Blurry but with clear intent.

It's cherry blossom time. The blooms are fat and heavy on the branches, low over my car. They're in my car. They're all over the front walkway, and pretty much everywhere else too. They're in the house, in Ruth's shoes. They pretty much take over until around Mother's Day and then they will dry up and disappear for another year. It makes up for a winter of...muted green clawed-back vegetation and slightly chilly temperatures and don't make me laugh, this isn't actually winter in Canada, who's pulling my leg?

I'll be cursing the track of petals through the house inside of a week because I've become all jaded and spoiled like that.

No, actually I won't. I secretly love them and still lament the fact that one of my neighbors decided to cut their trees down because they made a mess. Um, what? Seriously?

I can walk under the branches. Only the kids and I don't have to duck. Next year they probably will but I won't and then maybe I'll make a fort out there and not tell anyone where I've gone.

The petals are in PJ's beard, too. He has taken to double-checking his face every time he passes a mirror and the others keep fooling him, pointing to his face and saying You've got a little pink there, Paddy and he'll start combing through his facial hair while we laugh and laugh.

It's very pretty (no, not PJ's face, the wall of blossoming trees), and even though I am terrible with photographs and even if I wasn't, a picture could never do this justice, here. Enjoy.

(It would have at least been in focus, had Bonham not been pulling on the leash I was holding.)

Dress reversal.

Wouldn't it be so much better
If we could look at what we're seeing
Late gazes wore me down
Oh won't you see what you're doing

Gaze into passing places late at night
Gaze into welcome faces when you see no right
Gaze into your own eyes
When it's too late

This morning I stood in the driveway in my Sunday best and waited for the boys to get ready. I'm sorry, but I decided a long time ago that I was not going to go from room to room mashing down cowlicks with Brylcreem or standing on the bed behind someone trying to tie a perfect Windsor knot while looking over their shoulder into the mirror to get it right and I wasn't going to point out that the braces should match the shoes even if no one could see them under a suit jacket. It takes me long enough to get dressed as it is, checking in on the children all the while to make sure they get ready too and don't become distracted by toys/cats/each other.

Eventually I wind up here, alone, loitering in the driveway freezing my butt off, but loathe to go back inside lest someone take that as a sign to slow down. Not like it matters, we're already late and I don't want to make our appearance smack-dab in the middle of Sam's announcements because it's such a spectacle as it is when we go in. Waiting outside isn't an option, there's no room and no good time to interrupt anyway once the service begins.

Sam will invariably call upon us to join in. He has Matt save space in the first two pews on the left and I will blush furiously as all eyes watch us make our way to the front of the sanctuary. It sucks, it really does. I have to pinch the children to reset their facial expressions from bored to polite and keep Ben from whacking his way down the aisle, knocking aside handbags and errant legs. I have to pull Lochlan along, he who would rather be anywhere else but here, confined indoors and I have to fight with myself to ensure that I don't spend too much time turning Sam's efforts into Jacob-memories in my head, comparing sermons, choice of hymns, you name it.

I don't like church, okay? I just don't. I'll get on my knees at home and pray. I'll say Grace. I'll talk with Sam one on one about God but I don't want to go and sit through public services because it's hard and I feel like every last word is aimed at me. Every eye is on me. Every moment is endured, cataloged and filed away as one I will never get back and one I am supposed to process and improve upon.

But I'm still in the driveway and the longer I stand here the more I have decided I hate what I have on. I fidget against the confines of my garter belt under this very proper layered dress. I stick my index finger between my teeth and pull my gloves off one finger at a time. I unbutton another button on my bodice and give my bra a mighty shrug. I stumble in my stupid stiletto ankle boots and when I recover I walk in circles watching an eagle fly the same path far above me. I hope valiantly that he shits on my head and then I'll have a funny excuse to stay home and lounge with the heathens.

