Fifty yards from my life.

If Deer has gently nudged its way into your cards today, you are being asked to find the gentleness of spirit that heals all wounds. Stop pushing so hard to get others to change, and love them as they are. Apply gentleness to your present situation and become like the summer breeze: warm and caring. This is your tool for solving the present dilemma you are facing. If you use it, you will connect with Sacred Mountain, your centering place of serenity, and Great Spirit will guide you.
~Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson

Double standards and ghostiversaries.

This morning it's coffee and honey toast at the island. Bare feet. A fresh jar of honey to open. A handful of blackberries on the side. Cartoon noise softly from the living room, where Henry has taken over the entire couch when he should be on the floor at the coffee table with his grapefruit juice and cinnamon-sugar toast. We're the only ones up this morning, after a glorious sleep last night. It was so hot I thought I would melt or be sick. PJ fired up a rare round of teasing me that everyone jumped in on because I'm positively golden as of late, and three hours in the sun yesterday baked me to a brown glow. I don't usually tan (I never stop moving!) and so they were saying I was just dirty, and getting filthier as life here goes on.

Har.

I got in some really good comments about precisely how filthy I am, and the subject was respectfully changed once again. I live with a group of men frat boys, I can handle my share of teasing, but I also know when I am too hot or too tired to attempt to stretch my patience and I took that cue and Ben and I went to bed, where I could mercifully strip naked and lie on top of the sheets with the fan blowing directly on my skin.

Of course, with Ben, lying there not doing anything lasts about twelve whole seconds. My point, however, is that once we did finally go to sleep I fell down the well into dreamland and didn't come back until eight this morning, when Bonham wandered in to do his usual nose-poke into the side of my hand/arm/leg to let me know it's morning and he needs to go out.

I looked at the clock. Eight whole hours. I looked in the mirror. Oh! Dirty face -wait tanned but the endless black holes under my eyes seem less horrifying than usual. Yay.

I didn't have to fight to pry my eyes open the whole way down the road with the dog.

(An aside for a lot of people who ask why I don't just leave him out overnight or tie him in the backyard in the morning? I love my dog AND my grass. I don't believe letting a dog out is doing much more than ruining the lawn. So I walk him. He gets exercise and time with me and I don't get a polkadot lawn. Your mileage may vary.)

I am awake. Awake and alive and ready for another day of fun. I think we may do more fishing today because yesterday was an endless game of dumping the children off their air mattresses out in chest-deep water and they would scream and fly off and climb back on for hours. I swam twice.

I lay on my beach towel and closed my eyes to the sun and almost fell asleep and Ben kept watch over the children without blinking because he's a better swimmer anyway and when he wasn't, Lochlan would.

We also might head downtown today for some delicious meals and some more exploring and then spend a little more time just doing little things at home. Ben has to install a peep-hole for the back door and I'm campaigning heavily to have it installed slightly lower than the others, which I need to stand on tip-toe to see through and boy, what a pain that is at my front door, even though the boys have the gate-code to get their trucks/motorcycles/egos down the driveway but not keys to my house because I'm keeping those to the people that live here this time because all emergencies are covered.

He'll put it low for me. I know he will.

I must go now and stand in the shower and marvel at precisely how brown my skin is and I know it's bad and I know I have the crinkle-lines around my eyes and a face full of freckles and once winter comes back and I am pale again I will curse the sun in all its glory but this has been the longest stretch of mild weather I have witnessed firsthand in almost a decade and I plan to milk it, wring it out and soak it up for as long as it lasts. Someone said this area averages five degrees in the winter and I laughed and then they reminded me it's a bitter damp cold and I laughed again, having been raised on the edge of the continent already, thank you, just on the other side. I know bad weather. This isn't it. This is home-weather.

I'm also going to go stand in the shower and marvel at the fact that had Jacob not ruined everything, today would have been our fourth wedding anniversary. Only, you know what? For the first time in a marriage I don't feel like I'm the child.

Oh, well, Ben just walked in and made a terribly pornographic comment about the filthiness of my skin again. I'm definitely not the child.

Snort.

(He can do that but he's the ONLY one who can, okay?)

Plans for the best-laid.

Morning.

