On not giving in.

When I returned home, I walked straight into Lochlan's room and dumped out the contents of the bag on the desk in front of him.

What the fuck, Lochlan. You could have said something.

What did you want me to say, Bridget?

Maybe that you were serious?

Would it have made a difference? Would you be married to me if I had produced a ring? Is the ring really that fucking important?

No. I don't know. I can't think.

Right. But thankfully the rest of us still can.

I don't make decisions lightly.

So you thought real hard about sneaking out to go see him tonight. Did you touch him too, Bridge? Do you want to show your husband another set of bite marks and crush Ben just a little more?

The only one crushing people around here is you with the weight of YOUR history coming down on all of our heads. I can't even breathe anymore, Lochlan!

Whoops. Touched a nerve. He swiped his hand across the desk, taking the tiny white box in his fist and he stood up, coming around the chair to meet me face to face. He was about to say something awful I'm sure when we both realized Ben was standing in the doorway.

Hey guys.

Lochlan nods. I run over and throw myself into Ben's arms.

What's wrong.

Caleb had a ring that belonged to Lochlan that was supposed to be for me in high school.

And?

And we're fighting over why he never mentioned it.

It was fifteen years ago, bee. Let it go.

Then he kissed my head and turned and left the room.

Ben is like that sometimes. All or nothing at all. Won't give the other boys an inch but he'll give me miles and miles and miles in between.

(It's a Heretic's Fork, and it hurts like hell.)

It's Caleb's birthday today and he has a present for me. Suddenly he has all the time in the world again as he prepares to formally retire at the age of 48, not as old as he looks, for in my mind 48 is grey hair and more lines, more acceptance of the way things are and less resistance to stress, drama, life's bumps and jolts.

He is still frighteningly handsome in the wind and otherwise, and I find myself back on the docks for the second time in two days, wishing I had worn a warmer coat today, wishing I had my scarf instead of hunching my ears down into my collar to avoid the worst of the cold gusts. I find myself daydreaming about Jacob. Jacob was the perfect antidote to Caleb and to Cole, by default. Don't get me wrong. The similarities between Caleb and Cole were few while Cole was alive and now that he's gone it's almost as if they have become the same person and Caleb is now some sort of a romantic half-dead historical figure launched into my present to act as a barrier to any and all happiness that I pursue.

He smiles reluctantly and I am impatient. I need to go. I'm not feeling well. I don't want to be alone with him but he was insistent upon a solitary trek out past the boats jostling one another for purchase against the waves. Ben is working. The boys are home, the children are home and I have driven out under the guise of needing to clear my head and run some errands, replete with promises not to do what I'm doing right this minute. Curiosity is my weakness, I'll admit it. It gave the princess to the devil and it killed the cat too.

It probably killed some grown men I know of, but we won't get into that, because Caleb's going to play this out slowly, appearing to have some sort of five- or perhaps ten-year plan to reel me back in. Some sort of death wish, only it's for me, not for him. They're all so heavily invested in being certain there's no double-meaning and no doubt that I am left collecting breadcrumbs all along the trail through the woods and just as I manage to outrun the wicked witch with her candy and gingerbread house, I find myself face to face with the big bad wolf.

He stands too close. I smell Armani and Irish Spring. He's shaved so recently his skin is smooth enough to touch but I don't. His lips are smooth enough to kiss but I won't and he hands me a bag.

It's your birthday, I tell him. You're supposed to get the presents. Henry will have something for you on the weekend. (Henry is plotting an elaborate birthday picnic lunch for his father. We're going to freeze to death but nine year olds cannot be talked out of their grand plans.)

I think this is something you should see, Bridget.

I take the bag from him and peer inside. Ancient tissue paper has been flattened in folds around another box. A set of stapled notes and receipts is shoved down beside it.

Caleb? Why don't you just tell me what it is.

Just look at it. Please.

I pull out the paperwork first. It's a layaway form from 1986. Lochlan's name is repeated nine times. Eighty dollars each month. Jesus. I'm sure there were months when he didn't come close to making that unless he held some over from the winter working at the garage.

There are several blank spaces and still more spaces where the store appeared to make notes attempting to contact Lochlan for a full year and then Forfeit to Caleb C____, paid in full is written in a different hand, dated August 1989.

I'm not getting it.

Open the box, Bridget.

I don't want to open the box. I think right now I'd rather vomit on Caleb's bespoke shoes or maybe run screaming straight into the Pacific but oh, there's that curiosity again and I'm reaching in.

The box is cream-colored satin. Slightly aged but still crisp. I really don't want to know.

