead I'm going to tell you about the freezing-fucking-cold motorcycle ride I had last night. Ben borrowed a bike from a procrastinating neighbor who hasn't put his bike up yet and warned me to go and add as many layers as I could. Even chaps. I never wear the chaps he got for me. Well, not outside anyway. He likes many layers of protection on a bike. Just in case.

I thought he was nuts. Figured we'd be out for a ten minute tear across the city and back and then we could light a fire.

Nope.

Ben drove for thirty minutes in the six-degree moonlight, until the city was a memory far behind us. And his wife was a Popsicle, clinging to his waist, head down, chattering teeth and all. He managed to extricate himself from me finally when he stopped the bike out by the fairgrounds. Across the road is an endless hay field, lit up with endless stars in a prairie sky that is so beautiful sometimes it makes living here almost bearable.

He put the kickstand down and took off his helmet and walked about a hundred yards into the field. Gloves and leather jacket making him almost invisible since he left the headlight on.

He walked back and opened his arms out wide, gesturing.

Is this the perspective you need?

I just shook my head. Defiant. Frozen. Still sitting on the bike. My knees were locked against it and my teeth were clamped together so they didn't chatter so badly.

He threw his arms back down to his sides and walked back to me and pulled me off the bike and half-carried/half-marched me out to where he had walked. He put one hand on the back of my head and one under my chin and forced my head up and then he let go of the back of my head and pointed up into the stars.

Where is he, Bridget?

In heaven.

Where are you, Bridget?

Down here. On earth.

Say it again.

Ben-

Say it again, princess.

I'm on earth.

He can't run your show anymore.

I know.

You know but you're letting him anyway.

I don't know what else to do, Benjamin.

What do I always say to you when things get hard?

Take your own advice, then.

This isn't about me. What do I say?

Just be, bee.

He walked back out into the field.

Just be, little bee. Just let him go. Let the sad parts go and the mad parts and all of it. Let it go. I don't know how to help you. I want to and I don't know how. I can help with as much as I can and it will never be enough until you get to a place where he doesn't exist in every breath you take in. He's not your air anymore, princess, you've been breathing without him now for a whole year and there's a lot of years left that he won't be in. I just want you to take a full breath because Jake is gone and he isn't coming back and we're going to make a life here!

Ben was done. He got it off his chest. Maybe not so smooth anymore. Not eloquent, not articulate, just plain straightforward Ben as only Ben can be.

Yelling.

And it made perfect sense.

So when my brain revolted and exploded all in the next moment I was surprised to see the regret on his face when I fell apart. I went down on my knees in the dirt and let go of my helmet. It rolled away from me but I didn't see it because he was running to me and pulling out his phone and I very slowly keeled right over and everything went black. Dramatic self-preservation to the finest degree.

I woke up in PJ's truck, Ben saying he was sorry. Holding me close to his chest like a baby. Heater blasting in my face.

My head knows when it has had enough and between that and the rolling vertical blackouts I have had from all my higher-dose medication lately I'm now getting the walking coma I wished for for this very difficult time. True to form, I'll keep writing, it just takes that much longer to get out what I want to say.

And I've talked to a lot of people about time recently. How time is marked for me in terms of before and after, pre- and post-, individually, in Cole-time, Jacob-time and Ben-time. How in the blink of an eye you pass a milestone like a year and in that blink everything changes, absolutely everything.

Adapt or die, princess.

It wasn't Ben's voice I heard when I went down.

It was Jacob's. And something tells me I'll never hear it again.

Your demons live for me, Bridget.

Yes, Jacob, I guess they do.

This one gets a song.

Click here then just click on the song and it will play for you. You know how much Bridget likes her music. Just listen to it. Then come back.

Ready? Then here we go.

A year ago today was the last day. The last good day in which I was still completely blind to the fact that Jacob's savior complex had eaten him whole and I was blissfully unaware that the next day would be the worst day of my life.

(You think you want to correct me here, but you don't, actually, sorry. You think you know me but I'm here to tell you that you were wrong on that count as well.)

