Collectedness.

Bridget!

Oh shit. I could hide but this one can see through fabric, fire, and concrete, I imagine. He owns my soul, he'd just seek it out and use his evil to draw it in. Like a magnet. Like a puppy.

Yes? I put on my big girl panties, answering him like an adult would. Then I frown and rip them off in favor of my stripper ones. If I'm going to do something, I'll have to go big or go home.

He walks into the room with his suitjacket over one arm, tie loosened and hair tousled and I attempt to steel my knees against weakening. The look on his face makes that easy.

I'm trying so hard to make you happy and you keep busting my balls. He says it softly. I don't exactly know what he means but when PJ says it he's being funny so I just play along.

What, specifically?

Everything. Being worried you don't have the upper hand or that I might turn you all out on the street? Calling me names? Dredging up the past? He throws up his hands in frustration, on the verge of tears but composure is something Caleb strives for in every facet of his life, even in his sleep so the rest of us are clearly deficient in the face of his surplus.

You scare me when I don't know what you're up to! I blurt and he laughs.

You sound like a teenager.

That's the past, remember?

Oh, sorry. Now what do you need to know? I'm trying to be transparent. I'm trying to work with you. Everything is on the level here. What did I miss? I can't fix it if you don't tell me.

You engineered...this. My hands flutter around. Clearly I'm indicating both houses and the fulfillment of my dreams. Except for the ones involving reanimating dead people. I am still working on that, don't think I don't know he can do it, just like he does everything else.

Yes. For you. Because it's what you wanted.

It isn't your place to give me everything I want.

He just stares and then he sits down and laughs. What do you want me to do? If I take it all away, I'm horrible. If I leave it all the way it is, I'm horrible!

I don't know!

Then it remains. Until you make up your mind. He smiles and leans in to kiss my cheek, lingering far too long for comfort, to the point where I wish madly for my big-girl panties again so I can be a lady, because the stripper ones are busy thinking up a private routine for him. He says goodbye and walks out of the room. The spell breaks when he leaves and I pick up the colander and hurl it at the kitchen door in frustration.

Argh! He did it AGAIN!

Who, Bridget? PJ enters the kitchen from the front hall.

Caleb.

Oh, good. I thought you were going to bust my balls again.

For fucks sakes! What does that even MEAN?

It's cold. It's so cold today and the sun is hiding behind the curtains, toes peeking out, mouth set in a line, and hell, no, she won't come out no matter what I offer and instead maybe I should just join her, for all the assumptions yesterday's post brought.

Raise your hand if you were in denial about what you've read and stand up if you really thought I was kidding about having my whole army here in one place and now sit the fuck down if you still think we have the upper hand. You may as well relax, because we do.

Caleb spends fully half his time collecting rent and being a landlord and the other half checking to see if I'm paying attention as he tries to teach me the nuances of being a high roller, a mogul, or any of the other nicknames I call him. A sugar daddy. Because all of this is mine. Why? He owes me so nevermind that part, just know that he can't pull any fast ones and leave us homeless and he can't go and spend the farm and leave Henry without a legacy because the evil idiot went and put all of it in my name and I think I spend all of my spare time now signing things I must read first because I don't trust him when it comes to business and forcing myself not to daydream while he talks about tax credits and immigration laws until I'm so bored I want to fling myself off the cliff just so he'll shut the fuck up.

Ungrateful? You betcha. Walk that mile in my stilettos and you'd run screaming into the dark the last hundred yards or so, guaranteed.

Two big houses on the bluff.

It's moving day!

Daniel, Schuyler, Christian, Corey and Andrew are next door as we speak, unpacking! It's fucking crazy around here today. CRAZY.

I hate that word but I love my boys.

Andrew has been couch-surfing for three weeks and that was enough. The house is ready (painted), here they come. Daniel and Schuy made a sweet little profit on their house and are thrilled to come back to the cliff and Corey is giving it a trial run because he is a little more removed and less caught up in the whole Bridget Adoration Society that the rest of the boys are card-carrying members of.

