You missed me, didn't you?

We are home.

I need to unpack, do a whole lot of laundry, carve pumpkins (I wrote crave pumpkins three times there before I could get it straight and now I can't stop laughing) and maybe sleep for the first time since about last Monday.

Yes.

Good times. Such good times.

So...more tomorrow! Thanks for your patience. Sorry for the mixed up emails to those of you who got responses tonight. I'm really not good at coming back down to earth, am I?

Save the date (October 28, 2011).

I always wonder why did we bother,
Distanced from one, deaf to the other.
Oh but sweetness follows
It's these little things, they can pull you under.
Live your life filled with joy and wonder.
I always knew this altogether thunder
Was lost in our little lives.

Everything is in. Everything is done. I've flipped the last latch, buckled the cases, triple-confirmed all the deliveries, crossed off the list and I stick my notes between my teeth while I struggle to hang on to Ben's hand and zip up Henry's backpack at the same time. We walk out on the tarmac and the children run ahead to the tiny plane and I roll my eyes. I hate this aircraft. It feels like a tin-can with my fate rattling around on the inside. It feels like certain death only it's better than flying commercial because I have become spoiled and rotten and wealthy beyond what most people will ever see and yet I would trade it in an instant for an old Kawasaki and fistful of midway tickets because I don't think I deserve this. Not a minute of it.

We're flying out now. Flying to a remote island owned by someone with more money than I will ever be able to fathom who deals favors like cards and owes us this time and we'll take it and make more memories and dry the tears from Daniel's face as he says his vows to Schuyler and I hope to God they remember this forever because for some reasons those precise moments tend to get lost in the day.

We'll dance and sing and eat and drink and cry and forget that we have all this history for once and we'll work together to make good memories. Sometimes those get lost too, in the hierarchy of all the wrongs and all the water under the bridges. We have to learn that putting the good things first is better.

I traded dresses again. A last minute request from Ben, who reached into the closet and pulled out the most delicate blush pink cocktail dress and asked if I would wear it instead of the black. He thinks it will look better in photographs, I think he loves pink, secretly because it looks less harsh against my alabaster skin and blue-marble veins. He would be right but the contrast against his dark suit, eyes and hair will be jarring all the same, like it is in every photograph of us. Opposites attract, they say, which is how Daniel and Schuyler came to this place where we are all going to get to have a hand in the first day of their future together.

I am so excited even this tin can with wings can't take away my happiness. And that's saying something. I really hate flying lately. And I have a perfectly good oceanside bluff at home just begging for a wedding ceremony but WHATEVER, BOYS.

Everything is going to be okay.

I love you both so very much.

Heads or tails.

I sat in the corner trying not to laugh while the boys have the final fittings of their suits. The tailors kept asking me if I was excited. Finally one of them asked point-blank how it felt to be the bride because I seemed so calm. I smiled and pointed to Daniel.

He's the bride.

That was all the encouragement they needed to go full-on flattery to the boys instead of being so professional it was almost uncomfortable. They started to fuss over Daniel and Schuyler as if they were celebrities, and when they found out Ben was giving Daniel away they asked who was going to give Ben away and could they make offers because they would take him if he's available.

Oh, dear. Help me.

Someone made the joke from Bridesmaids, about climbing him like a tree. By now I am smiling helplessly because they've turned the music up louder and this has become a bit of a party and I am so not cut out for wedding planning even though I think I could do it in my sleep at this point. This is the fifth one I have organized, if you count three of my own and Sam's. Our track record is deplorable, only one of the four couples is still together and that's only because God hasn't found a way to kill Ben yet without it being blatantly obvious that he's shooting firebolts at my life for some perceived slight at this point.

My advice to anyone planning a wedding? Skip ninety percent of what they tell you you NEED and spend it on something you want. Also? Make it yours. Because nothing is worse than a cookie-cutter classic wedding in which you can predict everything right down to the colors and nothing reflects the happy couple except for the gleam on the teeth of the smiling, well-paid impersonal wedding coordinator.