I hope Caleb comes out and makes me a better offer. We have a lot of words we need to exchange, only he's made no move to do so as of yet, rolling in late Friday evening and managing to avoid me all weekend. That won't last forever. I'll give him until midnight tonight and then if he hasn't shown his face here I will march over and confront him myself. I'm not eight anymore, thought I feel like it today, plotting to scowl through the service right up until Ben reminds me of lunch out, a promise he has already made to me. Afterward we're going to see the Olympic torch, it's being lit today and I might finally see it on fire with my own eyes. That will be amazing, especially if we come home first so I can change.

I don't know why I insist on dressing up for Sunday service. Sam wears his jeans and a plaid flannel shirt every Sunday (actually every day) without fail. That makes me smile, because Jake never would dress down unless the service was outdoors. Inside he always wore khakis or his grey dress pants and a plain white dress shirt with his ragged green corduroy coat and I...

Oh it's totally post-traumatic stress.

Hey God, if I pray really hard do you think you could fix my head? It's a total fucking mess. Kind of like my morning. Kind of like my life. Oh, on second thought, don't answer. I know what you're going to say. I used to be married to a minister, after all.

Heliopause.

(It's hard to believe we can have this kind of a strife in a world currently painted in the shades of grey and teal of deep water and the pale pinks of the cherry blossom trees. But things are going to be okay, thanks for asking. I just need to spin and ramble for a few. Ignore me, please.)

Come on, come on
Put your hands into the fire

My anchor appears to be six-foot-four with brown hair that's almost black and a history so austere he might have been in the witness protection program, at some point. The only baggage he brings to the table is an epic drive for sex and a gay little brother, who has been entirely absent and honeymooning for the past five months and if I daresay I'm happy for Daniel but I'm getting bored trying to drag PJ and Andrew shopping because they. hate. shopping.

Except for food, naturally.

And I'm not trying to digress. Hey, it's been another week of misery here while we fight through time and space looking for the upper hand only to find it means you reach the sun first and get burned beyond recognition, pushed against the surface until your screams are absorbed into the broiling plasma seven times over.

Because we have baggage. And for all the armchair and local psychiatrists pointing out that Ben is not different (because he did indeed provide swift rescue and there was no time in between and I barely waited three months and if I had any brains at all wouldn't I have not done that and I always answer something resembling Fuck off because I can't explain it) please step up now and kiss my little tiny ass.

He is not anyone else and something clicks here that makes me happy. He played his cards with great personal risk. So maybe you should admire him for his restraint with me. After all, he's the unpredictable one. A drinking problem and a temper and a life out of a suitcase brought him to me in ruins and now he is happy. Happier, anyway. By far.

He is my project boy and my savior rolled into one. He has let out so much line to watch me stray that I don't know how I find the way back but then I do: muscle memory, because the heart is a muscle and he is the way home.

But this isn't about Ben. Again, it's a digression.

You see, this house is our solar system and Lochlan is the sun. And everything revolves around him. He exudes heat and flame and serves as the anchor point around which the boys revolve. They are the planets. I am the dwarf planet, Pluto, running to catch up and keep up, catching a ride on Neptune, coasting through the milky way, slow to count orbits in terms of years because I keep falling off. I'm only eight. I can't keep up with them, they're all thirteen, fourteen or older. Come to think of it, I have no business being here at all, but here I am.

Saving them all.

Ben is Jupiter. Sometimes I can leapfrog over the other planets to spin in beside him and then I am dropped out once again. He can't help it, Jupiter is locked in place and too big to move quickly. Pluto has no business here. This is grownup space.

And the sun is so fickle, but without it we would die. The hierarchy in this house is such that we are bound to revolve around each other and the dynamics are such that sometimes we travel smoothly for ever and then there will be upheaval and change. And the boys are somewhat like me in that they will be easygoing and take so much and then suddenly the tipping points are everywhere and we are getting stabbed, arrows through the crust of my not-quite-a-planet-after-all, spinning me away on a different axis. Personalities are different and our situation is unique after all.

I don't know of any other commune that revolves around a singular female. I don't know of any other plural relationships that have a lifelong history behind them. And I don't know if we're doing it right, frankly. If you ask the experts they will wonder aloud why we haven't simply disintegrated years ago, ending in a brutal double-murder-suicide that would make a brief horrific read in the paper only to be followed by a scramble for the ticket to check the lottery numbers underneath.

