Vacancy.

My ghosts have found their way back home
I have every right to kill my own
I am something now that never could exist
My anguish conquers all
Pay the price and watch me fall
My only key is broken
My broken key is only me

This is Gage's last weekend. He's heading down South and may or may not swing back around in early spring. That's okay, he's a nomad at heart where Schuyler is a true homebody, content to bake gourmet delights for Daniel and sooth his nighttime fears in a way that still makes me green with envy. While Gage and Schuyler share the same father, their mothers were two vastly different people, from what I hear, and that brings me back to even in my nature/nurture argument on child-raising. It's a whole lot of both, in the end.

I'll miss him but we never did become very close after all. I'm more mindful of Schuyler's omnipresent disappointment that Gage did not opt-it to our idyllic lifestyle here on the coast, instead choosing a harder road.

But you either fit in or you don't and while Gage is a wonderful addition to the point, I daresay it just doesn't feel as if he belongs here. Even though he left last fall too. He was here longer than the last time, maybe we'll just be lucky enough that he will come around every now and again and grace us with his smiling presence and endless patience for lightweights and fuckwits. Besides, he won't find a girl here.

I have an empty room again.

And I still hate goodbyes.

Carpe minutus.

Wage no war thou brutal sea
I laugh at you
You can't have me
You will calm and carry me

I collect lip gloss, sketchbooks and hearts.

I'm still waiting for Restaurant Day. That's the day I don't have to cook at all. Not a thing.

Rain makes people edgy and mean. That, I am learning the hard way.

***

Lochlan is a thief of opportunity and has not let me out of his arms in at least the past thirty hours, making protest grunts when I said I had to use the bathroom and demanding that I bring my plate closer at dinner so that he would not lose direct contact. Daniel moved down a little more.

Things work better this way, Loch proclaims quietly and I nod now as I sit typing at the end of his desk, my feet in his lap because he pulled another chair over close by while he does some concept stuff. I'd rather take my laptop to the couch and curl up by the fire where Andrew and Dalton are both reading but he just says maybe later.

He replaced the Rip Van Winkle I took from PJ with Glenmorangie Lasanta, a gesture that soothed the savage beast. He told everyone else that if Ben wasn't going to come up for air that I would be right where Lochlan was until further notice. Somewhere Ben has bent his head back down over the strings, earphones blocking out the world, his absenteeism and meticulously cultivated oblivion a force to be reckoned with in this life and one I do a piss-poor job in handling.

August came around. Someone told him what I wrote and told him to man the fuck up and for the first time in ages he showed up at dinner with a brief smile on his face and an offer to help clear afterwards.

Caleb is suitably disenfranchised until further notice, a lethal cat pacing in a cage of glass and designer coverings, candles lit, skylights holding back the dark weekend rain. I sent a message saying I was considering continuing as his assistant only because the pay is good but otherwise he is to stay away from me, also until further notice. He did not reply. He gave me some ground, which I needed, for I was falling into the sea. He took a hit. A big one. He stepped back far enough to concede on several points at the risk of losing his edge and lose his edge he has.

But like I said, the rain will give it back to him. This rain, it never seems to stop anymore.

The devil's in your head
Filling in the stance
God is playing dead
So save your breath

Take me all the way to the end
Show me how you want it to end
Keep dancing with the dead
Go ahead
Keep dancing with the dead

I told Lochlan that Jake was dead and then I reached over and grabbed the forty, tearing open the tin cap with wet hands, cutting my finger, telling him he could either help me or go get someone who would. He swore and took the bottle from me, winding up and throwing it overhand right off the cliff with his good arm. Next spring I'll have some lovely pale blue seaglass to collect at low tide. We've thrown a few glass things off the cliff as an experiment to see what comes back when. So far nothing.

I am less than impressed and I swear right back and he laughs and throws up his hands.

Bridget, if I let you drink yourself into a corner then I'm not doing enough. If I stop you I'm parental. I don't know what the fuck you want from me anymore but I know I'm not going to take my cue from Ben and go disappear into a fucking job or whatever but I'll be around. I'm just not so good at soothing you. 

But you are! 

No, I WAS. I used to be. And then I could hardly touch you and everything hurt so bad and it still hurts. Every fucking time it hurts like I've burned myself but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them gain ground anymore just because I'm afraid because it seems like that's our only roadblock.

What are you afraid of?

You. Jesus. You. Your feelings are so big. I don't even know how they stuffed it all inside, you must be bursting. Half the time when I hug you hard I fear you might explode and I'll be left with pink feathers. 

What a visual. 

Tell me about it. Now, the rain is getting worse so we're going to go inside and dry off and I'll make you a proper drink if you still need one but I don't think you do. I think you know what is right and wrong and maybe it's a relief to let go of Jake just a little more because it's safe to do so.