Our own next-time will be different. Ben's been threatening to organize a renewal of our vows. Probably for our fifth anniversary if God doesn't catch him first and take him out. I'll let him plan it since he takes my breath away with the quietest moments. And now if Daniel would just stop crying all the time we could get this show on the road. Yeesh. He's a big leaking fool. Thank heavens he is so adorable or I would smack him right now and tell him to smarten up.

(Also in news!! The dress! It fits! Mine, silly. Daniel isn't wearing a dress. He should be. That would be awesome. They have morning coats, or as I spelled them for the first two weeks, mourning coats. Sorry. Couldn't help it, that sort of thing just happens. And yes, of course the coats are black. Why do you ask?)

Cue the hero, please.

He's already given me his hoodie. I am wrapped up in it, hood up, hands pulled back into the sleeves, warm and comfortable. I'm watching Lochlan alternate between emptying his beer bottle and making paper airplanes to sail off the cliff. I'm sitting on the Adirondack chair a good ten feet back from the cliff. He is sitting on the edge. I don't worry that he'll tumble over the edge, I figure I've already beat the odds on tragedy for a while.

He's been lighting the airplanes on fire before he flies them for close to an hour. I lost count somewhere after sixteen or maybe eighteen planes. He's talking quietly. I can't hear him, he's facing the other direction. I am getting unrelated ramblings and disjointed cursewords and loving diatribes aimed painfully right at the center of my being. It's nothing new. I'm a little concerned he's going to set his hair on fire, that's about it. Otherwise I'm enjoying the moon, the stars and the flames as they spiral down into the sea. I'm trying not to focus intently on the words. I'm trying not to focus on the past. Lochlan thought the past would save him. Funny how one man's ruin is another's salvation.

Abruptly I am lifted to my feet. Ben's chin appears when I look straight up over my head and he doesn't let go.

Been looking for you for twenty minutes, Bee.

Lochlan stands up. You should have checked with me, she's usually within reach.

Ben nods and looks out over the water. Probably considering pushing both of us over the cliff. How easy life would be after that moment. Except it wouldn't be. He'd spend the rest of it in jail. It would just be one more thing to tie Lochlan and I together for all eternity.

One more thing. A last straw, plucked from a strawman that Ben has created as a defense for his temper, because I chose him and I continue to choose him even while he shoves me away and then denies it and takes everyone else to task for filling in.

Yeah, thanks, brother.

Ben picks the high road, surprisingly, bringing me along, grabbing my hand, pulling me back up the walkway to the house. He stops halfway and strips Lochlan's hoodie off me, leaving it on the concrete, and takes off his own flannel shirt, wrapping me in it and tying the sleeves in a knot around me instead of waiting for me to find them to shove my arms inside. I laugh and he smiles at last and puts his arm around me, steering me back up to the house, back through the warm, softly lit hallways until we reach our room.

He tells me that he's taken a couple of weeks away from his latest project to spend some time with me, to help me navigate the next two weeks as I drop into year five. Already. I wasn't sure he remembered that today marks exactly four years since Jacob walked out on me but Ben always seems to remember everything and he steps in to shoulder the heavy load just when everyone else runs out of patience and begins to check their watches.

Ben doesn't wear a watch. He wants to know what it's for.

To tell the time, I say.

Tell it to do what? He always responds with a twisted grin. He doesn't give a shit. He never will.

This morning he buried us in pillows on the couch, cued up a list of old movies and locked the door. He fell asleep, holding my hand, halfway through A Place in the Sun with a slurred instruction not to move until he wakes up.

I hope it's soon. He's going to miss North by Northwest. That's his favorite.

Peter Cetera was singing about what he would do the next time he fell in love. Apparently I wasn't taking notes.