My carpets have been cleaned, the siding, walkway, porch and stonework has been pressure-washed, the laundry is caught up, the litterbox is clean, the dog has been walked, I made a grocery list, updated my calendar, sobered up, renewed permissions to my wing of the house and now I'm going to the beach to teach my kids to fish.

Yes, that's right.

No, I have no idea what I'm doing but there's a pier and we have rods and wiggly things and really the mechanics of it aren't important when you're nine.

Or when you're twelve, for that matter.

Just listen for one little minute, kay?

Lochlan and I have great plans to sit outside on the verandah tonight as the sun sets and drink sasparilla and talk.

Talk. Huh. hahaha.

Yes, I've already arrived in the village of Sassafras and have set up my chair for the duration, in case you are wondering. I don't do well with new and different kinds of drinks but this stuff is really good and rootbeerish and not at all sinister so whatever, I'll listen to what Lochlan has to say, which I'm sure will be a well-rehearsed litany of things he didn't mean to say or do, tangled up with how we wear our secrets and a need to plan for the future and Jesus Christ, already, can't I just marry him and then we can leave all of this painful stuff behind?

Well, no, we can't, because I'm in love and it's not with him and revenge and grudges run so deep you would be stunned and really who the hell has ever kept me from Caleb the way Jacob did? None of you, that's who. You guys couldn't protect me from him with baseball bats and homing lasers, locked in a steel cage and that's what's so fucking dumb about all this.

Dumb.

Where were you all when he came to the fair when I was twelve? Where were you when he came back when I was in my early twenties and I married his brother and Cole promised the same things Lochlan did and then lied too, only he was worse but he's dead so that's not important right now, is it?

Heck with this. I need another.

Okay. Damned bottle caps. Lochlan would open it but he is still in the backyard talking with Dylan and Corey and really they need to go home because I feel one of those mess-things coming on. You know the kind where everything spills out and we look at it and dissect it and then pave over it and drive as if there's nothing buried there until some part of it begins to stick out again as time erodes the asphalt and suddenly you're forced to confront things better left buried.

It's not going to be pretty but then again I'm not either anymore. At least not in the mirror. To them I am. I know that. I know I have to be careful not to distract them when there are issues at hand. It's just easier, kinder and the lesser of all evils. I don't mean any harm. I'm just so tired of reliving everything every time the wind blows.

That's all. I'm just tired.

No ultimatomatoes though. I've made those before. They don't work. He stays. I'm keeping him. I just don't know in what format he gets to be anymore. Hell at this rate I'll be done for before he even gets inside.

And spellcheck is good, isn't it? Just for you, ethernet.

I would have posted something, aside from my indignant rant on the crazy drivers here, but I have a better offer from Ben to go and sleep on him while he watches some mindless television. Goodnight.

Sea to sky.

Here's the thing.

You are not special.

You have no reason and no right to drive faster than everyone else, cut in and out of lanes with so little room I gasp, talk on the phone while operating your moving vehicle, travel without wearing a seatbelt or drive after drinking.

But here's the thing.

You are special.

You're special to the children you have at home and to your wife or husband and your friends. To your brothers and your neighbors too.

You're special to the EMTs who are now trying to save your life and to the attendants at the funeral home who are going to try and make you presentable for your own service. Your name will never be forgotten by those who love you or by those whose loved ones you killed because you were too hurried/distracted/drunk to fulfill the privilege of operating a motor vehicle safely and with due dilligence.

Yeah, you're special all right.

Loch, stock and barrel.

Why don't you ask him if he's going to stay?
Why don't you ask him if he's going away?

Even most of the boys have switched to jeans and flannel shirts tonight.

It's cool, cold almost. A good night for a bonfire but we're not permitted bonfires due to being in the fourth week of a summer dry spell from the rain. Everyone seems to have dressed appropriately, however. Everyone is having fun. The dinner part is winding down now, latecomers milling around the barbecue while PJ serves up steaks and grilled cobs of corn and assorted goodies, my portobello mushroom caps that were a big hit as veggie burgers for the non-meat lovers. I know Schuyler can handle dessert and refilling coffees and lemonades and Chris will look after the beer and wine crowd.

Ben has taken centre stage with his acoustic down on the lawn with some of the older neighbors, all closet guitar players, it seems. I can hear them playing Tusk through the open window. My neighbor with the hydrangea (her garden makes me green with envy) is singing, God bless her heart.