Caleb grows impatient and takes the box from me. He opens it and turns it around so there is no mistaking what's inside. So that I see it, plain as day.

A diamond ring. A beautiful gold and diamond engagement ring. Delicate. One of the nicest I've ever seen. And holy, my head is pounding now and I am beginning to look for an escape route because I don't like where this is going and Happy fucking birthday indeed, your present is you get to fuck with Bridget's head a little more. Just the way you like it, Satan.

Lochlan was afraid that Cole would propose to you before he could pay this off. He was hoping to win you back with this. Amazing the things you find out when you hang out at the circus, dirty as it is. Sadly, Cole beat him to the prize, pardon the pun, and Lochlan let the deadline on his next and subsequent payments pass without acknowledgment. He never even bothered to try and get his money back. He just walked away from it all. Isn't that ironic seeing as how he used to be so poor?

I am dizzy and he grabs onto my arm, tightening his fingers around my elbow until I hold my breath. He bends down so that his eyes are level with mine, his nose touching mine. His lips moving and disturbing the air on mine.

You know what the really ironic part is, here, Bridget?

His eyes are so blue now they have turned black but hey, what do you know? So has the sky, the water and the rest of my soul.

The really ironic part is I wouldn't have let you marry him anyway.

Then why are you showing me all this now?

Because he's gotten too close again, and it has to stop.

Galeforce hearts.

Slight of hand
Jump off the end
Into a clear lake
No one around

Just dragonflies
Fantasize
No one gets hurt
You’ve done nothing wrong

Slide your hand
Jump off the end
The water’s clear and innocent
The water’s clear and innocent

I'm standing between Duncan and Ben.

Everyone is facing the house and I am facing the sea, headphones firmly seated into my skull, chewing gum keeping cadence. Codex on repeat. The perfect song for this grey, blustery day. I am in jeans today, tucked into rain boots and topped with a heavy fisherman-knit sweater. It's cool and Caleb invited some of us for a sail, knowing full well we would have to set out early to be back before the storm, knowing that I would never be allowed to come alone.

They think I am too wrapped up inside my head to notice their conversation but mixed in the piano swell I can watch their faces and see their emotions painted harshly on their features, fervid expressionism, responsive surrealism. I want to smile for the beauty of not needing to hear the words shouted into the wind. I am concentrating on the ocean instead. One good wave and I'm inside her again like a lover and it is so hard for her to willingly let me go. One keen cold roll of the sea and every trace of me will be washed away with the high tide.

Lochlan's face is stone. He's confident that common sense will prevail, like the wind. Ben isn't interested in debating where I am or who I'm with today. He is done with point-scoring, done with timeshares and done with the divided loyalties. Disappointment threatens to spill over and slide down his cheeks to be wiped away hastily with the back of his hand, subject changed, subject closed. Caleb radiates risk and thrill like heat, emanating the dares of his devilish side, proving Cole's personality a hundred times over, dark blue eyes flashing as he looks at me, perhaps he is mollified even with my guarded presence. Perhaps he is planning something different now. His hair whips around his eyes and I am grief-stricken by how beautifully Cole would have changed as he aged.

I clench my fists up tightly, pulling them into the sleeves of my sweater for warmth. The chords surge into my skull and I let my head soar across the water. I don't need to be present for their words. I don't need to be here at all.

Okay, stop it.

I am fully aware the mood difference between yesterday and today's entries are light years apart.

I told you my life was a circus but you didn't listen.

I wouldn't make that mistake again if I were you.

For the sake of argument, gnomes, leprechauns, pixies, elves, trolls and fairies all get lumped in together.

I am still looking for a new jacket for spring. I don't have many requests. It seemed so straightforward: black. Must have a hood and at least a little wind resistance. Slightly lined so I don't freeze my ass off, nipped in a little at the waist. Pockets. At least to upper thigh, not down to my fucking knees for once. Slightly dressy maybe.

Think I can find it? No. Something's wrong with every coat. I keep getting drawn to this one charcoal velvet confederate blazer with ruffles which is gorgeous but not what I need, and I will know the right coat when I see it.

Lochlan asks me if this is going to be the green hoodie of 1983.

In 1983 I was twelve (when have I not been twelve? I am STILL twelve) and I had a grass-green thin weight zip up sweatshirt which was pretty much the same as every North American kid ever. The difference was, when I put the hood up it went into a point.

Like a gnome.

Oh, how glorious!

I was a little tiny blissful freaking gnome and you could pick me out in silhouette because of that ridiculous hood but I wore that hoodie into the GROUND and have missed it ever since. I lost it in the spring of 1986 when Lochlan brought over the backpack full of my things from his cottage/camper/room/truck the year he tried to wipe my presence from his life.