I was an alarming sight when he found me, sitting in the back of the pickup truck, holding my crown in one fist and a bottle of vodka in the other. I was at least two sheets to the wind, my mascara was exiting my face at a rapid pace, and my prom dress was edged with grease. I kicked my shoes off in my efforts to climb into the back of the truck unnoticed. So barefoot, drunk and clearly out of my league.

What a little prize of a prom queen. And the prom king was the eighteen-year-old soon-to-graduate captain of the football team. We made a fairytale couple in pictures but in reality I hardly knew him. He was a little too old for me, and too busy to have much more than arm candy for a girlfriend anyway, and I wasn't looking for a poster-boyfriend, I just wanted to get back at Lochlan for ruining my life by moving on. Dumping me during fair week and taking up with every older girl who looked at him sideways, and trust me, they all did. The way his hair turns strawberry blonde in summer, coupled with the easy smile, charming accent and free-wheeling independent life on the midway, who would refuse?

And he dated every last one of them, sometimes several at once, sometimes running weeks with one in particular, breaking hearts up and down the east coast all goddamned fall and through the winter into the spring and now here it was May again and I was fifteen finally and he would soon be twenty. Here was another summer staring us in the face, but this one promising pain instead of our customary welcome escape from reality.

While he stared me in the eye, I held up my middle fingers together in front of my face and fell over sideways against the wheel hump. I would have sworn at him but I couldn't remember the words.

He hopped up into the truck bed easily and sat down beside me, propping me up against his shoulder. He looked up into the stars. I put my head on his shoulder and he reached out and touched my face. He took the bottle from me and took a long drink.

What in the hell are you doing here, peanut?

Living up to my duties as the youngest prom queen in the history of this school.

I see that. How is it working for you?

Clearly I am a natural.

He laughed in spite of his dismay and asked again. What are you really doing?

Paying you back for leaving me.

By getting drunk?

By sleeping with the captain of the team. I'm popular now, I don't need anyone to judge me.

You slept with him?

Yesterday. What are you up to now? Dozens? Hundreds?

Jesus, Bridget. That was payback? Come on, we're leaving. He jumped back out of the truck and stood beside it.

No, you're leaving. You don't go to the school and you don't have an invitation so that means you're trespassing. I have to go back inside anyway. People will wonder where I am.

I see their concern, where are they? Yeah, INSIDE. I'm not letting you go back in there in this condition, Bridget. You're fifteen. They're too old for you.

Like you are, you mean? Fuck you, okay, Lochlan? Fuck you. You couldn't take the pressure and you left me to deal with all of it and I've been alone ever since. Fuck you and your fucking perfectly oblivious carnival life, Lochie. Just fuck you. I stood up and fell out of the truck bed straight into his arms. He stood me up against the side of the truck and got right down in my face.

I'm here, Bridget. I haven't left you. I've been nearby every time you leave your house. I wish I could have been man enough. It's exhausting. I've had help. I've had others watching you so that we can keep you safe. You haven't been alone. It wasn't enough though.

Who? Who helps you? Who would bother volunteering to keep track of the little fucking neighborhood nuisance who is of no use to anyone? Who wants to be a babysitter? Tell me their name so I can laugh in their face for the fool that they are.

Cole stepped out from the shadows of the building, hands in his pockets, hair still too long, face as familiar as ever. I hadn't seen him in a long time, not since I turned away from the boys after Lochlan humiliated me. I ran to Cole, throwing myself into his arms. He lifted me easily off the ground and spoke into my hair.

I do. I've been watching over you, Bridget. For a very long time now. Not to be a babysitter, though. You're not a little girl anymore.

The look in his eyes was the only thing I needed to see to know that I wouldn't be returning to the prom that night or bothering to continue to date lunkhead football players anymore. I just found the biggest knife to twist into Lochlan's back in the space of a heartbeat. I would seduce his best friend, and as a side bonus, the brother of the monster of my dreams.

