Bento boxes. He said I forgot those too.

Now don't believe she'll never leave again,
I can't forget the words she said back when.

(Daniel wants me to remind you to not forget to store your pens together. This is critical. Especially if you need a year to motivate yourself to do it.)

Today I bought myself a new pair of army pants, found out my favorite bakery has a whole! big! bin! by the door of lovely things they made yesterday that didn't sell that will fit in my freezer just fine, and then drove all the freaking way downtown on a moment's notice to pick up a still-sick Benjamin.

And then for Benjamin, and ONLY for Benjamin, I did not resist when he suggested a picnic in the car, since we stopped at a drive-through on the way home because it takes forever to get downtown and home again and we had fifteen minutes to spare before the kids were finished school. If you know me you'll know that I don't eat in my car! Seriously. I threw a fit at Cole in 1999 after we seemed to spend more time in the parking lot of most fast food restaurants than we did in the tiny kitchen of our rental flat and I said I would never do it again. Ben promised it wouldn't become a habit.

This evening I took Ruth up to the high school for her first honour band practice, because she was asked to join. I am very, very proud. I tend not to talk about my children much online, simply because some day they will take a serious interest in reading my archives and I don't want them to think that I mined their lives for blog-fodder (the boys on the other hand, well, they're grownups. It's different.)

My legs fell asleep sitting on the steps by the gym waiting for her and I got to see an incredibly entertaining cross-section of high school drama and I sat there biting my tongue, desperate to tell the two involved that in twenty years so much will have happened that it doesn't matter.

I didn't say anything, if that's what you're wondering.

So it was sort of a long day, in that my knees were asleep for most of it and all of it involved looking after everybody else, which is a nice change from everybody looking after me.

We got the patina thing from Apartment Therapy too.

Barometer?

It's rowing out. Which is snow mixed with rain, in this house. Making for eleven-hundred pound shovelfuls, and Bridget's little turbo parked in the driveway isn't going anywhere until the snow is gone. Mostly because life is all uphill and downhill here (HA, I made a funny) and frankly hills + snow sort of terrify me and I will scream out loud as I'm driving. I can drown out Pete Steele on my stereo and he's parked posthumously on volume number forty-two, in Bose car-stereo speak. That's VERY LOUD to you without my car stereo, amps under the seats so Bridget gets her full-body sensory musical experience, every time.

Bonham leapt through the snow this morning like a small, furry gazelle with no legs, and wore himself to bits sixty feet down the sidewalk (his legs are six inches long, we got eight inches of snow, so he body-surfed with no one to carry him along, you see), and is now resting comfortably at Ben's feet on the couch. Ben has been sleeping on said couch since six this morning. We woke up at four, realized the power was off (again, what is it with you, Vancouver?) and checked our phones, snoozed until they actually went off, and then he got ready for work, I took the gazelle up the road and then Ben told me over one hell of a barking cough that there was no way in hell he could manage the day and that was that. Third day in a row and that's when I start to worry and so when/if he gets up he's going to go to the doctor because he's been too miserable too long.

I am faring much better. Possibly because I refuse to let it get me but I've got a very raw throat and some seriously exciting and questionable things coming out of my nose that *almost* make me want to show the boys but otherwise I am still holding steady. The massive aches and pains don't seem to kick in until late evening.

Being sick 'adds patina' to the house, I guess. Otherwise we're just glaring perfection in the face of flawed humanity.

Oh, shut the fuck up. I'm kidding. I'm delirious from lack of sleep and the knowledge that this spring, an Anthropologie store is going in on Granville Street and I swear to God you're never going to see me again.

Also I heard Michael Kors is coming. I have a Michael Kors bag but empty it is too heavy to carry because of the latch so if I have to use it I make the boys carry it for me and that looks a little awkward and also it comes back sans lip glosses. That pisses me off.

I'm starving which always makes me weird. Three pieces of (sprouted) grain bread with jam (the closest thing I can find to the Goodhearty bread from Wolfville that my mom discovered and smuggled out of the Annapolis valley for me) and I'm eyeing the clock. I should just eat the damned pretzels in spite of the salt. Fuck the salt when I'm hungry. Feed the Bridget.