What can I say? I suppose it works because it's not a gimmick or an experiment, it's our lives, and we take those very seriously.

Lochlan has made a couple of really good and terrible attempts to seek exclusivity and I hesitated to even confess that I heard him properly. Sometimes he relaxes enough to allow things to be as they are and sometimes he develops a sharp angle, gunning for his own leapfrog, all the way down the line of planets until he drops out of the system to where Pluto floats in the Kuiper belt just outside the range of normal consciousness.

He wanted me to come and live with him. Again. In an airstream by the sea. We would fish and busk and watch the stars and pick up from 1985, where we last left off (if you don't count those summers on the freakshow in my twenties but we're not going to go there tonight). This plan was further cemented this week as he revealed the remainder of the manifesto explaining why he is the way he is. If you knew him you would understand the reasoning he can dispense in his sleep. The stupid bulletproof prudence that has always left me with his hand on top of my head while I made such mad efforts to jump up and down and see the world. By Tuesday he was cocksure my misery was simply based on the fact that I would have to let Ben down. Boomerang, back to the show for the little freak planet and her tightrope, wound on a spool, too heavy to carry a planet on by far.

Instead my tears were for Lochlan's preemptive disappointment, and hell, even Caleb felt safe enough to return because perhaps nothing will change except that even more of my dreamlike, fantastical childhood can be explained in better detail now. Mostly to me, for I was the youngest and the things children remember are not always what transpires. Sometimes it is better than what we recall and sometimes it is worse.

Lochlan looked at me this morning and I grimaced and finally returned his gaze and he gave me a small tight smile, telling me See, peanut? I told you it would change nothing. Only his voice cracked on the you part and then he had to catch his breath and he tried to cover it with a cough but that didn't really work and I pretended I missed it anyway. I threw my arms around him and pressed my head underneath his chin, where you have been able to find me pretty much anytime since 1979, and I nodded because I didn't know what else to do.

Juggling is hard. Saving is too.

Five feet tall and freakishly intimidating, apparently.

My next tattoo will say something like Breaking hearts since 1979 or something fuckingly similar to that. I swear.

Close the door before it's late
We were born to love and hate
Turn it down for our own sake
We do no wrong
You fill your ears with every note
Direction seems the only hope
Its crowded, let's create now
We do no wrong

Common sense protects us
Everything affects us
To the outside light it's paradise
To the outside light it's paradise

In the dark there is no jury.

I put my arms up around his neck as he pulls me in close. Ben lifts me up for a kiss but it doesn't have an ending and I do not have purchase anymore. I slide back down and he laughs briefly but his eyes are serious. He lets go of me and pulls my shirt up instead. Over my head, my hair trailing out of it slowly until I have a pale halo of static spilling over my shoulders. I frown and he smiles again and goes to work on the button on my jeans. He reaches back up and shoves me down and pulls the jeans off my legs inside out, dropping everything on the floor. He follows by reaching over his head and grabbing his shirt between the shoulder blades, pulling it over his head in one motion. He's standing in the candlelight in just his jeans staring at me. I'm not even wearing the good lingerie today, instead stuck in what I threw on this morning so I could get to my day. Plain white underwear. No bra. He smiles. No giftwrap, just real, he says.

I laugh but it comes out tired and forced. Ben-

He leans down and puts his hand over my mouth and puts his own mouth against my ear. We're not going to talk. Not tonight. He pushes me down and hooks his fingers under the sides of my underwear and pulls them down. I stretch my neck to see out the window from here as he finishes taking everything off both of us and then there are no excuses anymore.

He pulls me up into his arms and I cry out. There is no tenderness either. I latch on to his neck and am rewarded with razor burn and teeth. I push at him and he says sorry breathlessly as he unlocks his mouth from my bottom lip. I can't breathe. He pauses in the dark and then lets go, dropping me onto my stomach on the duvet. He puts one hand on my hip and the other wraps into my hair, his forearm locked against the back of my head. I am helpless now and he is rewarded with total compliance, total silence. He's rewarded with whatever he wants and that is simple:

Me.

