Value.

I am your satisfaction
I am your memory
I am your suffocation
I am your sanity

I was hurrying past him to get the pitcher of lemonade and he grabbed me, holding my arms. I stopped struggling instantly (in through the nose, out through the mouth.) He was in one of those moods and I had to watch myself. A little too enthusiastic. A little too loud. Fast and loose with the praise and the condemnations again. I spent the better part of twenty minutes watching him butt heads with Lochlan before I saw an escape window. Lemonade refills. I can make fresh.

Who's your monster, Bridget?

What?

Who's your monster? What keeps you awake in the dark?

There is but one answer, and it's right and wrong. I smile at him and ask for a kiss instead. I have discovered Bravery in my apron pocket. It has a best-before time stamped on it and I gobble it down, choking on gristle.

Cole grins and gives me a long hard kiss. Silence falls around the table. His intensity is a force to be reckoned with and I know there are unspoken questions as to whether or not I am managing it at all or maybe I'm just hiding his flaws behind my back so that his friends see his good side and continue to worship him. Maybe I am deluded and submerged, over my head. Maybe I am in danger. I drowned years ago, when no one was watching. Drowning is silent and pitiful. It's permanent, too.

When he pulls away the fleeting lust and complimentary tenderness in his eyes buries all of that for precious few seconds before the temperamental clouds roll in again. Jacob, ever watchful, asks if I need help with the drinks.

I shake my head, not taking my eyes away from Cole's. Right now, help would not be a good idea. Later on it will mean the difference between life and death and Jacob will be nowhere to be seen. Time's up. I hasten into the kitchen. Maybe there is another little bundle of Courage in a different pocket somewhere. I have time to search around a little if I hurry. Jacob drops his offer upon registering my expression. He will grill me later, for he carries a small bundle of Truth.

Not sure it's enough to outweigh Obedient, but whatever.

Bang.

I stood in the shadows near the door, breathing quietly. Waiting. Finally the sounds fell away from the room in front of me, and all was silent again. I stepped from the darkness, my pupils dilating. Huge black holes broadcasting my intentions to the night.

I walked carefully. These shoes are killer, the straps from my stockings digging into my skin. Biting my lip, I pause and reach down to unfasten the clips at my thighs. I need the extra focus, and no one's going to care when I am through. I slip out of my coat and let it fall in a puddle on the floor.

And then I raise the gun. I flip off the safety, squinting behind the sight. He is centered, one kill shot and everything is over. I straddle his lap. My chin begins to tremble and I shake my head once quickly, pulling my chin to the right and readjusting my balance. My chin starts again and my eyes begin to fill. I bite my lip harder and close my eyes, willing composure. It fails me but it's dark and he's not awake and I should hurry before they realize I am missing. I should hurry before I lose what's left of this nerve, this pretend courage.

I raise the gun once more, two little hands and a pocketful of determination this time, a far cry from how I look in tousled curls, lip gloss, long black eyelashes and his favorite outfit, the baby pink and black corset, worn as an unseen goodbye-kiss.

I squeeze my fingers around the trigger. I am aiming for right between his eyebrows, I don't want him to suffer any more than necessary. Tears fill my eyes to the brims and I resolve to shoot blindly, if need be.

He sighs and my heart screams out of my chest and runs off down the hall into utter black. My chin goes to the right again and I shake my head violently to clear my eyes. It isn't working. I have to get it right and I'm not going to. I admit a provisional defeat, stepping closer. I climb off his lap and stand beside his chair.

I run my hand lightly down his cool cheek and then pick up the cigar, still smoldering in the ashtray on the table next to him. I jam it between my teeth and turn away, putting the safety back on, jamming the regret home for coming here at all. I watch the rain slide down the windowpanes, blurring the city lights and I check the time. Time to go. I drop the cigar into the inch of warm whiskey left in his glass.

I turn to leave, my goosebumps turning to icicles when he quietly thanks me for not killing him.

I don't say a word or turn around, I just keeping walking until I am far enough away from him to exhale and I drop the gun on the narrow table in the hallway and enter the elevator. The lights are harsh, unforgiving. The night has grown old and I break into shivers. Time is up, fragile Miss. Now tell me, what have you done?