You know how this one ends.

Last weekend in the midst of one of our epic arguments he made some crack about having kept up his end of the bargain in the form of a stack of letters. Not just any letters but a letter he wrote to me on each of my birthdays, starting at nine and ending at thirty-nine.

So far.

Only he said that the movie The Notebook ruined it and it seemed cliche and he never knew what to do with them anyway so he just kept them, and look, here, take them and you can see inside my head since you want to so badly all the time and he went into his closet and took down his big backpack and pulled out a green bundle.

Only I realized right away what the green thing was, wrapped around his letters. My hoodie. My gnome suit.

He rules everything. Absolutely everything. I'm going to look like a TOTAL fucking freak now and I couldn't be happier.

And I still haven't read the letters. As soon as he gave them to me he grabbed them back and said he had changed his mind. Hence the endless weekend tears. Another effort thwarted and I am never ever going to get to know what he's thinking.

And now I'll be wondering in green.

More simple than this.

My favorite sort of winters, the brief thirty-hour ones that roll in as we are finishing dinner downtown at our favorite hole-in-the-wall ramen house and end within a day or two, as the temperatures rise, bringing rain and taking away every last trace of the snow. The children spent most of Sunday building snowmen in the backyard and we found out what still fits and what doesn't when it comes to snowpants, boots and mittens.

Today is blinding sunshine and warm spring air once again. It smells sweet to me, as if spring is coming at last. Just around the corner.

He sat at the desk, waiting while I cried. Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I took hitching breaths. Wishing he would just look at me but he couldn't so instead he kept his hand wrapped around mine and held it tightly while I kept trying to pull it out so I could hit him or hurt him or make him feel the same way just for once and I cried and cried until there was nothing left and then he stood up and grabbed a tissue for me, standing beside my chair while I dried my eyes and pretended to compose myself.

And then I made a break for the door.

He was waiting for that too, and he grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground and just held me there as I thrashed and screamed at him. I called him everything I have ever learned on the show and afterward. I named every flaw he owns and put myself right back at square one with tears, wondering why he's still allowed to make me feel this way when I have come so far without his help.

And still not a word. It's all right there in his eyes. Pretend stoicism, Incapacitating fear masquerading as impatience, ambivalence, embarrassment, even. Maddening silence. I can talk and talk and talk until my voice disappears and I run out of words and he will listen to every single thing and still not respond. Not a word. Then I will throw myself into his arms, forcing him to put them around me and rock myself for far too long before he takes over, the movement less one of desire and more of a habit, a hypnotizing lull.

His life now is the next best thing. The closest he can get to still having his beloved circus without the danger involved for me, because it became abundantly clear that it was no place for a girl and so he was forced to choose between his two only loves. Resentment goes both ways, you know.

I took it away and yet I am what he loved most about it. Though he gets tired of these wordless fights.

We had a lot of years there where we were almost normal, ones where you never would have known how visceral things were, just under the surface. Years we thought we might actually survive one other. Years we thought maybe things had changed.

A wasted effort, all of it. Nothing changes. Ever.

Snow tires and cigars.

When I finally got into my boots, coat and gloves, I went outside to see a row of men standing at the top of the driveway watching the children play in the snow. August was blowing on his hands and rubbing them together, Caleb was smoking a cigar. Ben wasn't watching the children at all, instead turned to face the house, watching for me. I ran down the driveway and threw myself into him. He closed his arms around me when I wavered, having hit a brick wall. I was slightly dazed after that but he hardly felt it. PJ laughed out loud and and said maybe I should start wearing puffier clothes for my own protection. I shot him a look and then winked at him too, just in case. He's been sort of testy this weekend. PJ gets the late February blahs. The only thing that picks him up is Daylight Savings and tea so we have two weeks left to go. I make a lot of tea.

This morning we woke up to a good seven inches of fluffy, packable snow. Coast-snow, a far cry from the powdery granular ice-snow of the Prairies. I didn't like that snow, but it never mattered much, the children were never allowed outside long enough to make anything of it when it was usually -30 or below. At least now it's warm enough to still stand around without gloves or a hat and enjoy yourself. It's real winter, the best part being all of it will be gone in a day and a half when the rain returns because the tiny little cold weather spell is over.