In the morning the sun comes up and blinds me, searing my closed eyelids as I remain in the dark a while longer feeling his hands slide all over, feeling muscle ache compete with muscle memory, lifting one shaking arm to run my fingers through his hair as he turns me back over finally, his brown eyes six inches from my green ones as I open them finally.

He smiles. Good? It's our thing. We do reviews.

Better than good. I grin and melt his face with my morning breath. I don't know where that came from, it's not like we slept at any time during the night.

I love your sweet little cries. He kisses me again. I wonder if he's going to take me for another round and I don't think I could take him when he stops abruptly and stares at me. This is a whole different look and I put my hands up to hold his face.

What?

You're going to go to him, aren't you? Now that you understand what happened and why he was so frozen.

Ben, I-

Could I ask for just a yes or no? It's kind of killing me inside, Bridget, and I need to know. A man should be told when he's about to lose everything.

Tears sting my eyes suddenly at the thought of Ben equating me with everything and I shake my head. No. I'm not leaving you.

He bursts forth with a shaky sigh. Okay then.

You thought I would leave you?

Everyone thinks you're headed that way.

Since when do you care what everyone thinks?

Since robot boy unleashed his excuses.

Excuses?

Reasons, whatever. Since he played his trump card. What do I have to counter with?

You don't have to bring anything to the table. I'm not leaving you, Ben.

He looked into my eyes and I stared right back and he reached out and pulled me in close until there was no space in between. This is where I will remain. If you were the one person hoping differently then I'm sorry but I'm a chickenshit and I can't say it to your face.

Mechanical.

I could kneel against him, and take his face in my hands. His pale blue eyes were always washed out and tired, crinkled into a big smile for me, always for me, attention rapt as long as I needed him.

Don't, okay?

There's something not right about him. He's a robot. I mean, come on, princess, there's practical, there's efficient, indomitable, but he goes above and beyond. What is he doing?

Trying to take care of me, of everything.

He doesn't need to take care of you. Jacob's face is guarded now, defensive.

He still tries.

Why, Bridget? Just tell me why.

Maybe he's atoning for the past. I press my hands against his cheeks and he covers my hands with his and pulls them back down. He pulls me down into his arms. But he's not a robot. He's just...pragmatic. I didn't give him such an easy time when we were on the road.

But if he wasn't always that way then what changed?

Everything. My mood darkens. I don't want to talk about it.

I can't help you help him, if that's what you want to do, princess, if you don't tell me why he's this way.

I don't know why he acts the way he does. I think he's just still trying to provide stability and be my guardian even though I'm an adult now.

Not to him, you're not.

I know.

It irks the shit right out of me.

Jake, don't.

And you always cut the conversation off without telling me anything. I'm just supposed to accept that he's going to come into my house and lavish affection on my wife and it's not supposed to bother me because he's a robot in every other facet of his existence? Does that sound right to you?

Yes.

Then I would venture a guess that you're remembering history as a child would and maybe there is more to it because adults always see things differently.

Maybe you're right. I don't know how else I can remember it.

That's just it, Bridge. You can't. And you don't have to keep secrets for him or for anyone else.

I'm going to go up and draw I think. I stand up and he wraps his arms around my legs and presses the side of his head against my belly. It gurgles. Always hungry.

Jacob laughs. How about we make some food instead? He is easy, jovial, but all through the construction of our midnight deli sandwiches he kept looking at me, waiting to give him all the answers that would help him to understand what makes Lochlan tick. And I was helpless in my ignorance. Had I said anything it would have been all wrong anyway.

I took a bite of the sandwich instead, and let a mouthful of food be what kept me from blowing everything wide open.