I think the neighbors are all relieved, frankly.

We are nice people.

Not goat-sacrificers nor drug peddlers. Folks who worry about their dahlias and run out of propane and make kickass blackberry coffee cake just like they do, simply with unconventional jobs. And now they can also get the tour and understand the amount of space we have, that Lochlan has his own wing, distinct and apart from ours, as does August, and that Schuy and Daniel's apartment downstairs is darling, and possibly already better decorated than most of the expensive homes that circle the bay. That we all pitch in and look after the house and the garden, the vineyard and the orchard too, that we obey the speed limits and that the house is spotless. Oh, they looked, trust me. They see that my children are coddled and loved but also given limits, and have better manners than any of us. That we are well-read and cultured and travelled and not scary or gossipy in the least.

At least I hope so. The rumblings got back to me quickly when we moved in. The people who live up here are as protective of their neighborhood, of their peace and quiet, beautiful landscape and their way of life as are we, and so it was easy for us to choose this area. Even the bikes have been well-received, considering how loud they can be. The neighbors are discreet, in other words. We keep our privacy as long as we keep our decorum. That's so easy it's dumb.

They are sympathetic as well, upon hearing of some of what we have gone through, and I am protective of my reactions and so that's why right now I'm not so much hiding out as I'm taking a moment to breathe, away from everyone, because I can't deal with an endless parade of people exclaiming in hushed whispers that I seem to be doing well when they don't know me at all, and that I'm so young to have been through so much, when they don't know the half of it.

I don't want to hear that. A little understanding is fine, a wet blanket of pity and respect is more than I can bear. I'm permitted to hide for five more minutes and then I know August will knock gently on his door, since I commandeered his den, and I'll head back out into the night to have some more wine and maybe some strawberries if there are any left. I'll watch Caleb dance with Ruth and watch Lochlan watch me watching them while he pretends to be interested in the girl he brought tonight (because just ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHH) and watch Ben watch all of us with his usual casual interest that misses nothing while he seems to miss everything.

None of this has gotten past him, I assure you, and while he's content to bring down his hammer on affection that I traded freely once for security, his patience has worn thin. He is also anxious for life to begin, we have been stuck in limbo too long thus far.

I've stayed here too long as well, there's my knock now. Time to bring out the goats and drugs and freak the fuck out of everyone, I guess.

I'm kidding.

We don't do drugs.

I still want a goat, though.

Caught between the glass and the backing board.

Car overheats
Jump out of my seat
On the side of the highway baby
Our road is long
Your hold is strong
Please don't ever let go

I couldn't pretend that I had never read his letter. And I still find it funny to this day that no one ever said a thing or rang any alarms after seeing a seventeen-year-old boy dragging around a crying twelve-year-old girl by the hand but I'm guessing we look like brother and sister thanks to our hair, even though Lochlan's blonde is strawberries and mine is ashes.

He pushes my plate toward me.

Eat, Bridget. Come on, we can't stay here forever.

I'm not hungry.

I only said those things so that you would hate me and not want to come with me when I left and then I realized if I left you there you wouldn't be safe. Jesus. I'm seventeen. I'm supposed to be studying math and playing guitar and saving for a new car, not this.

You wanted this.

I'm saying I don't know everything and maybe I screwed up and I'm not going to screw up your life too.

So what now?

We drop it and go home. We go to school. Right through college. We do summer work on the midway but otherwise whatever romantic dream you have of staying on the road with the carnival has to end. Bridget, it isn't safe. He can get to you there.

He can get to me anywhere. He told me. Will we be together? You and I, I mean?

Of course. After college we can get married.

Can we buy a camper?

Sure.

* * * *

I'm standing outside the gates, digging in my bag for my watch. He's got to be late by now. The lineup is so long already and I don't know if I'm supposed to be in it or not. I walked from my job at the shopping center and Lochlan was driving back from a shift at the restaurant where he slings wine and fancy vertical appetizers to people who tip poorly. We are starving again. I always think I can fill the void with cotton candy but it doesn't work. It doesn't expand to fill me with sugary satisfaction, it contracts into a hard rock that gives me a belly ache.