She's a monster.

PS I haven't heard from Caleb. I did hear from the court. Everything is duly noted and I could hear audible eye-rolling going on as I was warned to get our acts together because we use up a lot of resources with this whole love-hate-parenting arrangement. Lochlan is cautiously optimistic and terrified and nostalgic and remorseful all at once and secrets loom large. Caleb could respond antagonistically or he could be uncharacteristic. He is not usually unpredictable but I never know.

So I am instructed to hold tight, and I will for the moment. I'm going to go back to my new favorite hobby with Daniel, which is snarking on Apartment Therapy posts. Where they discuss riveting topics like the revelation of using coat hooks for...a coat rack! And microwave 'hacks' like cooking eggs. And my favorite, how to manage your laundry! If those don't make you wonder, these same people extol the virtues of choosing throw pillows, all under $100! (Who buys a $100 throw pillow? Someone who can't figure out how to make an egg in a microwave, apparently.)

This is the apocalypse, my friends, only it's very slow-moving and well-coordinated, with designer fabrics and the word 'hack' sprinkled on everything liberally, like a bad cough.

With that I am out. Places to go, people to molest. Possibly antibiotics to buy. Drive safe.

A place that might surprise you, and a Ferris wheel made of cheese.

(For the moment, I will try to bring closure to one damn thing on this journal.)

I'm pretty sure that Jacob would be rolling over in his grave today, if he was in one, but he isn't, he's in a big copper urn in a little white house in Newfoundland and some of him is in a tiny copper box here on the mantle with Butterfield in one as well. I seem to be collecting boxes with dead things. Oh joy, I've finally become one of those really creepy-

Wait a minute.

I always was vaguely creepy and weird so maybe nevermind.

What I meant to say is that Jacob backed up Ben and forgave him time and time again, when there was positively nothing redeemable about Ben whatsoever. Jacob gave me his blessing to rely on Ben in the letters left for me and Jacob believed that deep down Ben was a good person, when everyone else threw up their hands, blocked Ben's phone number and told him when he finally smartened up they would be happy to be friends again.

Maybe Ben is just coming full circle after an incredibly difficult five years. Maybe Jacob was just better at reading people. Maybe Ben is a trickster, a shaman, a fraud. Maybe Ben and Lochlan are working together on a slow and non-suspicious snail-paced abduction and brainwashing and I am too stupid to understand the difference.

Maybe none of them will ever get along sufficiently to last a week without a punch thrown or a few hours of silent treatment, or a silent mark kept on a lifetime board that holds so many strikes-you're-out that the game has become one of endurance, played through decades and styles and mindsets and plans.

Maybe I am the last of us to turn forty this year (shut UP) and it's simply time things change, because things were out of control.

So far out of control that it has come to this and this is something I can endorse because I tend to agree with Jacob. Ben was never much good at keeping up the charm for long. At worst he's an unruly five-year-old with a truck in one hand and a sunflower in the other and he had big plans to rule the world with his music someday only at best he's one hell of a wild, unruly type with little self-control and no plans for the future past riding out the day. Throw in a case of incurable stage fright, an inability to get along with others in close quarters and hold to big decisions for very long and a heavy hand that belies his incredibly fragile heart and you have a force to be reckoned with. The Dark Side.

Ben needs time apart from people. Down time. Time to unwind. He needs space to spread out and please, don't touch his stuff. Advise him of the best way to proceed and then trick him into confirming the most beneficial choice with you and call it a decision. Don't try to contain him, for there isn't a room that can. Get him off the stage and let him rule the world in a different way, in which his name will become synonymous with great things without him having to sell his soul every night under the hot lights to get it.

Jacob gave me permission to love Ben when all signs pointed to that being a recklessness of the highest degree.

But Jacob didn't make me fall in love with Ben, Ben did. And when no one's looking (better yet, when no one is talking about the last thing Ben ate that wasn't exactly edible like truck tires, ipods or Bridget's watermelon all-chemical lip gloss), Ben does things that continue to surprise.