And the edge of the world has forgot
Every second inside has been lost
For a moment a lesson was learned
When the eyes of the people were shut

The wind is freezing. When I take off my helmet it floods into my ears and eyes, cutting off all sound and making it hard to see. My eyes are already burning and red. My nose is running and red. My hair is uncombed, tangled, remnants of a ruined braid still evident and my legs shake like jello after what was a marathon ride on the Sunbeam, borrowed from New-Jake who took one look at me and ran after Lochlan asking him if it was such a good idea and maybe I should stay in but Lochlan shot him one of those looks and he fell silent.

It was sort of the theme of the day, for I haven't said more than a few words in days, mostly content to speak to the children and otherwise punish everyone else in sight.

I've been coughing. I haven't slept. Lochlan put his hand up to my face and he said things that made me want to cry that much harder for their tenderness. He said things that were encouraging and he said things would be different and I believe him because we're at the bottom again. There's nowhere to go but up. Onward and upward, as Jake would say, only Jake saw Lochlan as a threat and he saw things I didn't want to acknowledge and everything sometimes makes so much sense it makes you miss the fugue in which you were content to admit you didn't know what was going on at all, because it's so much easier to live without confirmation, without proof.

Caleb saw me coming a mile away and booked a flight out. Needed a break. He was just about to head home and he got a heads up from someone and never came back. I had an email from him late last night. He was going to visit some colleagues who have a place in CA that he can use. Might be back next week or the week after. Good time now that the March break travel has lightened up considerably and he was free to go. Nothing else.

He's running from me because he knows how angry I am. And he knows damn well I can wait him out. He has to come back sometime, sometime being within the range of his legal obligations to Henry, spelled out clearly in our custody arrangements.

It's just a matter of time.

And I can wait him out. I have a lot of things to think about in the meantime. A lot of things that keep me up at night now. Things I'm not going to itemize today, since every time I stop and start to think about things my eyes fill up and I drown.

What happens when you underestimate a pyrokinetic? This.

You can find it anywhere under the sun
You can find it in your heart if you look hard
You can know your way around and be lonely
You can tear us all apart and be on your way
You can tear us all apart
Be on your way

The air begins to feel a little colder
The air begins to show a little time
The air begins to know what you are thinking
The air can see the trouble in your eyes
So tell nobody you're on your own
And find somebody to take you home
To take you home

I hear the side door open. Three little beeps give him away. Footsteps echo down the hall, up the steps and into the kitchen.

He has his coffee cup and is covered with the light rain that is falling outside. Back to routine today, including the usual weather. Lochlan stands up from the table and greets Caleb with a nod. I am determined to ignore both of them. I finally found a way to spin the past that makes sense to my heart but I don't like it one bit. Only Lochlan gets a pass, as usual, as I tried to tell you about something nice he did for me without it being just a consequence of his already-planned behavior. Remember, he is logical to a fault. If there is no reason to do something, it isn't done. If it doesn't make sense, it's removed. If it can't be explained it won't exist.

Caleb nods in return. I look up in time to see that movement but he is staring at me. Target acquired. He passes around the island to where I sit and stands beside me. I hold his gaze.

How close are you going to get, Bridget?

To...what? The cliff? I give him the most innocent face of all and I watch his features quarrel with his brain. His mind is angry. His heart is open. It's when his heart closes that you have to watch out. See, in the thirty-two years they have been falling in love with me I have been learning everything about them, too. I can sort them by mannerisms and choice of words. Had his movements been any slower coming up those stairs, I would have run.

It's not the time to coy. I need to know if you plan to make things difficult in our custody arrangement.

What are you talking about?

He looks down as if he is exasperated in trying to reason with a small child.

Bridget-

She's not going to do that. Henry needs his father. Bridget is aware of that. Lochlan speaks from across the room without looking up. He has returned to his chair, he is painting on his tablet. I nod, obediently. Caleb looks more pained at the fact that I am Lochlan's puppet than he did when he thought I might rat him out.

He turns and walks back out, back down the steps, door opens, door closes and there is total silence in the house again.

Why don't you let me fuck with his head, Locket? It's the only entertainment I have today.

Because it could have easily been me in his position.

But it's not.