August comes home tonight (!!!!) from six weeks on the Rock (Vacation. Also somewhat reluctant member of said society, but not really) and will resume living here. He left the house last year briefly, trading places with Dalton (also know as Telfon Jesus or TJ) and came back. Does this make sense?

What do you mean, no?

Okay fine. I'll make you a list so you can keep it straight.

Boathouse (part of main property): Caleb.

Main house: Bridget, Ben, Ruth, Henry, Lochlan, Dalton, Duncan, PJ, August, John.

New house (next door): Andrew, Christian, Corey, Daniel, Schuyler, Gage.

Boys living nearby and that's good: Dylan, Sam, Sometimes-Matt (Sam's on-again, off-again lover),John, Keith.

Boys living very far away and that's good: Batman, New-Jake, Rob, Mark, Joel, Chase.

Boys who don't breathe: Cole, Jacob.

:(

Got it now? Okay, good. Back to helping unpack the kitchens because apparently that is one of the things I do best. I would beg to differ but that's how I ended up needing flow charts and lists, right?

Oh, hush, you.

Two peas, one pod (greetings from close reach).

He puts a plastic Star Wars light sabre in my hand and steps back to regard me. His eyes are lit up with amusement.

Okay, just a minute.

Off he goes and I center myself on the floor of the garage with my blue light-up sword. It makes noise. Vooahmmm vahhhmmm. I swish it around in thin air and smile.

He returns with a jeweled felt crown and Henry's mock chestplate armor, putting the crown on my head and tucking my arms through the straps on the armor.

He steps back again. Oh! Just a minute.

I keep up the swordfighting. It is highly underrated. He's back in minutes with a small plastic medieval dagger.

Back-up weapon. He puts it in my left hand, nodding sagely.

I burst into laughter and he heads to the ipod dock. He thumbs through a list until he hits on something crazy-heavy and then he turns it up loud and he says Now go for it! Slay your demons, Bridget!

And I turn and look at him and say Are you fucking kidding me? This is how you get through the tough parts?

And he looks at me and in all seriousness says, Well, yeah. I don't drink anymore so this is the next best thing, right? And then he turns the music louder.

Something tells me if I poked around a little in Ben's brain I would find his imaginary friends, and they would give me some of their peanut butter sandwiches and tell me that they didn't think Ben was quite right. I would nod quietly and agree, a little afraid, a little amused, a little more understanding of what makes him tick after all.

Probably exactly how he feels when it comes to me.

Overcast.

I woke up this morning alone in the bed and covered in charcoal fingerprints, the bed cold, rain pouring in sheets down the window glass, the house quiet. When I sat up I saw Lochlan sitting on the floor, wearing his pajama bottoms and drawing conclusions on a big sheet of Ingres paper. His headphones are on to block out the world, probably with some Floyd or Senses, background music to soothe his carnival brain that never shuts out the flame or the lights or the love.

Ben is working. Ben is always always working and does not sleep or worry or check in often enough and I feel disconnected and alone without him here when I wake up. I take my phone and find my robe and then change my mind and head for a hot shower instead. My head is throbbing from the scotch.

When we reached the back door last night, Lochlan knocked his chair over in his rush to come and take over possession from the devil, who exited graciously and did not attempt to linger.

Where's Ben? I'm so tired I cut directly to the chase with no explanations of the night thus far.

Recording or writing, I don't know which, peanut. He's been down there all night.

I'm going down to see him.

Bridget, you need to sleep. He'll come find you. He turns me around and steers me upstairs in the near dark. I am heavy-headed and all fluttery, fumbling fingers with the wrong words spilling everywhere and we're slipping on them. Lochlan takes advantage of my loneliness, and my dependence on him like he has so many times before, pulling me into his arms, winding me out and keeping me captive until I am asleep, exhausted and bathed in a mixture of sweat and shame.

When I emerge from the shower some twenty minutes later, scrubbed clean but with faint traces of grey still ground into my flesh, Ben is sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for me and Lochlan has taken his tools and vanished. The rain has stopped and the sun is fighting to peer through the cloud cover, losing the battle before it has even begun.

Perrault vs. Grimm.