My best memory of Jacob rests in when I can close my eyes and in my head is a day two summers ago when we went camping as a group, the airstream weekend up at the lake. Jacob had about four beers which is three too many for him and he climbed up onto the roof of the camper and had a guitar passed up and he stood up there tipsily as anything, singing that song, singing his fool heart out in the sun. A pale blue t-shirt that matched the color of the sky perfectly which meant it matched his eyes. Threadbare jeans on the verge of falling apart. Wearing his wedding ring and the big watch that I now keep in the drawer in the bedroom in a box under my stockings because there is no piece left of it that's bigger than a dime.

He did that when he was happy, you know. He sang.

Memories, they wash my mind
Like the frozen rain
I am numb here but I can't forget the pain
Death was yesterday
And somewhere I have never seen
So never mind tomorrow
Tomorrow's never been

Benjamin saves the day.

If you could only pick one place as your favorite place to be, where would it be, Bridge?

Into a hug, into your arms.

I'm serious.

So am I.

That was too easy.

Okay, next time I'll say the Taj Mahal.

I poured my heart out and it spread over the concrete in a black pool, thick like oil, slow moving and bubbling with a sickly, aching pain. I found a stick nearby and I drew patterns in that pool, shifting some of the blame, taking some of the heartache and shaping it into a boomerang and then I threw it but it never came back.

The clouds raced through the sky over my head like a nightmare in time-lapse photography and I ate some more words but I had to choke them down, they tasted awful. And so I stood, and into my apron I gathered my courage, my hope and my resolve and I took them, bundled up, inside to the fire where I shook them into the grates and watched them burn.

And then when the sky disappeared and the dark came in to quiet the world, pockmarked with tiny lights that other people pin hopes to, my heart found its way back, dragging the ache after it like dirty laundry that has been ignored for too long.

I'm doing all those things that everyone wants me to do.

I take my medicine, even though it makes my hand flutter and my head hurt. I go see my psychiatrist, even though I hate her guts and I believe she hates mine, I go for grief counseling even though it reopens the wounds day after day. I let the children talk to me about their sadness when so moved, even though I'd rather just forget it hurts them too, and I keep on going even though in the very back of my head, a once-loud, now quiet voice points out it would feel good to just go to sleep and not wake up.

I moved on and found that something I once fought against turned out to be something so wonderful and bittersweet and sorely needed.

I changed.

I did all of that and on Friday will I feel any different?

Right up there with fear of clowns.

Treachery,
Like I have never seen,
So never mind your sorrows
Your demons live for me

I'll give him credit for trying.

Caleb came over last night after dinner, with flowers, to prove his regret. I can't imagine what kind of thoughts went through his head when he rang the bell, the one inside the porch, and the front door opened into the hallway where Ben was in the middle of trying on his goalie gear for hockey this winter. He plays when he's home.

So Caleb opened the door and saw Ben standing there, a full ten inches taller than Caleb in his full gear and skates, saw the catching glove and blocking pads and helmet on and wordlessly passed the flowers across the threshold, choked out something about him being sorry, the flowers were for Bridget, and then he turned and left.

At least I think that's what happened, Ben has hardly stopped chuckling long enough to make the story decipherable. He swears he didn't mean to seem menacing. He says he didn't even have his neck guard on. And he didn't have his stick.

Somehow I don't think Caleb noticed those things. I wouldn't have either.

Milton never saw remorse like this.

I ripped a page out of one of the books of Paradise Lost, I think.

I went for an early afternoon walk with Caleb yesterday, down to the benches, his car waiting a whole three hundred yards away because his unspoken request that I comply with, equally unremarked upon is that I dress to the nines when I visit him, and so my black wool dress and long black coat and my black stiletto murder boots make for difficult walking of any distance. It's my funeral outfit for Cole. I wear it to grind that into Caleb. Jacob's memorial outfit was his ever beloved blue velvet that I will never wear again. Ever.

Caleb wanted to know how I was doing. Safe from the confines of my big brothers and incredibly passionate, immature and unruly new husband, safe from August and Joel's abilities to see through his motives so easily, safe from anything that could later used against him, he attacked verbally, from the side.

He didn't like my answers, he failed to accept my words as the truth as I know it. He figures the boys brainwash me in a different way. That they control and I obey and he refused to take my answers as my reality.