Close enough. Shitty post, by the way. You have a gift for making me out to be the biggest asshole that ever lived.

You don't care what people feel about you.

What about how it makes me feel?

You were there. None of it should come as a surprise.

Remembering things hurts. You know that? You're not the only one who finds nostalgia agonizing. You have no idea how hard it was to let you go so that he would leave you alone.

And with that he opened a door in the floor and I fell through it.

You what?

Fucking Christ. Nevermind.

What did you do, Lochlan?

You were already in the middle of it or I would never have believed the things he was capable of.

I thought it was us against him. That we fooled him. Instead you were fooling me?

I was protecting you.

At what cost?

As it turns out, it cost me everything.

He threatened you to keep us apart. What in the fuck-

No, he threatened YOU, Bridget. Only he demonstrated the damage he could do up front and if you think I was going to risk you after that because I thought he might be bluffing then you don't know me as well you think you do.

I don't think I know you at all. Why didn't you tell me?

You wouldn't have left me if I had.

I didn't leave you.

Right. Exactly. The only way to keep you safe was to push you away and then make a game of it, that we were only pretending to be apart so we could stick together and ruin him. I just didn't tell you everything. I'm sorry.

You're...sorry?

I'm sorry. But it changes nothing. (Logical to a fault. This never ends.)

Oh my fuck. It changes everything, don't you see that? And what changed now?

What do you mean?

You're back. You're here. But I'm still alive. He didn't hurt me. Well, much.

He can't now. You're all grown up. You're the mother of his child. Besides, the damage is done. He kept us apart to the point where you blame us equally for everything and moved on. You did exactly what you were supposed to do in life. Maybe we are both proud of you after all. We ruined each other but you're okay. That's the most important thing.

I'm okay? DO I SEEM OKAY TO YOU?

You have a life, you're in love. You survived us. All of us.

You really believed that he would hurt me so you agreed to leave? You trusted him to leave me alone when you weren't there?

No, Bridget, he SHOWED Me that he could hurt you. I didn't have a choice.

I blamed you. I went to him.

I know. This kills me. Everything went wrong, Bridget. All of it.

Get out. I need to think.

Bridget, I-

GET OUT.

PJ picked that moment to walk into the kitchen. What's going on?

Lochlan looked at him, then at me and stormed out. I turned to PJ in tears. You know the part in the movie where the one doing the double-crossing gets double-crossed? This is that part.

This isn't a movie, Bridget.

It sure feels like it.

Back fire.

His eyes were bright. I told you, it's a surprise.

Is it safe?

I am suspicious these days and that makes Lochlan sad. Instead of spending our days working for extra money to get through the lean times between towns toward the beginning of autumn, we are preparing to go home at the end of this run. Usually we would stay on for another few weeks, almost right up until school but things have changed. I tremble in my sleep. I have black circles under my eyes. I am afraid when he leaves the camper and I hold my breath until he comes back. He has shifted all of his energy into keeping me distracted.

You're going to love it. That's all I want to tell you so that I don't ruin this.

He turns into the field abruptly. We are on an unmarked dirt road off the highway, rutted and pocked with holes. We bump along forever, jarring our teeth against our skulls, rocking deliriously as the truck shifts and heaves over the bumps, falling into the dips and highlighting a total lack of remaining suspension.

Finally he says There! He leans over and presses his head against mine and points his finger out in front so that I can follow it.

There is an upright piano in the center of a field of lavender.

I gasp. My first thought is he engineered this, only Lochlan doesn't have a piano and he hasn't left me alone for weeks now and this has clearly been here for a while. He lies anyway. I didn't do this, Bridge. I heard about it on the line.

He keeps driving until we are closer and then he turns the truck off and I am out the door, running straight through the tall flowers until I reach out and put my hands on the top.

It's real.

I bring my hands up to my face and then drop them to run my fingers across the weathered cover. I don't dare open it. Maybe it's empty. Who leaves a piano in a field? It's from the forties, says the faded remnant of the maker's dated signature.

Play for me.