Caleb took the opportunity to disappear for the weekend, giving up his scheduled time with the children for once in favor of saving his own skin, even though if you want to be bitterly technical, I can't prove he is responsible for any of this. I should have known better but I am distracted in my nostalgia and still ridiculously under the weather with this endless sore throat and the full complement of habitual sleep deprivation that functions as my shadow.

Ben took us out and made sure we all did things. He bought me some watercolor paint supplies and fresh sharpies and a new phone (Nexus S! I am no longer a Blackberry girl and everyone is thrilled). He found Thai food and rainy-day drives. At night he closed and locked the door behind all three of us, keeping the nightmares at bay, holding the world, bathed in shades of red and gold, tightly in his arms and eventually Lochlan came around, the disappointment waning.

If there was one thing we would have known, it would be this. The timing was close enough but Ruth does not fit the mold of the circus man, she only consciously chooses to blend her logic with unexpected, impulsive silliness on rare occasions, just like he does. It's nurture, not nature that makes her this way and life will go on, like it always does. On the bumpiest, most-rutted, barely-passable, overgrown and fully trampled trail that passes for a road that I have ever seen. Caleb may not lose, but he's not going to win, either.

I am taking recommendations for new, uncorrupted lawyers, doctors, therapists, ex-brother-in-laws and grocers, as now everyone is regarded with a suspicion that should have been in place from the very beginning and instead I find myself trusting people who don't have a good grasp of precisely how evil evil can be. Bridget gets burned when she touches the fire and so she snatches her hands back and steps out of the heat and into the cool shade of doubt, where the surroundings are familiar and the hours go by so much more slowly.

At one point yesterday Ben reached out and put his hand on the back of Lochlan's neck and he told him that it would be okay, that nothing has changed, that everything is going to be fine. That we've been through worse and we will stick together. And I sank into a chair on the other side of the door, grateful for these two men in a way that leaves me breathless and determined. Lochlan nodded. He knows better than anyone else the difference between how nature can produce psychopathy the same way nurture can instill the will to survive it.

He knows.

(I jumped the gun. Caleb can win. Not even sure if I'll bother continuing to write. There is no point anymore, Lochlan is crushed and I have lost my orientation and no longer know which end is up.)

Time has run out. Ruth is due to be picked up shortly and you didn't do very well, princess. As entertaining as you all are, I won't risk the children to the extent that you seem to think I will.

What do you mean? I can hear the exhaustion creeping into my own voice.

Do you really think your little tests were independent? And do you really think that returning Lochlan's diaries absolves him of anything at all? And don't you think if your precious preacherman was still alive, he wouldn't move heaven and earth to be with you? I am so disappointed in you, Bridget. You take everything at face value all the while assuring the world that you trust no one. Lochlan has no claim to my brother's child. Oh, and the next time you try to best me in this little game of life remember this week. Remember the damage done to your better half, remember the risk you took in creating new upheaval with the children and remember one more thing.

I am nodding.

Are you listening, princess?

Yes.

I don't lose.

Pinetree line.

Finding Lochlan's midway diaries proved to be the catalyst for a lot of things.

Lochlan logged meticulous proof in his neat loopy handwriting and without that proof in his possession, Caleb can no longer keep Lochlan under his thumb. Brief little victories unraveled in the shadow of something new.

Before PJ put Caleb to sleep (I never ever want to be a boy because they hit each other so hard) Caleb ripped the rug right out from underneath me. He said that maybe Jacob was still alive, because Jacob was always very good at disappearing for very long blocks of time, and then he gave me proof that I am easy to fool.

If you have read for a while, you'll remember my unsettled dismay at receiving one single cryptic piece of paper confirming Henry's paternity four years ago. Just one page. No information about Ruth, which meant that she was Cole's.

Except that there were two other pages, pages that Caleb intercepted and kept for himself. The cover letter, explaining the results, and the sheet detailing Ruth's results.

Because Ruth belongs to Lochlan, confirmed with new testing, because I didn't even want the old papers back. I don't trust anything past the end of my nose today.