Like spend years culling favors and keeping friends in order to help another friend and save my life at the same time, in a way I can't tell you about because the Internet remains a stranger sometimes, not a friend.

And now Ben holds the upper hand, in everything. And even Caleb with his threats and history and potential for total ruin can't touch us anymore. None of us. Lochlan is safe. I am safe. The memories are safe, tucked in tightly with the secrets and the grief and I was taken this morning to close another chapter of life that I left open a little too long, page turned down repeatedly, threadbare fibers waging tears between the words, spine cracked on a book that is too hard for most people to read. One I now know by heart, word for word.

I stepped through the threshold into the concrete room and Jacob was standing in the light. Ben entered behind me. Jacob nodded. Tucker, he said softly. Zero, Ben replied. Jacob broke into a gentle grin and my heart strained against the stitches. It's funny how things that shouldn't be are intertwined in a way that everything happens at once or nothing ever happens at all. I would like more of the latter, I think.

Are you sure I have to do this?

I need to go, princess.

Just so you know, I'd like to keep you here forever, but I know I can't.

I think things will be easier for you now. You don't need to come here to spend time with me.

What if things don't get better?

Then you have a willing cavalry to help you.

I love you, Jakey.

I love you, princess. You know where to find me.(Thankfully he did not point straight up. I might have died from cheesiness and a proliferation of flashbacks to watching Highway to Heaven.)

I closed my eyes together tightly. I squished my whole face up in an effort not to cry. When I opened them he was gone. No goodbye. No drawn-out departure. No last chance. I was aware I was holding Ben's hand so tightly my fingers ached. I let go and shook them to bring back the feeling. Ironic. Usually I want to make the feelings go away.

Hey Bridge.

Yeah.

Can we use the garage again now? It's going to snow tonight.

Maybe.

Oh, fuck. I'm going to go move the truck before you change your mind.

With the best of intentions and his invisible cape.

Trying something new, because it's been a while.

Trust.

When I hit publish yesterday morning, Ben walked into Caleb's office, holding the key card that gives access to the elevator. The card was still attached to the doorman, who didn't look very happy at all.

Ben let him go and he beat a hasty retreat. He knows Ben. I'm sure the moment he returned to the ground floor he would have called Caleb on his cellphone to warn him there was an angry giant waiting in his office but Ben didn't give him that chance. Ben looked at me and then went barging through the condo, walking right into the bathroom where Caleb was and telling him we were leaving and just stay where he was.

Caleb was too surprised to say anything, I bet.

Ben returned to the study, took my hand and asked me if I had anything else with me. I said no and he pulled me back to the elevator and outside to the waiting truck, still running. He buckled me in, locked the doors and then called Lochlan to let him know we were on the way.

He called Caleb again and told him to have my car brought home too.

We came home and he made no move to go inside. I am sitting quietly. Tears rolling.

You gotta give me some of it.

What?

This part. The hard part. Stop running to him when you feel angry about Jake. This is part of being together, Bridget. You're supposed to come to me.

You have enough to deal with.

And I would rather deal with you and help you than worry about you twenty-four hours a day. That just adds to my problems. Let me help you. Stop putting yourself in the path of a freight train.

Caleb's a train now?

When it comes to you, yes. I think it's time some things change.

That's what he said.

Caleb?

Jacob.

Ben stared at me without a word for so long I started to squirm shamefully under his attention. His face started out positively furious and then I watched as it softened. As he went from monster to lover in the space of two minutes, which was an eternity and then he finally asked.

What did Zero say, exactly?

That I have to let him go now, and that I should stay away from Caleb.

And how do you feel about that?

Well, fuck. I hate that question. That question sent me out of the truck, doors slamming, jaw clenched. Marching back to the house where I stopped, patiently waiting for Ben to catch up and unlock the front door and then once inside, I went straight for the library where I threw myself face down into the pillows on the chair.

Bridget-

I know. He's right, you're right, everybody's right.

I don't want you near Caleb anymore.

Is this an ultimatum? My Ben doesn't do ultimatums.

Yes it is and yes he does. He's just been a lot more perverted and more patient than most Bens.

My Ben isn't patient at all.

Sure he is. Your life up until now is an example of that.