He moved here to be closer to the kids and I and I'm not sure I'm one hundred percent clear on his motives. I'm not naive as to what they are but at the same time I'm at a loss to understand how a man with Caleb's money and stature and position in a city he adores can just up and decide to 'retire' (if that's what anyone is really calling it), and leave that beloved city to come live in a place that sports one multi-star hotel and overall, little else that is of interest to him. Especially since said man has zillions of aeroplan miles that go to waste and he's rarely in one place for more than a handful of nights at a time, someone who can and does go absolutely everywhere without taking even the meagerest of a financial hit. Why here?

Please. It can't be my companionship. You can buy that kind of company. I'm sure he has. I bet it was taller and less belligerent, too.

And so I asked.

What difference does it really make to you if I'm okay?

Because I know what Friday is and I know you're not feeling strong enough to face it?

So what?

So, I'm here now.

And that should fix everything?

Maybe, if you let me help you here on your own terms, since you won't accept mine.

Your terms always seem to involve selling you my soul.

Would you stop with the devil remarks, please?

When you stop acting like the devil, sure.

Point noted.

So what's the real reason, Cale?

I think you're well aware, princess.

I want to hear it from you.

Why?

So there's no mistake.

Cole knew, once he went too far, that he'd never have a hand in taking care of you, looking out for you again so he asked me to make sure you were okay, to keep an eye on you, to look after whatever you needed, the kids too.

So you tried to kill me too. Hm. Makes sense.

We got carried away. May I finish?

What else?

I could make you happier.

We're not having a contest.

Sure we are.

Then let me put it to you another way. Want to make sure I have what I need? Then don't make this complicated. I need Ben. I need him straight and I need him here and I need to know no one is fucking with that. That's what I need to get through this.

He just stood there, peering at the clouds through a half-squint, trying to find words for his frustration, to smooth it like wrinkles in a blanket. He failed.

Bridget, I can't do that. No one can, except for Ben. And do you really want to pin all your hopes and dreams and happiness on someone with such a deplorable track record for keeping his promises? Someone who isn't strong?

Why not? Everyone else does that when it comes to me.

I'm not sure if he finally realized he's never going to be someone I trust past appearances or if he realized that the boys and I have come up with a brand new faith that is so imperfect it's more fantasy than spirituality but all of the light drained out of his eyes and he was left wordless and frozen to the ground.

I stopped walking and turned around to look back for him.

I see now why they feel the way they do.

Oh, why is that?

Because you're the strong one, and they're leaning on you, princess.

And they say I'm slow.

I turned around and continued walking up the gravel path and around the loop that would take me back to the car, jamming my hands in my pockets and hunching my shoulders forward, as if I was cold. It wasn't the cold though, it's the weight.

Caleb caught up to me just as the driver opened the door for me.

I don't get it. You're not strong enough for this. How is this even possible?

Haven't you ever been to church? You don't get to pick your path, it's chosen for you. You just have to walk it as steadily as you can, following God. Like me in these ridiculous boots on gravel, Cale. It gets easier.

It's not fair to you. We're supposed to hold you up.

I could barely hear him now. I wasn't even sure if he said it out loud but I snapped back anyway.

No one said life was fair. And the other way didn't fucking work so-

You're the angel-

DON'T YOU SAY THAT!

I balled my fists up and yelled in his face. His composure slipped and fell to the ground in a whisper.

I'm so sorry, Bridget. For everything.

Underneath I saw the tears. And he managed them quite formally, as he does with everything, letting his eyes fill while he got in the car beside me but looking the other way, out the window as we were driven back across the river to take me home, and I sat and stared at him without a single notion to allow him the dignity of some privacy, because he has allowed no dignity for me ever.

But for the first time, in twenty-three years of knowing Caleb, it's probably the first thing he has ever said to me that I trust is true.

Expectations cast in sand.

I'm up on the wall today, slowly tightroping my way across the stone as leaves scatter around me, not strong enough to push me off but threatening enough to distract me with their dance, partnered to the wind. My arms are rooted to my body at my elbows, hands cupped to keep the words from spilling, almost failing at keeping my balance on behalf of my body, stick-straight in the middle of the wall as I press forward, one foot and then the other in front of it. Eyes straight ahead, mouth set in a half-curve of foolish, misguided determination and a desire not to fall off.