I have lengthened out a little at fourteen. Lost a lot of baby fat. I'm lightly tanned and my hair is so long it regularly gets caught in the doors of the boy's trucks and in their watches. I have developed an affinity for short skirts and halter tops and flip-flops if I have to wear shoes. Every ride I go on is in bare feet because they make you take off slip-on shoes. I do this on purpose because it feels so good. I have developed a sick affinity for lip gloss. By the bucketful. I can charm almost anyone into anything and I'm aware of that in the way that you're aware that it's raining when you step outside into a monsoon.

A kiss lands on the back of my neck.

Let's go back to the truck.

Huh?

I need to talk to you.

People are going in, can't it wait?

The fair is all week, Bridget.

And we're...here, right? We had plans to go, that's why we're both here. What's going on?

Just come with me.

We go and sit in the truck and I have a sinking feeling I won't get to ride the ferris wheel after dark.

* * * * *

I knock on the door of the apartment hesitantly. Lochlan opens it, sees me and heads back to his computer. He is finishing up some work. Twenty-four and bearded now. The apartment is a mess and I start loading dishes into the sink from all over the place. I chastise him for not keeping it clean. He would be calmer if his living space were organized.

You didn't come here to do my housekeeping.

I stare at the framed photograph on his desk. It's me at seventeen, sitting in the ferris wheel alone and smiling. Waiting for him. Two summers ago. The fair is our thing, we still go to it together in spite of the fact that I have now been dating Cole for five years. Lochlan and Cole are friends so we're together all of the time. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

No, I came here to tell you I'm getting married.

Silence descends like a fog over the room and I'm acutely aware that this hurts. I don't want to look at him but he hasn't said anything.

He stands up, grabs his keys and brushes past me, walking out his front door and slamming it hard. After a minute I hear his truck start in the parking lot and he drives away.

* * * *

I knock softly on his door, and he calls out for me to come in. I open the door carefully and walk down the hall until I reach the sunny window nook where he has his desk. He is doing freelance work today. I pass him the steaming mug of coffee and he thanks me and smiles, his beard spreading out when his mouth turns up. He has lines around his eyes, now at forty-four and I can't help but be grateful that he has kept his promises to me in spite of the fact that three times now I have sprung engagements on him and once I have turned him down.

My eyes fall on the picture of me, still on his desk forever frozen in 1988. I wonder how long his promise will hold. I can see in his eyes the things he has been through and the one attempt to go away from me and make his own life that ended in disaster and brought him back for something over nothing at all. I worry that I have ruined him in a way that only we can understand and at the same time I will forever punish him for forcing me to grow up before I was capable of being the girl he wanted me to be, and for not stepping in and being the man that he promised he would be when it mattered most.

When Jacob flew I went to Lochlan and I asked him for help and he refused. I asked him to take his place in front of me and keep my children safe and I was going to go curl up into a ball and block everything out for a very long time and he said no because he was reeling and he couldn't help me, no one could, and that's your forty-eight hour gap between when they told me Jacob was gone and when I knocked on Caleb's door in hopes that death would take me quickly. Cole and Jacob were dead and Lochlan no longer wanted what was left of me so please, here, just make it quick.

Sadly, it didn't happen. Hi, I'm still here.

We exist in an awkward space, tied together with heavy ropes and then for good measure he has jammed a ruler down between us to always keep us a foot apart. For good measure Ben jammed another one down there and it hurts but I'll get used to it, just like I've grown used to the first one, my skin fused around it in a reluctant sort of acceptance. I think at this point we've had thirty years of stubbornness that has become too thick to swim through and that somehow retains the shape of our history despite our efforts to make it into something new. Once again the chance has passed, and frankly I don't think there will be another.

Then again, I didn't expect to have this sort of history in my life so I never say never any more. I'm not yet forty years old and yet I feel as if I have already lived a hundred lives, all different and varied and unpredictable and full, all compelling and eventual and complicated to a fault.

Lochlan realized the error of his ways very quickly after that first winter without Jake and I was gifted with the best revenge ever. Lochlan finally asked me to marry him so he could fulfill the dream of the twelve-year-old Bridget who would grow up to be his unintentional anchor, his focus, his muse.

And I said no.