He opens the cover to reveal yellowed, cracked keys. They are ruined but intact. I reach out and press middle C. Clear as a bell. Someone has tuned this. This is no accident. I smile breathlessly, ducking under to see if there are pedals. Yes. He tests other keys and laughs. This is amazing, isn't it?

Look at this. Can you imagine playing outdoors, Locket?

No. I can't. You should show me.

He smiles and winks. He totally engineered this. I'm sure he thinks I am dying. I've said twelve words in three weeks, up until now. I don't eat. I'm becoming a ghost. His insistence that the show go on (someday he will run the show, I'm sure) rings of comfort in times of great difficulty. (Through them, you will be entertained, Bridget and that will help you forget.)

But it didn't help, it just kills more time. That's why we're leaving early this year, with a promise to be back next summer. Hopefully by then I will understand what has happened because as it stands now, I don't. I only know that I became collateral damage in a war between Lochlan and Caleb. Everything will be different now. Everything is different now.

Dutifully I play the beginning of Fur Elise and a smile lights up his face.

Keep going! I wish I brought a camera.

I shift gears and give him a little of Heart and Soul and he grins and slides me down the bench, pushing in next to me. We used to play that song on the piano at my house once I taught him how. I play bits and pieces of a few more songs. I feel happy suddenly.

I like this, Bridget. It sounds so poignant.

What does that mean?

Touching. Special. Intense. Like you.

I shake my head.

Yes, you. Keep playing. We have to be back at four.

You go. I'll be staying here.

I can't do that, Bridget. Oh, here we go.

You don't get to decide. I hold my tiny patch of dusty, sun-baked ground.

Yes, I do.

You don't own me. I'm staying.

He looks up to check the time, using the sun. I'm a little bit sure he isn't human, he's good at too many things and even completely sure of his doubt, if you can believe it. He squints through his curls and then looks back at me. He does own me. He has the temporary paperwork to prove it but he doesn't say that. Instead he scolds me gently. Half-father, half-lover, it's no wonder we were doomed to fail.

We're leaving in fifteen minutes. Play until then and we'll come back tomorrow.

I sit and stare at him. We won't be back. Tomorrow has no free time scheduled. His touching plan has backfired and now he's taking this small bit of happiness away the moment I get my hands on it.

Did you do this just to hurt me then?

Jesus, Bridget, no. I did it to make you happy. To give you a little break.

But we have to leave and I'm not ready!

How long did you want to stay then?

I don't know.

You don't want to go back at all, do you?

No.

If we leave the show you go home, peanut. I won't be there when you have nightmares.

I burst into tears. I am twelve years old, I don't know why I have to make these decisions. I don't want to be at the show anymore but I want to stay with Lochlan. You are my home. Maybe we can figure something out. Maybe we can just run away and find a place to live.

And do what to make ends meet?

Hustle, Locket.

He laughs and it breaks the tension. I am encouraged.

We could do it, Lochlan. We'd probably be okay.

He shakes his head. We wouldn't be okay. But do you see? He walks away and comes back, kissing me hard on the cheek. This is why I love you, Bridget. Your dreams. You live inside a perfect world you created in your head. Your dreams are real.

I shiver when he turns around. Gosh, I hope they aren't. Every dream sees the big bad wolf coming for me. Lochlan steps in front of me and is eaten first. When Caleb takes off the wolf's head and licks his lips I start screaming and wake myself up. When my eyes open again Lochlan has set the piano on fire with his mind and is walking away. I run after him yelling his name above the roar of the flames and he stops and waits for me. He keeps saying he's sorry but I don't know what for.

Devoted.

I have been sitting on the floor, my back resting against the side of the bed. He sleeps easily, tangled in sheets and contentment. I sip red wine from a big goblet and eat Cracker Jacks out of the box. Once, a thousand years ago when I was eight I told Caleb I wanted to find a compass at the bottom of a box. He still buys boxes of Jacks for me to keep the hope alive, and still I have that hope that when I find that stupid compass I will know the way home.