So I've gotten it all wrong.

No. Not at all.

What about Lochlan?

Let me deal with everyone from now on.

You can't deal with them, Ben. If you shut them out Caleb will crush Lochlan and me, by default. Is it worth it?

I have aces in my hand too. Maybe you haven't paid attention to the game.

Why didn't you use them already? Christ, Ben, we've been to hell and back a hundred times now.

I was waiting for you, but, really, Bridget, you're taking a while and sometimes I think you take advantage and really I have had it up to here with everyone else taking their piece of you and leaving me with crumbs. They need to go find their own lives. Caleb needs a new hobby that doesn't involve terrorizing my wife and playing on her weaknesses.

You're going to take Lochlan away from me, too? I have already forgotten about Caleb. I don't need Caleb. I need Lochlan though. This is one dealbreaker I won't indulge in.

No. Just Caleb.

Good luck. If this were possible it would have already happened.

Let me fix this. Once. Just this one thing.

No, sorry. I can't risk Lochlan. And you shouldn't risk me, by default.

And you shouldn't doubt me, Bridget.

What do you mean?

Maybe I've spent the last three years planning. To be sure. Do you trust me?

I had to think about this. For a long moment. Holy fuck. I actually DO trust him.

More than anyone.

Then let me deal with Caleb. The only time you'll see him is when he picks Henry up or drops him off. Okay? I have spent so long saying nothing. I'm done, Bridge. No more.

Okay.

Can you do this, little bee?

Yes.

No more Caleb, no more Cole.

No more Caleb, Cole.

No more Jacob either, princess.

What?

Package deal.

You can't put restrictions on Jacob. I didn't sign up for this.

Yeah, well, princess, I didn't sign up to watch you hammer yourself into the ground squarely between them either.

Caleb will kill all of us. Did you warn Lochlan? Does he know?

I want you to let me handle him. If Caleb contacts you, I want you to direct him back to me. Okay?

Okay.

Nothing else, Bridge. The company will be run by the board. You don't have to touch it.

Okay, Ben.

I love you.

I love you too. What if-

There are no what ifs here. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay, bee. I've been planning this since the day I fell in love with you.

Eight years?

Three, goofy. Okay, maybe longer. And I've had it with him. It's time to move on this.

What if-

Trust me. I love you. And I love Lochlan.

Do you really, Ben?

Sadly, yes. He's pretty hot actually. (Ben grins briefly and I start choking on tears. Laughing and crying at the same time. So pretty.)

It's going to blow up in our fac-

Or it might just all end happily ever after.

You know we won't know that for forty or fifty years.

I can wait, Bridget. I've waited through worse.

What's worse than Caleb?

Jake was. Believe it or not.

Condemning the already-condemned (AKA The Devil is real).

It was pitch black and cooler than I remember the temperature of the room being when I fell asleep. I slipped down to the bottom of the bed from between my guards as they slept on and shrugged into yesterday's clothes. Buttoning my jeans I saw one guard turn over and then he pulled the quilts up over his head and the soft growl of his snore resumed. Not so much of a snore, actually, more like someone getting a cold. I frowned but kept moving.

I gingerly pulled on my warmest zippered hoodie and took off, down steps, down hallways, lighter than our room by virtue of the lack of window coverings. Down, down, deeper until I hit the stairs that turn to the right and then I was home free. At the bottom of the steps is a frozen sheet of water, once a perpetual rain puddle in the place where I land after hundreds of trips, turned to treacherous ice by the overnight drop in degrees. I keep my hand on the railing until I'm sure I'm not going to wipe out.

I made it. I turn and walk slowly down the hallway today. The ice-puddles are everywhere. I'm surprised it is so cold. My hands are numb and shaking already but I need to keep them out for balance. It's a tightrope without the fall, a line drawn between wrong and wrong.

The door is open again. I either keep a messy grief or he has been waiting hard for me. The iced dead leaves remain curled around themselves along the walls. A light wind whistles down the corridor, echoing off concrete. I feel lonely. None of the boys are here at this hour. No one can convince me this isn't real. Nobody understands why the sadness ever goes away and I never wanted to have to make this trip on a regular basis but it is expected, and the obligations to the dead outweigh the ones to the living every time. All I ever wanted was to bring him back to life and until I figure that out, everything else will have to go away.