Partly because I wanted to pay him back for being too late for pretty much everything I've ever been through, and partly because my focus is now on Ben and I think a lot of the time Lochlan's jealousy leads him to do and say things he doesn't want to follow through with. Lochlan has led a privileged life. Hungry by choice, vagrant by design, alone by one single hesitation that lasted an exhale too long and put me in the path of someone I have tried to outrun for most of my life as a result. Forgive? Sure. Forget? Never.

* * * *

Last night Lochlan brought home a camper, and I'm not sure if he's trying to fulfill my wildest dreams or finish me off. You'll have to ask the girl in the picture. She is life before death, and I am life after it.

And you wonder why we struggle so.

Look at the ground look at the ground look at the ground.

I flick the mental metronome and start to count along.

Look at the ground look at the ground look at the all of the sudden his eyelashes flicker and he slowly raises his eyes to meet mine. Mine are glassy, dripping with hot, panicked tears. The corners of my mouth are caked with cotton candy and I still have the five dollar bill clutched in my hand that he gave me for the hot dogs we're not going to get now. The ones he asked me to get so he would have time to leave.

What did you do, Lochlan?

Nothing, Bridget. Don't worry about it. We need to go.

What did you do? Tell me.

Is there anything you need from the camper?

My sweater.

Here, take mine. And if anyone asks you, make up a name.

Make up a-what's going on?

Let's go.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me around, practically running. We make it to the truck and he opens my door and lifts me up, shoving me in at the same time and I feel my hair brush the doorframe. A hair's breadth away from being knocked out but I land safely on the seat and scramble to launch toward his door to open it. Only I don't know what the rush is for. Maybe he has seen a ghost. Maybe he's robbed someone. I just know that Lochlan is never scared of anything unless it concerns me and so I do what I am told.

One minute I am reading his letter telling me to go away, go home, go to school, be a good girl and the next minute I am his only possession worth taking in an emergency.

Well, that's kind of thrilling in itself but I'm afraid because he's afraid so it's not something I can dissect enough to feed to my ego. Not now, maybe later.

He stomps on the gas and the truck spins in the dirt, spraying gravel all over the trailer. It screams to life and suddenly we are jolting along at a hundred and thirty miles an hour on the packed dirt road, full of potholes and I scramble back over to my own side and grab my seatbelt. It's that or go through the windshield and I'm twelve so I had my whole life ahead of me up until this point or so I think because I don't know what we're running from. We turn onto the highway and drive the wrong way. Inland. I have never gone this way before.

I'm so sorry, Bridget. I thought it was you. I should have known better. Dammit! I should have KNOWN it wasn't your fault.

But it was. I didn't mean for it to happen.

It's my fault. I left you alone too long. I'll never forgive myself. I'm so sorry, baby.

So why are we leaving? That's family you're taking us away from!

Those people are not your family, Bridget.

He yanked the wheel and the truck veered dangerous across two lanes and skidded to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. He throws his arm out reflexively to block me as I lurch toward the dashboard, the seatbelt all but useless the way he is driving. We're far enough away now. It's dark out and Lochlan hates night driving. Maybe I can reason with him and we can go home, back to our cozy little camper. To sleep. Maybe get our food first. I'm hungry. I'm always so hungry. We don't get enough to eat and my stomach growls loudly and Lochlan hears it and rests his head on the steering wheel, helpless. I know he wants to cry but he's being strong because I'm not.

Bridget, listen to me.

I lean in and listen very closely. Lochlan talks low, quietly and he is difficult to hear with the trucks rumbling past us, shaking our seats, rattling the windows. I listen and my eyes grow wide and suddenly I understand everything that has made him afraid and I am glad we are away from there.

But what about the letter?

Pretend you never saw it. I thought I was protecting you by leaving you behind and I was wrong.

So now what?

Now? Easy. We find a different midway. Maybe go to Ontario. And I never let you out of my sight again.

For how long though?

The rest of your life. I'm your family now, Bridget. And I will watch over you until the day I die.

Quick before the vision goes away.

You know it's summer when the boys are all hanging out in the backyard wearing their utilikilts and holding plates loaded with meat. I've always enjoyed July but this just makes it completely worthwhile.

There are no mosquitoes here either. That helps.

A lot, Ben says.

Snort.