I grow tired of the candy and shake the remainder of the contents out on the floor. At the bottom is a paper pouch. I open it and find a sticker of an Irish flag. I peel it off and stick it on my forehead.

Diabhal, I say under my breath.

His sleepy, gentle hand traces my hair.

Neamhchiontach, he whispers back.

The broken tellurion.

And I will be good at making bad
And I'll light the way for the fucking mad
I will defeat what I'm heading for
And I will be here for evermore

I close my eyes. So hard to stay awake this afternoon.

Then what happened?

He taught himself to eat fire.

Why?

He wasn't scary enough.

Caleb stifles a laugh. No, the other part.

If you were going to breathe fire he would consume it, just to show that he could overcome you. Or overpower you. I forget which.

And then what happened?

I tried to balance all of you at once on my tightrope.

The low one with the blindfold while he threw the flaming hoops up and you'd jump through them?

Yes.

Were you scared?

No. If you trust the person responsible for your safety, then there is no fear. Besides, it's nothing compared to the highwire.

But you are afraid of me, Bridget.

Do the math, please.

Why don't you trust me?

You've used everyone you've ever met, yourself included. Self-sabotage is such an amazing redemption, I couldn't find any more suitable penance for you if I tried.

He puts his head down against my shoulder and pushes against it.

I don't think I ended up too bad off.

Is that proper grammar?

I have no idea, I'm a lawyer, not a writer.

He laughs and drinks Dom straight from the bottle. We have been in bed for two days, celebrating his call to the bar. Well, that and he loaned Cole a whole bunch of money and Caleb decided the interest was due up front. The interest being in me.

Am I a capital gain or a dividend, then?

What are you talking about? He laughs and takes another drink. I daresay he isn't really paying attention to the words anymore, whether they are used correctly in a sentence or not.

I have given up keeping everyone straight at this point. I am in my mid-twenties and they all think they're so smart, double-crossing one another. Lochlan has spent the better part of a decade telling people I am too much work and therefore he was finished forever ago, only he never actually went away. I pilfer time with him from Cole as a respite for the time I am forced to spend with Caleb.

Only I have come to a place where I only act like I hate what Cole does because it is my absolution too.

I get up and go outside and curl up in the lounge chair on the balcony. It's thirty degrees in the sun. Beautiful. Caleb follows me out and readjusts the umbrella so that I am in full shade. I frown and he just says you burn.

I do. I burn. I burn for everything.

The heat and the exhaustion and the champagne put me to sleep in seconds and I pull the sheet up around my shoulders and let it happen.

When I wake up it is late afternoon, twenty years later and the sunny day has turned overcast. I frown at the sky while my stomach growls. My mouth tastes like cotton batting and my head hurts so I go inside to get an aspirin and some juice. When I step inside I hear him on the phone.
He sounds frustrated. He's talking in his Secrets voice. Quietly. Adamantly.

I go away for a few years and I've been fighting my way back in ever since. He does the same thing but then picks up right where he left off without acknowledgement of the absence on her part. He conducts his life expecting her to just be there for him and she IS. He doesn't notice husbands or time, for that matter. Every time there is great difficulty he vanishes, deals with it and then he comes back strong, ready to take over again. I think it's that distance that keeps him grounded so he can help her cope after the fact but she blames him for abandonment and that's what keeps her doubting him, to my credit. But they are one soul divided down the middle. That I know for certain.

The devil is counting his roster. We have denied him whole numbers. Part of me smiles at the description. One soul. Two bodies. Part of me cries because he is still obsessed with both of us, moreso than I hoped. How many casualties will there be from those who try to break this bond? The more success that is gained, the higher the price that is paid. They have learned nothing from Cole or from Jacob. After all.

Who is the devil now? I'll give you a hint. She's standing wrapped in a sheet, listening at the door and she looks as if she couldn't harm a fly. Caleb walks out of the room abruptly, tucking his phone into his shirt pocket. He is dressed. He is leaving. He turns and smiles at me (a lie) and kisses my cheek gently.

An investment, Bridget. That's what you are.

And he walks out the door.