I nodded to Cole, vindicated. I turned to Lochlan and smiled with drunken satisfaction.

What I didn't expect was that I would fall for Cole so hard. I didn't mean to. I only wanted to pay back Lochlan the worst way I knew how and the whole thing backfired and the joke was on me. I was pretty sure Lochlan was the only person I would ever love in my lifetime. It pisses me off that I was wrong.

He will tell you I'm not wrong.

Fifteen days ago.

(I am trying to make you see things but you refuse. How easily he moves from devil to angel, how quiet and loving and frightening the shift from captor to savior can be. How scared they would be on the day that balance tips and I fail to keep everything in mind.

I was taught from such a young age to keep things to myself and to keep my head down, my thoughts to myself and to always be ready to run. Be ready to pick up and go. Don't leave any traces that I was ever there, don't get comfortable and learn to find comfort where I can. The rules and the lessons become a part of who I am and the brightly-lit, painfully sunny, noisy universe of the freak show was the perfect antidote for the oppressively dark, silent nights in which fear blew up, taking over everything.

There is only one safe place in the entire world for me.

It is the only place I can close my eyes, or dream or take a deep enough breath to keep on living and most of the time I am prevented from accessing it. Most of the time it is not available. Most of the time it is covered with paint, hidden by nostalgia or betrayal, obscured from the new half-light in which sound mixes with silence and the colors blend into a sepia sprawl. Most of the time it is forbidden, and so I search on. While I search I write about things I need to think through and they are woefully out of order, sometimes out of date, and more importantly, mostly out of my mind.)

Caleb is pleased with himself. I stir my tea mindlessly, watching the raindrops race down the window. I hate this hotel, with its overly-kind staff and overly-fragrant jasmine butterfly tea. Everyone here treats Caleb as if he's some sort of celebrity just because he flashed his black card at them and they wouldn't know him from Adam. Money buys sycophancy from strangers and nothing more. When people are employed to see to your comfort it is easy to become jaded and ridiculous.

And I feel like a freak sitting here, I feel like I should jump up on the furniture and start demanding that this move faster or that we are given some sandwiches or profiteroles maybe because I'm starving and while we're at it, some tea that I can't taste the flowers in, because that's what I am used to but I am well-trained so I sit and count the drops instead.

Lochlan sits on the other side of me. He hasn't said a word, he hasn't touched his tea. He is staring at the floor. He doesn't have or want any money so no one pays attention to him. He doesn't care how people act when it comes to money. He knows he can get some by throwing his fire and for him that will always suffice. He would like answers instead. Those are worth more than cash.

The truth will set you free. The question is how much will it cost?

Caleb still knows what I'm thinking after all these years and instead of acknowledging my legendary self-control in this moment he congratulates himself on the ire Lochlan feels for the simple fact that he never wanted to be controlled by anyone and here Caleb is, still calling the shots after all this time.

The door opens and I look up. Another stranger stands there, this one with an envelope. He looks at Caleb and Caleb nods and then the envelope is presented to me. I stare at it. Is this where everything changes or is this where nothing changes once again? How do I trust him to tell the truth when my world has been nothing but lies since he walked into it?

I take the envelope finally, jamming it deep into the bottom of my handbag. I stand up and thank Caleb for the tea and I leave the conference room, walking unsteadily down the marble hallway. I know Lochlan is ten steps behind me, hands fighting with the tie I made him wear, pulling it off and jamming it into his pocket. He will have that look on his face, half incredulous and half concerned, out of his league but unwilling to play the games, outraged and quietly, madly curious too.

We made a deal in the car not to open the envelope until we are safely in the house, and we stick to it.

When we arrive at the house, Lochlan exits the car before Mike can come around and open the door for us and he holds the door for me, barking an order at Mike not to worry about it. He takes my hand and pulls me up the walkway, up the steps and into the house and we retreat to Lochlan's rooms. He locks doors as we run through them.