You like it when you are pulled in different directions.

No. I shake my head gently and take another sip of burning-warm scotch.

You wanted me back and I warned you it wouldn't be easy.

Let's get something straight here. I wanted you to come back for your son.

Don't be coy. Henry has a waiting list of surrogate dads and has hardly noticed I'm here or made note of the fact that I'm back ten days early. This is about us.

There is no us. I am drunk and slurring slightly. I wonder briefly if he can still understand me.

Those delusions help you sleep, don't they, beautiful? He reaches out to touch my bitten shoulder but I pull back, away, pushing out from the table. It could have been worse and by the way, you look adorable and helpless with your hair ending at your chin like that.

Fuck you and your fantasies, Diabhal.

He lifts up his drink and drains the glass before placing it upside down. He leans across the table and smiles again, without letting his eyes in on the joke. What if I changed my terms?

You don't get to have terms. We have no agreements.

But we could. We should.

I need to go.

Probably a good idea. I'll walk you over.

I can find my way across the drive.

Bears, Bridget.

Ironic. Leave the wolf to encounter a bear.

He ignores the namecalling. You're not at full capacity right now. Let's go.

That's the kindest way anyone's ever described me, you know that? I stumble when I stand up. Fucking Scotch.

He just smiles so very tightly, and offers me his hand.

Aperture science.

He showed up this morning.

Dressed in a bespoke suit with his shit together and lies in his eyes, Caleb was standing in the driveway talking to Dalton when I came out of the house also in my finest, dressed for graduation day. The last day of school for Henry too but the strange transition of Ruth beginning high school, since they start it here in Grade 8. The ceremony was amazing. She is too grownup and I am having trouble grasping this, like all change.

He had a wrapped grading present for each of them, and his luggage was nowhere in sight. A red eye with red eyes, the very worst of travel but he still looks presentable and is or seems sober.

And I'm weirdly thrilled that he came when I called.

Like a fucking puppy.

(Here, boy.)

Bridget. He smiles almost imperceptibly and waits for my reaction. He is tense and exhausted and evil and charming all at once and it is the very worst way to show up in front of me. Especially when I am not warned in advance because I didn't expect to see him and I don't know if he is here for the day or the weekend or back home for good and Lochlan still isn't speaking to me but here I am balancing my emotions on a scale but I've shoved the scale way in the back of the cupboard since today will not be about me by any stretch of the imagination. Oh no. This day is for the kids. They worked very hard and we are dressed to the nines and beyond and will go to the school then out for a big ticket celebration.

And that's precisely what we did and now I am flitting around the kitchen on pins and needles waiting for one message to go across the driveway and get the information I want and two messages to go upstairs so I should just drag that scale back out and set it on the counter and hope the balance tips in my favor, always.

Answering.

Bridget!

I heard him coming a mile away and I did what any self-respecting adult would do when faced with a confrontation.

I hid.

Only he knows me so well he was opening cupboards as he talked, looking for me. I was standing beside one of the opened bifold doors by the front hall closet listening to his diatribe about my absolute gall in calling Caleb and what did I need that I would go looking for trouble when trouble finds me.

(Without a map, time after time, a homing beacon locked on a moving target, no less.)

I am trying to parse Lochlan's one-sided discussion and failing because he's moving too fast and his voice cuts in and out between the accent and his movements and I finally get so frustrated I bang my head against the door and it slides closed, revealing the red hair and concerned face of my conscience.

My conscience frowns his disapproval and yanks his jeans up a little higher at the same time. He is losing weight, something he tends toward every summer when the days are long and hot and he lives on night air and bright lights and joyful screaming.

(But it sounds so disturbing written like that.)

I step back behind the door, opening it again to block his unwavering gaze. I don't want to present to him right now. I don't want to answer to him. I don't want him to be involved in my brain right this second but these are the moments when my judgement tips over the front of the Ferris wheel and he scoops it up from the platform and returns to the brake to stop each car at the line to exchange riders. He won't give it back for days. I'll have to beg. I've been doing a lot of that anyway lately, I guess.