If I fall off, I'll be bruised, but only on the inside, and I'll have to climb back up with help and begin again. I've come too far to do that now. I see the end in sight and then I can climb back down and walk on the ground like everyone else. I won't be the freak, perched up high above their heads, trying to at least walk somewhere, instead of getting nowhere at all. Breathing despite the lump in my throat, seeing despite the tears welling up perpetually in my eyes, and hearing everything they say about me in their hushed whispers, in spite of the ever-present thud of my erratic heartbeat in my own ears.

Here's the thing, I'm in no danger of falling off right now. Not with these steps, not on this portion of the wall. It seems to be a safe zone, see, since I have leaned out very far and still remained on top. I'm sure I dropped a few words down to the ground, I see them resting in amongst the leaves and I'm sure someone will pick them up later.

Do you understand why?

When he saw me lean, he startled, and with a shout he called out to me that it was okay. That I could try anything.

Because he would catch me.

The only trouble is, he's standing on one side of the wall. What if I fall off the other side? What then, dear Benjamin? His solution was to swear at the wind, and then he reached up with both arms and pulled me down off the wall and then he didn't let go.

You can't fall if you're already on the ground. You can't fall when someone is there supporting you. You can't fall if you're steady.

You can't fall if you're already down, Bridget.

There is no foundation here, I said.

Sure there is, it's just flimsy as hell, he laughed.

We need to make it stronger and we need to do it now. I wasn't laughing.

Yeah, he nodded. His eyes were grim in the sunlight. We are, Bridget. We are.

And with that, he took my hands and pulled me to my feet and we set off down the sidewalk.

A different kind of thief.

Wait for me.
Trust for me.
Fall for me.
Even when you don't know you're falling for me.

This one doesn't steal memories, he simply alters them, ever so slightly.

Late last night, long after the kids were asleep, I returned to the garage, a hot mug of tea for Ben balanced in my hands, because it dropped to five degrees after the sun went down and the moon rose, bright and full in the night sky.

He was still grinning, happy for having fixed my truck for me even as he had scowled and cursed his way through the job, not impressed that I just didn't plan to rely on him and everyone else to chauffeur me through the winter months.

We listened to the unbalanced hum of the engine. So it needs a few tweaks to sound smooth. He'll continue to work on it. He also fixed the tailgate, so now instead of being rusted shut it opens easily for me in case I need to put something in the box. As if I can lift anything into the back.

He suggested I climb up and sit in the box. I settled for accepting a hand up and I perched on the edge of the open gate while he stood in front of me, his arms around me, my chin against his collarbone.

He suggested that we christen the truck. For luck.

In five degrees? I whispered, surprised.

Why not?

This from the coldest man I know.

I opted to let him lead but he didn't go anywhere. The thought of him folded up in the three-person cab was comical at best, but Ben had other plans anyway. I've never had my clothes removed so purposefully or slowly in my entire life. In minutes I'm sitting there on the gate, naked and covered in shivers and goosebumps and smiling from ear to ear as Ben removed his coat and wrapped it around me and then slid me right out to the edge.

So not cold anymore.

He kissed my throat, arching me back over his arms and holding me off the cold metal by mere inches and then when we were pressed together, his coat pushed up to my shoulders, he could no longer maintain that hold. He gently pressed me into the frigid metal and I cried out loud, it was so cold and then suddenly the blend of fire above and ice below was a whole fresh kind of heaven. Just cruel enough to be beautiful, just dangerous enough to be safe.

With his hands on my face, to be sure that I was paying attention. To be sure that I knew that it was Ben, not a ghost, not a memory, not a dream. His fingers sliding over my lips, over my ears.

Over my lower lip again so many times, a thumb that hesitated just the right amount of time, and my heart broke and mended all in one smooth blow and I emerged a whole new girl.

We came back inside, me still bundled in that coat that is always warm no matter what, my spindly legs sticking out the bottom, hoping none of the neighbors were peeking out their windows, and when we made it to the lights of the kitchen he laughed, for my face was covered with smudges of grease from his hands. Upstairs we discovered giant prints followed over most of my body, concentrated on my arms and my back, full hand prints there for us to marvel over in the full-length mirror. A metaphor for something wonderful.