And while we waited for those tests I went to Newfoundland with Ben to nail down the leads I was given regarding Jake. I found nothing but I will go back soon. The boys are not happy about this at all. I figure if Caleb can keep a secret like that for over four years running then he's probably hiding more. Hiding big things like whole men who are supposed to be dead but wouldn't be. Jacob wouldn't do what I was told he did. That much I always knew. I figured Caleb pushed him if he really was gone, but I always hoped I was wrong.

So go ahead and level your judgements, make your proclamations about therapy and trash. I'm too busy feeling to have any energy left to listen. Fuck this, fuck everything else too.

Kindling and lullabies.

It would've been hard to do something else, to as it were, run away from the circus and become an accountant.
~Samuel West

In the midst of this mess that the devil has made, there are very good things indeed. Because when God closes a door, Satan detonates another bomb and blows a hole in the wall, after all.

In spite of his efforts, good things. Maybe even better by tonight.

Ruth leaves for band camp this morning. I can hardly believe it when I look at her. She is all lip gloss and Hello Kitty and strange elaborate hair styles one day and still forgetting to even brush the next day. She is her mother in slightly (hardly) smaller form. Almost twelve. The witching age, by my definition, kept from her in order to allow her to practice flight without the weight of a history that doesn't need to be shared.

Last night Lochlan put on one hell of a show as a sendoff for her. Fire on the cliff. Any hint of rust on his talent has been rubbed away and he is the showman once again. Hardly an eighth as loud as Ben without a mic, a more visceral, touchable awe surrounds him. He encourages massive involvement, we have to clap, cheer and follow his instructions or it doesn't come off as well but it isn't hard, for he is very very good at this, and was doing it long before anyone else I know.

By the end he had taken off his shirt, his curls were wet with the effort even but his smile never faltered and his focus never wavered, locked on the task at hand. The batons flew higher and higher still as his stories kept up a pace that left me gloriously dizzy until I remembered to watch him and not the fire. Fire is hypnotic. Fire is warm. Just like Lochlan. The man who exists at one hundred and five degrees on paper and a thousand degrees in reality is wrapping up his show and my brain has gone off on another tangent and when I bring it back around the final baton has been caught and he is extinguishing them and cleaning up. He jams his t-shirt in his back pocket and tells the children that it's time to go inside and get ready for bed. There will be another show on the weekend, when Ruth returns. When everything changes once again.

I saw a hint of who Lochlan used to be right then and there. Before everything changed and then continued to change until we were slipping off the carousel horses with nothing to hold onto, as it spun faster and the music rushed in to fill the void. That's what life has been for us, an out of control merry-go-round where the horses with their wild painted faces loom large in our eyes and then rotate back into the endless parade. My hair is tangling around the pole and I will never reach the brass rings and on principle no one must ever do it for you or it won't count.

And there he is again.

A much older version of that perfect seventeen-year-old boy, who walked across the beach and stuck his face directly into the yellow cotton candy I was holding until he could grasp the paper cone with his teeth. I started laughing, not the least bit upset because the yellow candy was banana-flavored and I didn't like it at all but then I started to choke and he tried to get his face back out of the candy floss and couldn't and he resorted to pulling off huge strands and putting them in my hair and the harder I fought him the more he covered me until it was all over both of us and we peeled off our clothes and jumped, naked, into the sea and I picked the rest of the bits of floss out of his beard while he held me afloat in a wave, far out from shore.

You coming in?

I snapped out of my reverie and nodded up at him automatically. In the light his hair is the color of brass. The rings I tried so hard to reach once upon a time so that I could share one with him. The luck that never held for Lochlan. I have my fingers crossed that maybe there was simply an unusual and unforeseen twenty-eight year delay.

20/20.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
~Edgar Allan Poe

Jacob is sitting on the back steps of the church, beside the ramp. He has one leg on the step below where he sits and the other is stretched out straight almost down to the ground. He's in worn jeans and a flannel shirt that only has two buttons still fastened. He has his head back, eyes closed, elbows propping him up. He is soaking up the sun. It is three hours past the service and he is worn out but satisfied.

Sam doesn't think this should be so exhausting, he says without opening his eyes.

And what did you tell him? I pause, looking up from where I have been furiously scribbling in my journal, stuffing raspberries into my mouth every fourth word, unable to stop eating them because they are warm from the sun.

That if it doesn't wear him out he's doing it wrong.