He Scottish-clicks open disapproval at me and I cover my whole face so he won't see how much that sound annoys me.

Don't hide your face. Be mature.

Pot, kettle, Locket.

I know, but why did you call him?

If I could answer that I wouldn't be hiding.

So be brave.

I'm so not brave.

Oh, yes you are.

Nope. Wrong girl. Move along. I sink to the floor behind the door and he reaches down to scoop me back up, standing me on my feet, closing the door and pulling me away from the wall in one practiced, acrobatic motion.

Fine. I'm very brave. That's why I called him in spite of your eventual disapproval.

My immediate disapproval. Disapproval isn't the word I would use though. You're so fucking proper sometimes. I should be grateful, I suppose, considering I taught you to spell on the road.

Yes, you should be grateful that I'm so awesome.

And braver by the minute, it seems.

Oh! Just shut up!

You first!

Fine!

You're going to miss Henry's graduation.

There's no graduation ceremony from grade five. I will see his report card when I return and bring a grading gift plus his birthday present. I'll be back in time for the party.

He's disappointed that you're going to miss his last day of school.

I'd be working anyway.

But you'd be there in the evening. So he could tell you he's done.

Oh, I see.

Do you? Do you get that you can't insert yourself properly as a father and then just disappear?

Yes, Bridget, I get that. Do you think it's easy to leave?

Then why did you? I told you you didn't have to go anywhere.

And I told you I did.

Is it working?

It's only been a week, Bridget. Give me time. You calling me out of the blue wanting me to come back is really fucking with my head. I'll just have to drink extra now.

I called you for Henry. This is not about us.

Everything is about us.

Maybe you should ease up on the drinking.

You're just beautiful today. Jesus Christ. I wish I was there.

So do we. Family comes before all of this.

I agree. But I'm here and my flight out is on the tenth of July so you'll just have to make do. Now I'm going to go back to my scotch. It's almost nine and I hope to be unconscious by eleven.

What are you doing?

Sitting in a chair alone in the dark thinking.

You at the house or the cottage?

I'm at a hotel downtown.

Why aren't you with your folks?

You want me to subject them to the Devil? Bridget, I may be cruel but I'm not dumb. They're old now. They don't need to see this. There are things they don't need to know.

Discretion isn't a bad thing.

I'm alone, have been since I arrived. Now are we done here? I'm thirsty.

You could just come back.

Bridget. If I come back right now, the way I feel, things will be very hard for you. So just say goodnight and let me get back to the dark, please.

Goodnight, Caleb.

Goodnight, Bridget. Cheers.

Composure took her sweet time leaving, and in her place sat resignation and an oddly comfortable sort of peace. I meandered my way upstairs shortly after midnight, trailing behind Ben, his hand stretched back to pull me along slowly as I kept becoming distracted by things along the route. Pictures that seemed fascinating or crooked. Blooming flowers. A cat on a stair step. My face in the mirror.

Finally he pulls me into our room and closes the door behind us. Lochlan is almost asleep, a thick acknowledgement in the dark confirming his presence. Ben responds and then leads me into the bathroom. The lights are off, the candles lit, bubble bath drawn, steaming clouds of foam fill the tub up to the brim. I know the water only goes halfway. Ben's exercise in volume proved to us early on how far we could fill it before we flooded the floor.

He strips himself first and then me, taking his sweet time. Big fingers on tiny little buttons, hooks and eyes, satin and bows. I don't help, I watch his face. When he is finished he holds his hand out and I take it and step up and into the bath. The water is so hot I gasp. Once I am sitting he steps in and sits down, the water level rising to lap against my shoulders. He positions his legs under mine and pulls me up into his arms. My arms go around his neck as I am lifted into his lap, holding on for dear life. He presses his head down against mine and I close my eyes.

I think sometimes this is my favorite place in the whole world now, after the beach, right at the edge of the water where the earth meets the ocean and all the treasures remain when the tides change. Ben stirs, kissing my damp skin, pulling up a washcloth, wringing it out against my spine so that the hot water courses down in rivers between my shoulder blades.

It was the last thing I remember before my dreams took me.

Safe.