Jacob is still sitting on the floor where I left him last. When I step through the door and look around I instinctively know he's still going to be right there, even after six weeks of not coming here.

He has his knees up with his head buried in his arms, resting on top of them. He doesn't look up.

You're hurt.

It's nothing.

WHO DID IT? He breaks out in a roar and I shrink away from him, back toward the door. He looks up finally and stands. I am small in front of him, the top of my head level with his chest. He grabs my arms and I shriek involuntarily and he drops them and meets my eyes. His are sunken, faded blue ringed in black. Betrayal floats in his irises alongside sadness and rage, each one struggling to be on top, drowning the others, taking turns pushing each other under the surface.

I am surprised at his rage.

It isn't rage. He's read my mind.

Like hell, Jacob.

I'm helpless here, princess.

There isn't anything you need to help with!

Was it Caleb because I can get to him.

He gets to you, you mean. And no, it wasn't and no it didn't happen on purpose. It was an accident.

They can't afford accidents.

They watch each other.

That only raises the stakes and puts you in danger. You can't be in that place anymore. You had enough from HIM! Jacob raises one hand to the sky and points at the darkest corner of the room where Cole lurks in frustrated silence. He isn't allowed to talk unless I give him permission.

It isn't like that.

Oh, man, you're just going in circles now. Let me go. I can't help you stuck in here.

I can't do that.

YOU HAVE TO. Keeping me here compounds all of this. You shouldn't be here. I can't do anything from here. This is insanity. Bridget, make something different. It's okay. You can visit the memories but this..this room isn't real and it's not right and it's enough already. Enough.

You don't know anything.

I know your heart, Bridget.

If you knew my heart we wouldn't be here, Jake.

I was really hoping they were strong enough. You have to try something else. Jesus, this can't be happening again.

Get off it! It isn't like that. Just STOP. I can't do this today. I have to go back.

When will you come back?

When I think I need you.

What about when I need you? Six weeks since the last time, princess.

The rage transfers from his eyes to mine and I taste the bitter thrill of victory and his helplessness surrounds me and takes all the air out of the room but I have enough left to let a little bit of the rage out.

Yeah, well, what about when I needed you, Jacob? Where in the hell were you then?

I shocked myself and stumbled backwards, away from him, away from the sudden realization that I'm not magical and keeping him here isn't doing anything for me but reminding me that I am ordinary and useless, that I can't bring him back to life but I can't keep him here.

This isn't working only instead of being sad, I am so angry. Angry at everyone. Angry at myself. Angry at Jacob, who was elevated to angel-status up until this moment. Sainted. An innocent. A victim of my emotional tides and my insatiable need for things no single human being can fulfill and no group of human beings can surmount peacefully.

Hence the injury, as I was pulled violently between them like a rag doll, the threat of my arms ripping away and my stuffing coming out a sure eventuality until the breathless, silent terror on my face halted a moment that never should have happened. They both let go and I careened off one, colliding with the other at a hundred miles an hour. Their arms came back up to catch me but it was too late, their expressions admitting how startled they were at how incredibly out of control we have all become.

My tears and pain did nothing to dilute the treachery and I realized we never place a limit on their selfishness, allowing their predatory instincts to continue unabated, until I became their victim instead of their prize.

Jacob's voice cuts back in, gently now.

Bridget, stay and we can figure this out.

I need to go. They're waiting.

I can help you if you let me out.

I'll think about it, I lie.

I turn and run, stupid fucking door almost tripping me again. Instead of heading back to the stairs, I run in the other direction, toward the endless dark. Toward hell.

The doorman lets me in, aware that I am not dressed properly for visiting, aware that my hair is not combed and I have car keys and nothing else. Aware that I am shaking like a leaf and he reaches in close and presses the elevator buttons for me to give the code that will spit me out on Caleb's floor and then he looks at me questioningly as I shrink away from him, a silent inquiry as to whether or not I am okay.