It's a moment of truth, if ever there was one and I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to act and suddenly I realize I don't know which way I want things to turn out.

I only know that someone is going to get hurt. I just don't know who.

Killing horizon.

Hanging from the stars
Living by default
Catch me like a dog
Slipping through your arms

I am searching by touch. Blackout blinds cover the windows. The music is too loud. Not uncomfortably so, just enough that I can't make out sound, I don't know where he is. He likes these sensory limitations, testing me to see if I can find him first with my mind or with my hands.

But he is impatient tonight*, not willing to wait. Not willing to settle or fight. Not now. Now he has seven hours of darkness left, unwilling to waste a minute. Precious seconds have already been spent in the time it took to change his mind and he takes my hands and pulls them up around his neck, pulling me against him, his arms sliding around me. It's so abrupt I cry out loud and he pulls one arm back and puts his hand over my mouth. I am bent backwards slightly now as his other hand slides up my back and into my hair. He forces my mouth against his. I can't breathe through the brutal kiss and so I wait, throwing myself into it. I will come back to life later, with the sunrise. What he wants is my response, and I will never ever disappoint him again.

The music changes and he drags his fingers gently down my face, dancing over my eyelashes, pulling my lower lip down, running his index finger across my tongue and chasing it with his lips. I have learned how to breathe through this shallowly and he smiles in the dark. I can't see him, I feel it.

He begins to walk, me pressed against him, until we reach the smooth wall. He presses me against it and then lets go. I know this part. I am going to kiss another favorite dress goodbye. He kisses my shoulder, hooks both fingers under the straps and pulls hard. The delicate satin rips easily and he takes up a handful of fabric and peels me out of it roughly. My eyes are adjusting to the wonder on his face, the barest glint from his eyes, flashing dark, teeth, skin, his white shirt reflecting my anticipation. I reach out with my fingers to unbutton his shirt but he takes my hands, forcing them up over my head and my feet leave the ground. Helpless. The point of no return.

The smile drops off his face again and he moves in against me. So strong. His determination slides over my features and I turn my face away from the burn of his beard. He mistakes my pain for acceptance and tightens his brace against the door. I force my legs together and he forces them apart. It's a game to him and I play it better than anyone.

And then he lets go.

This is the best part, perfectly timed and I grab for his shoulders while he wraps his arms around my legs and drives me against the wall until whatever breath I thought I gained back disappears forever. I bite my lip and taste blood. He kisses me, tasting the iron. It drives him into a frenzy. I squeeze my eyes closed. I'm not supposed to be here, I wasn't caught leaving and the penalty will be harsh but the music is so loud I can feel it in my bones and there's a thrill in the danger of knowing how close to death I am right now I don't think I could ever turn down the invitation if I wanted to. He's a drug and the high is too much for me to bear but I want it anyway. I want it so bad I begin to fight him for control but he locks me down. That's exactly what I was hoping for.

He slows to a grind and reaches out for the remote for the music and he turns it so loud I fear for my skull exploding from total overload now. His lips are against my eyes, his breath steaming up my brain, his fingers digging deep grooves into my skin, his onslaught endless, tireless and violent, on through the night, the dark horseman of my nightmares rides.

In the morning, I stand naked in front of the full-length mirror, inspecting for marks I will have to invent excuses for. There is a set of three deep scratches and a bruise shaped like his thumb on my left hip bone (that one is going to hurt when it is touched later) and my eyes don't look the same. The color is a little more faded, the dark circles underneath a little deeper, the deceit is a little richer and I still haven't managed to find a face that looks good in an innocent expression.

He appears behind me in my reflection, his chin coming down to rest on my head. He smiles and reaches around to smudge off the bruise and heal the scratches with his fingers. It fades and disappears. He puts his hands up over my eyes and kisses the back of my head hard, holding his lips against my hair for a long count, and when he releases me, dropping his hands and walking away toward the bathroom, I look at my eyes again and the color is restored, the rich bottle-green, with no dark circles. As a bonus the excuse of an early meeting is planted securely in my head to explain away my morning absence from home and the beginnings of the thought of the next meeting are beginning to seep into my brain from somewhere I can't access to shut it down.