Maybe he is confusing being worn out with being worn down.

Think there is really a difference?

I don't know, Jake. Maybe there isn't and he's right.

Then I'm in the wrong line of work.

What would you be if you gave up your post here?

A carpenter. No, wait. A mailman.

Seriously.

A mailman. Outside all day, petting puppies and chatting up the neighbors? It's be perfect.

What else?

Professional surfer, maybe.

I like that one, but it's so dangerous.

So says the queen of falling down the stairs.

The stairs are dumb.

Yes, they are, princess. He is laughing now. But you also don't pay attention. Ever.

I have it, then. You can be my keeper.

Oh, geez, Bridge, that's a helluva responsibility.

I know. But you would be perfect because you know me so well.

That right there would prove there is no difference between being worn out and being worn down.

Gee, thanks.

Anytime, beautiful.

Home sweet fucked-up home.

We're home. I am enervated and anesthetized. I chased a malevolent whim across the continent and returned an utter failure of the highest magnitude. I may have to go back. I couldn't breathe so I came home.

Ben talked me back. He is here too. In case the rumor mill is churning into overdrive, he's been really pretty amazing. I think a lesser man would have packed up and checked out of this circus a long time ago, which leads me to believe I was spot-on when I discerned him to be a freak from the get-go.

Thank God for big freaks. That's all I can say at present. I need some sleep and tomorrow hopefully I can talk without screaming. You know? I always thought Caleb was evil and then sometimes I doubt myself, maybe I've been so harsh. Maybe he doesn't deserve it.

Then he does things like this. No holds barred. Gloves are off. Apparently it's going to be a fight to the finish. I guess I knew that already. Denial is such a lovely place to be, though, isn't it?

Made it to St. John's. The explanations have gotten so long at this point I don't think I'll ever be able to sort the words out. I am running on adrenaline, panic and I don't even know what else. I just want to get to the bottom of this. I wanted to extract Lochlan from a mess and instead it blew up in my face and I don't know if I wished for this, after all. I really don't. Can't think. Gotta go.

Hold tight.

(this is going to be the hard part. How to continue to talk without giving things away.)

She is everything to me
The unrequited dream
A song that no one sings
The unattainable
She's a myth that I have to believe in
All I need to make it real is one more reason

The gate did not keep him out and neither did the line of knights standing in front of me grimly, distilled down to their singular purpose, shields up, swords drawn. But evil is not bound by the same constraints as man. Evil can dissolve and reassemble on the other side, evil can seep in through the cracks of your psyche and eat away at your brain until a putrid, rotting mass remains only evil stopped right in front of me, James Bond in his three-piece suit and his dumbed-down, kindly patience when he is very, very angry indeed.

Bridget, what have you done?

I resumed my role as moving target on the other side of the wall, my blonde crown invisible as I paced quickly behind their backs, coming to rest directly behind Benjamin, where I could curl my hands into the back of his shirt and hold on for dear life. He broke the line long enough to reach back and squeeze me against him, but only very briefly. He patted me and let go. He is concerned. My eardrum burst, I am still not feeling well, I'm down to scraping up the last of my reserves.

Time to go, Cale. We're not going to do this here. Ben said it quietly. You don't want Ben to be quiet-angry back at you, that's when he's at his most dangerous. I took the cue and let go of his shirt, not wanting to go for a ride if he lunged, even though he has been warned to leave it. We won't solve this with his brawn or his heart. Only with his attorneys.

This isn't over.

Ben nodded. Lochlan stared at the floor. I know him so well. He is biting his tongue so hard I'm sure his mouth is filled with the taste of iron. His arms are loose, elastic. We are struggling desperately to contain an effervescent, almost comical relief that wants to burst forth but that would be premature. Preliminary thoughts are that this will go well for Lochlan, how it goes for Caleb remain shrouded in uncertainty. I am still struggling with how much damage I want to do. I know I will toss and turn and fret and weigh and balance and maybe I will wait to be told my options so I don't jump the gun, slide off the end of the barrel and wind up getting shot in the process.

So I will leave it to fate as I have done all along, holding to building up my defenses instead of seeking retribution. I will wait and see. Maybe crossing our fingers and staying quiet and true all these years won't have been for nothing.