I dismiss it without responding and close my eyes as doors close and the elevator rises.

When the doors open again, the Devil is waiting, pulling my hands into his fire. They are still ice-cold. He is smart enough not to touch more than just my hands. He tells me he has to get ready for the day and I should wait in the safety of his office, that I could read on his laptop or whatever I wanted to do, really.

That he won't be long.

All of this is a mistake.

Sillies.

This is what we come up lying in bed being goofy on a Saturday morning. Today is going to be an everything BEN day.

So:

We'll have eggs BENedict for breakfast.
Maybe sit on a BENch.
We'll be BENevolent.
We'll say hello to our BENefactors,
Let's do things for our own BENefit.
We'll BENd over backwards to have some fun,
and not get eaten by BENgal tigers.

I'm sure there will be more.

He requested one particular song and I couldn't do it for him. The piano is situated in the glass corner. All windows, the rain just pouring down the glass and I wondered why he was twisting screws this morning and then I saw why. Earrings on the kitchen counter.

Someone I know?

Sophie.

Nice.

I stopped trying to play altogether, getting up abruptly. I thought I saw a flash of amusement cross Caleb's face but it was gone as quickly as it arrived and replaced with what I could only place as guilt or maybe sadness, even. He maintained convention even as I managed to knock over the bench but John jumped a thousand feet from his place at the island reading the paper, having been asked to stick around for an hour in order to take me home. John reacted. Further proof that Caleb isn't human, though he can be prone to devastating emotion. Maybe he just learned that from me along the way.

He asked if I needed anything, a question so loaded with innuendo I broke into a sweat.

I was tempted to ask him for juice in a glass bottle so I could break it off at the neck and jab it into Caleb's wretched, inhuman soul, putting it out of misery for good, but I resisted and said nothing, hands beginning to flutter. I shoved them behind my back.

Would you like to talk about why you're so unsettled today, princess?

No. (There's no way he doesn't understand how I feel about her.)

Good then, because we have quite a bit to accomplish today.

I don't want to be here when she comes back.

What?

I just told you. I don't want to see Sophie.

You won't. I sent her home this morning. I'll courier the earrings out later.

So why did she come here?

She had a meeting and so we went for dinner. Bridget, what is wrong with you?

Nothing.

Is she a rival?

What? No? She can have you if that's what you mean.

Something isn't right with you.

She just..

What is it, doll?

We really need to get some work done. The children will be out soon.

He paused and smiled gently at me, leaving the smile in thin air, bending his head over the stack of invoices between us. Subject closed. A molecule of grace and a reprieve, in spite of his attempt to feign polite ignorance. My feelings about Sophie are none of anyone's business, Caleb included. Hell, BEN included. I can't explain it and so I just don't.

I just don't want Jacob's ex-wife to enter into my life in any way, shape or form, in person or in passing mention. Is that too much to ask? I came to that conclusion last time I saw her and I'm fine with my decision. And you all know how forgiving and permissive I am, so this didn't come easily. Don't make it any harder than it has to be.

I can't write with him breathing down my neck. Wait til I get home again.

They never tell you truth is subjective
They only tell you not to lie
They never tell you there's strength in vulnerability
They only tell you not to cry

But I've been living underground
Sleeping on the way
And finding something else to say
Is like walking on the freeway

They never tell you you don't need to be ashamed
They only tell you to deny
So is it true that only good girls go to heaven?
They only sell you what you buy

Elephants with strawberry blonde curls.

Oh fuck me. Lochlan got my head stuck on Journey again. It's going to be years before I shake this. Just like last time.

He's a very simple guy. He requires blue jeans, t-shirts, a handful of bands: Pink Floyd, Journey, Kansas, Allman Brothers and a couple others, coffee, smokes, a Wacom tablet for painting, his camera, his small but beloved princess and his motorcycles too.

I think that's all he needs. We're on the fence with the beer. Long story maybe not for today.

But I found out this morning his phone alarm is that Journey song and maybe I didn't find out this morning because it's been stuck in my head for a few weeks so I must have heard it in my sleep.

They always played it on the Ferris wheel.