I hope the crocuses survive because they were popping up EVERYWHERE, and I know that in just a couple of short weeks the cherry blossoms will explode everywhere too. And I cannot wait. In the meantime I have had my fill of cigar smoke, because like woodsmoke, gasoline and freshly-mowed grass, it's one of those wonderful smells I absolute adore. I have had my fill of Satan, who stopped by to see Henry's latest school project and help Ruth with a game, and I have had my fill of the snow again, because I don't like winter, you see. Fall is my favorite time of year, when it cools off just a little. That's when the leaves turn beautiful colors and the ocean is as warm as it can be after a full summer of sunshine.

Better left.

Is that what it is? The grand gestures? The fact that they fall all over themselves to see to your happiness?

There's no magic formula so you should save your breath.

You don't believe in second chances?

No and don't tell me you do. You never gave me any.

I'd like to, now.

It's too late. I mourned you first.

You got in over your head and couldn't get back out. It wasn't your fault. And I should have done something.

You should have done a lot of things.

You were supposed to come back.

No, I wasn't.

Look me in the eye and say that.

No.

No because you don't believe the words coming out of your own mouth. Peanut, what did you talk yourself into this time?

He had asked me that question once before, the day I spent all of my pin money on blue cotton candy and ate nothing else for a whole day and then had a single warm beer and spent the remainder of the evening behind the trailer, barfing up blue foamy surprise. He laughed then and walked away, back to the bonfire. I crawled back into the camper, wiped my face on his last remaining clean t-shirt and fell asleep fully clothed in the center of the bed. I never did figure out who he was more angry with that night, me or himself.

He takes care of me.

I took care of you too, once upon a time.

You took a pass, that's what you did. You hung me out to dry and you let Cole take over and look what happened.

If you love someone, set them free. He laughed bitterly and took a sip of his drink.

It wasn't meant to be, Lochlan.

Sure it was. The fortune teller told you so.

You never told me what she said to you.

Because she was a sham. Because it's not important.

Then you can tell me.

He took a longer drink this time. Courage, it meant and I regretted asking. I am done. I don't want to talk anymore.

She said that I would forever be watching you fall and be unable to help you. And that it was my punishment for what I have done.

But nothing had happened yet, Loch.

He nodded. Cold blood ran through my veins as I took the glass right out of his hand and finished his drink. It was pure whiskey and I was wholly unprepared.

I coughed hard and pushed the glass to him. I don't need this. I don't need him. I don't need these feelings bubbling up all the time like air bubbles trapped beneath the surface. But they do, and I have to get used to it. Just like he does.

Soap and glory.

I sat quietly on the edge of the bathtub while he dipped the facecloth into the nail polish remover. My skin is slightly pink and raw now, but he is gently working to remove the last of his words. I wanted to let them wear off gradually but he is somewhat sheepish about people's opinions of Bridget as his own personal canvas.

He paused and smiled at me and then went back to slowly scrubbing the back of my knee, head tilted to the side. He is concentrating on removing as many letters as he can without causing any undo amount of suffering but my skin tingles and burns.

It's the best love letter I've ever gotten, Ben.

I didn't do it to win a competition, bee.

I know that. I just wanted you to know anyway.

He stopped and dropped the cloth into the tub.

There, I think you're good as new.

I wish I was new sometimes.

Me too, bee. But it won't stop me.

He reached over his head and pulled his t-shirt off and then slid down his jeans and stepped out. Starting the shower with one hand, he checked for the hot water and then turned off all the lights in the bathroom. He took me by the hand and pulled me into the spray against his chest and smoothed my hair back from my face. His hair is dry. He is above the spray and I am drowning.

He proceeds to wash off all the caustic chemicals he had to use on my skin and he promises not to do it again, that next time he will paint the words in chocolate, or maybe in icing or lip gloss and eat the results, that he forgets I'm not so tough, that I am accountable and I am so done with his unwarranted apologies so I pull his head down, pulling myself up around his neck and I kiss him. He stops talking. It's like a miracle and I'm in control for a few blissful seconds until he pushes me into the wall and I am his object once again to be used and admired and ruined.

And ruin he does. :)

By the time we are finished my skin is wrinkled and throbbing. Heck, everything is throbbing. He turns off the water and wraps me in a towel and bursts out laughing. I am pink all over. A little lobster.

He pulls the towel off and bends down around me. A long hug. A never-let-go hug. An I just totally destroyed your dignity and everything is just fine now hug and I reach up and hold on so hard. I think I could almost fall asleep if I wasn't practically hanging and he whispers in my ear,

Okay, maybe it was a competition. And I nailed it. Just like I just nailed you.

He makes his letch-face and I can't help but laugh out loud. Ben is like that. From class to crass in the blink of an eye.

I still wish he had left the words. I wasn't finished taking pictures yet.

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
- C. S. Lewis

And quoted by my dear friend Sam from his favorite book:

Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.