We spent a solid half-hour in the bath, scrubbing me with soap and shampoo and even dish liquid, and managed to get off all but the worst of the marks, I believe today I still have the grayish shadow of Ben's fingers on my right shoulder blade and my entire left hip is blanketed with his giant hand span and then once we were clean, the inviting warmth of our bed in the dark, quiet room forged a safer place for us to draw out the rest of our want for each other. When his fingertips once again traced a path worn smooth by the two great loves who have traveled it before him, a feeling bubbled up to the surface in me that I never thought I would feel again, and I realized that it isn't possible to own (or even steal) memories after all.

One can only borrow them before others will claim them back. Only Ben isn't giving them back this time. He's going to pick the ones he wants to use and then he'll box up the rest, hiding them away forever, because here they're taking up too much room.

And today, underneath my twelve-hour lip gloss by Revlon is a faint gray thumbprint that I couldn't bear to even try to scrub off.

Give me this and I will give you everything I have.

Take it, it's yours.

Yay! My new (very vintage) truck started! Ben's been working on it off and on for over a week.

I wasn't worried.

Okay, I've been a little worried.

And you all owe me fifty bucks! Each!

Perfect temperatures.

That's the color of his eyes. Molasses. Warm liquid pools that defy the rest of his cold angularity and removed presence.

Only he wasn't cold and he wasn't seemingly removed even though he was right there, sitting on the step beside me, finishing a cigarette in the freezing cold while I watched the remaining leaves cling desperately to their branches, defying winter to take over their crowning glory of a season, trading color for individual perfect snowflakes.

Last winter we fell in love.

Well, I did. I suspect and have confirmed that I've been the center of Ben's universe since the day I met him and a lot of the time I resent the hell out of that, because sometimes it has felt like a virtual too little, too late copy of how my friendship with Jake progressed and if you think I somehow missed that wallowing in my dark gothic misery, you would be mistaken.

I know all of this.

And I know that this week something became different. Briefly Ben pulled away again from the collective mindset of fix her, a chant that rises above our heads and sticks in our ears until we shut down because it's hopeless, to be strong for her.

Stop drinking, stop running, and stop fighting and just be yourself. For her. For yourself. Be independent. Be the guy she loves and not the ones she's lost. Be yourself. I could see all this on his face and so I asked Ben about it, only I let the words pour out in a huge rush of revelation and they were misordered and so it came out as a accusatory failure when it was meant to be the most touched of open emotion to him.

True to form, he came out swinging his words by their tails, fighting back to protect himself from this sudden and unpredictable blonde fury. Only my hair is dark now. Short and plain and I look like a child who couldn't hurt a fly because the darker hair only serves to magnify the circles underneath my eyes which have come to resemble a stagnant pond somewhere in the woods instead of their once-miraculous green-turquoise. He let the words fall away, bouncing harmlessly off the walls I threw up in defense and then he just stared at me, without a hint of eloquence or charm, every bit the giant unruly and defiant teenager that I know Ben to be when he's beyond pissed and running on feeling instead of good grace.

Why can't you just accept it? why can't we just BE?

I had stood up and his words turned my knees to rubber so I sat back down in a hurry. On his hand.

He didn't move and I slid sideways to let him free and I could hear him as he let out a long slow sigh in the other direction. He turned back to me.

As is, princess.

I know, Benny.

I'm done complicating this.

Me too.

But are you? Are you really?

I have to be. There's no other way.

No, there isn't, is there?

Will it work?

Of course.

How do you know for sure, Ben?

You're everything to me, bee. You're my home and my heart. There is nothing else. We'll be okay, it just takes time.

Do we have time, Ben?

We have all of it, bee. All of it. Together.

Promise?

You really want another promise from me?

Yes.

Are they any good?

You're still here, Ben.

It takes so very little to make you happy, Bridget, you know that? You should really raise your standards.

I did.

Oh.

Out of the corner of my eye I could him smile, then. It wasn't a big smile, but it was there nonetheless.