You could curse Lochlan forever for being stuck in the past. You could tell me I'm the ticking time bomb and that he could be the soulmate based on what you've read and you could condemn him for the near-evil that he brings oh so quietly and you could revile him for his bottomless cold logic which isn't nearly as cold or as logical as it seems when you realize it comes from a place of total insecurity and you could fear for his perpetual fever dream state which always leads me to wonder if spontaneous combustion will be his fate some day.

Or you could just let it go, like we do. Leave it alone. Pretend it isn't there because you can't do anything about it anyway. Neither can we.

A thirst for potassium chlorate.

(One of the few requests I can actually grant. Thanks to those of you who asked for this story.)

I met Lochlan three weeks after moving to the neighborhood my parents still live in to this day. I was newly eight years old and we had moved around the Maritimes three or four times by then, summering in Shediac and Cape Cod equally, breathing in sand, exhaling salt air. Settling near Halifax because my father worked there and it was close to my grandparents, who lived down along the south shore of Nova Scotia.

(If I didn't spend my early childhood on the beach, I have spent it in the car, or rather standing beside it on the shoulder of every Eastern coastal highway you can name, dry-heaving because I can't sit in the backseat of a car. I still can't, to this day and Gravol is Bridget's very own roofie cocktail.

Out like a light for days.

Is that a tangent? I'm sorry.)

Anyway, the night I met Lochlan was the night he made his best-ever shot on goal (for a thirteen-year-old boy), knocking me down with the practice ball they were using for street hockey. They were playing a quick pick-up game, sons versus fathers in the waning light of a hot July night during the neighborhood block party. The bonfire licked at the sky at the end of the street just off the pavement where the road turned to forest and the path to the ball field began.

Up until I hit the ground I had been on the sort of high only an Elementary-school student jacked up on ice cream and excitement can manage and I never heard him yell a warning, though afterward I am told his thirteen-year-old voice broke spectacularly and he was teased for the rest of the summer, until that other kid showed up for Junior High with high-water pants on and Lochlan was left mercifully alone, having enjoyed a complete deepening of his voice at that point in late puberty that meant he was well and truly ensconced in teenagehood now and had little use for some kid in grade three.

But for reasons that remain a mystery to me, we were instant friends. He picked me up off the pavement and felt my head gingerly and apologized profusely. By then all of the dads were present, and all the other boys too. He told them he would take me to his kitchen to get an ice pack and they could continue the game without him. He put his arm around my shoulders and pointed out his house and we walked slowly in the dark as kids ran by with sparklers (oh, how I wanted one!) and bubbles and frosted cans of rootbeer and Dr. Pepper and hotdogs with grubby, blackened buns and the last dregs of relish from the jar.

Once in his kitchen, Lochlan promptly forgot about the ice, instead telling me I had cool hair. I was sitting on my long hair, perched on the bar stool by the counter. He poured a couple of glasses of cream soda for us and asked me if I had eaten at the barbecue. I had a hamburger, I told him and he nodded. Good.

After a few minutes I asked if we could go back to the party. I was hoping there would be some sparklers left and I had precious minutes remaining in my wild night of summer freedom. I wasn't about to waste those opportunities. Besides. All boys were always nice to me to show Bailey how awesome they were. I was sure he would be no different.

Lochlan nodded and we left, leaving his house unlocked as people did back in 1979 and he walked me back down to the end of the street and the bonfire, where most of the adults and children had gathered to watch the flames and roast marshmallows. He said goodbye and repeated his apology for hitting me with the ball and then he stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and walked away back toward the boys, who were still enjoying their pick-up game even though it was too dark to find their sticks, let alone the nets.

I burned four marshmallows beyond recognition, ate seven raw ones, and then started to become hypnotized by the flames when Lochlan returned and called me away from the log where I had been perched. I went to him and he produced a lighter and a single sparkler, which he lit and handed to me.

Didn't want you to miss anything, he said.

He lit a sparkler for me every night for the remainder of that summer. Every now and then we'll buy a package for no reason at all and light them and the nostalgia hits all at once, just like a hockey ball to the back of one's head. If you aren't careful it will knock you right over.