Not that I would want to, he tells me to think. Only he hasn't said anything out loud. He doesn't need to, I guess that's one of the perks of being who he is.

(*The night in reference was fifteen years ago. Get a life. Now write about it. Harder than it looks, isn't it?)

The best-dressed Red Delicious.

Here. I made an apple cozy for Sam.

You know you want one but I am not taking orders, sorry. We both carry an apple or pear in case we get hungry and have remarked many times how bruised they get in the bottom of a backpack (him) or very large handbag (me, silly). I have fixed the problem at last.

Voila!

I might make a few more for the others but they tend to bring their bruised and battered apples back to me at the end of the day. Fruit isn't high on the priority list of rock stars and artists, I guess.

(But I digress. I think you've heard enough domestic fuckery from me lately anyway. Look, things sometimes move really quickly around here. Too quickly and I never am able to keep up so I post total useless nonsense until I can get my brain wrapped around new thoughts securely enough to spit them out.)

The condo has sold and wouldn't you know it, Caleb is currently homeless. Karma. Or something. Poetic justice?

I offered to let him stay here. In the house. With...all of us. I threw it out there and Lochlan hollered at the top of his lungs for me to stop talking and take it back and he swore and he yelled and he acted really awful but he's still having a hard time adjusting to all of the changes.

(I've only told you about some of them, after all. Give me a little credit here. More to follow, eventually, as always.)

So either Caleb could hear Lochlan or perhaps he's just smarter than me (not a chance) so he politely declined and will spend the next two weeks at the Fairmont instead. His olive branches were burning when he offered them and Lochlan and I are still busy wiping soot off each others faces, tenderly, with a small white cloth folded many times and dampened with our spirits because we can deal with Caleb as Satan, but he is very hard to deal with as just Caleb. This new humility and complete transparency has been incredibly unsettling.

So I am hiding out in Sam's office most of the time lately. Helping him here and there but mostly just making clothes for his lunch.

Offside.

I was going to post something but the game is on and I really want to watch it instead. I miss going to the games since the boys aren't playing this year so TSN is the next best thing. As of this posting both the Rangers and Canucks are scoreless with two minutes left in the second period.

And tomorrow night the Jets take on my beloved Maple Leafs. You might not see me until spring.

Miracles and Mondays.

If ever there was such a walking disaster, always as close to tears as smiles, teetering along on her tiny shoes with her too-heavy handbag and threatening-to-smudge mascara, hair coming unpinned as it sees fit to escape, not paying attention while claiming to have everything covered, organized but unsure, it might be me.

I have a burn from touching the vent pipe on the stove while the oven hummed along at 700 degrees, cleaning itself. I have a blood blister on the other hand from forgetting to move my fingers when I fastened a latch yesterday afternoon and I'm surprised I still have any eyebrows after tonight's fiasco, which included opening the valve on the barbecue, turning on the burners, closing the lid and walking away only to take three steps and remember, so back I went, flipped open the lid and hit the ON button.

Oh, dear. With a whoosh of a fireball I had my comeuppance in flames.

Even more surprising?

That I'm not DEAD because I'm currently covered with paint thinner residue, from an earlier experiment today involving oil-based wood stain and a decided lack of a plan to clean up afterward, until I was up to my elbows in brown paint, forced to make an emergency trip to the hardware store, cash in hand, hands in gloves.

Because no one was home, and because clearly when left unsupervised I get into trouble.

On the other hand, dinner is delicious and the verandah is done. Both amazing. The boys were equally horrified and impressed. I am nothing if not completely remarkable.

And happy to be alive, in my normal shade of palest alabaster, and just barely singed and so very glad Monday is just about over.