Maybe. 

Maybe's enough, Peanut. 

Good girl.

I have a new favorite place. I like to sit on the low rock wall, which is less of a wall and more of a dividing line between the two lawns behind the houses on the point.

The wall itself is four feet high and three feet wide and the perfect place to sit, overlooking the sea, high enough that the wind will braid your hair but the rain will somehow miss you in favor of soaking the grass.

I've brought sketchbooks and picnics and headphones out here. I've been out here in my pajamas and in a dress and heels. I've been mostly out here in jeans and a hoodie because lately it's been freezing cold and rainy and damp and typical, which seems like a jaded, cynical expression for someone who has been here a scant two and a half years. I'm learning to fit in, I'm trying to let go.

Jacob never brings anything here. He said he liked the sun and the rain and so I moved him from his hiding place in the garage and when Sam made a few noises about coming down to sit with me on my wall, I almost took his head off. No one comes to spend time here because this is my time with my thoughts.

It's not a question of crazy, it's a question of Jake. Jake spends a little more time hulking around in my tiny shadow than I let on. Ben knows, and therefore Ben has now issued a few (dozen) gentle ultimatums about it being time to give Jacob up, or some ridiculous notion therein. As if you can put an expiry date on mourning. He, of all people, should understand this. No one calls him on being an oversized toddler when he can no longer bottle up rage or despair or loneliness or whatever demons haunt Ben now while he sleeps because he won't let me comfort him. And I don't ask him to change a thing. He issued a few ultimatums about giving up all kinds of things and I mostly hung on for dear life to whatever good moments we found on the farm and I left the rest on the floor, neatly swept into a small pile by the door.

Two can play this game so well that it's become a choreographed dance, set to a melancholy jazz standard, ripped from the forties from a quiet smoky club where people go to forget their troubles in the bottom of a glass of liquid gold.

I'll show you my ghosts, I challenge, changing all the words until the song becomes new, unrecognizable and heard instead of tolerated. Don't ask me to change things now, I plead.

He insists that I am ready and made sure Joel and Sam were both nearby, after yesterday's explosion when I came back across the driveway slowly, in bits and pieces and I headed straight for PJ's room where I knew he hides the good stuff and PJ made a few alarmed shouts about me being too small for fifty-proof or something  (TRAITOR) and I threw one of the bottles at his head and then Lochlan locked me in a hug while Ben called Joel and then Sam.

I don't know why, I fucking hate Joel and I don't want to ever hate Sam. Sam is practically all I have left of Jake some days, since August still hasn't come out of his shell and maybe he never will. Maybe this is where people come to self-destruct. Maybe this is hell.

I lit the cigarette while Jake watched me, the rain battering us sideways but not enough to force me back indoors. My ears are buzzing and I look at him. Can he hear the buzzing or am I just lighting up like a Christmas tree? Electrocute. Whatever.

Where did you get that stuff?

Huh? Oh, I stole the cigarette from Joel and the lighter from Loch.

Do they know?

Of course not. I place a forty on the smooth flat rock. Jake laughs uneasily and glances toward the house.


You and your pockets. (I always have my hands in people's pockets. I keep up my skills in case the opportunity ever presents itself again that I can run away and never come back. Would I? You betcha.)

I shrug and take a drag. So where are you really?

What do you mean, Bridget? There is no formal purgatory, because Jesus atoned for all of our sins. Keeping me here is not for my benefit, but for yours.

What if Caleb is wrong?

About what?

You being dead after all.

Hey! A sudden yell makes us both turn and look toward the house. Lochlan is coming down across the wet grass. He looks cross. He looks rather alarmed that I am out here alone and that I'm smoking. I don't smoke. I get headaches when I smoke but for some reason it's a lesser but just as effective act of defiance as presenting to the Devil was before I wrote him off too. I'm also drunk (still) but nobody cares about that right this second.

I continue to smoke while I watch Lochlan approach. I think he might explode, the rage on his face is funny. Just what I need. A little levity. I've had some bad news, you see.

(Oh, that came out of my head in Winnie The Pooh's voice. My poor Pooh. I loved you to death.)

What the fuck, Peanut? Put that out! He takes it from my hand and takes a drag, making no move to put it out or extinguish it. I laugh and he looks at me carefully, pockets his lighter and picks up the bottle. It's still sealed. I was only considering starting a new one because there wasn't nearly enough in the other one I found. Why are you out here alone?

I look at Jake and Jake puts his finger to his lips. I look at his fingers. His huge hands that knew every inch of me and I wish he was here to look after me but he's not. Not anymore.

I was trying to think. I can't think inside right now. Everyone's freaking the fuck out and it's too loud. 

Lochlan comes right up to the wall and wraps his hands around my elbows. He presses his forehead against mine. I know, Bridge. I just don't want you to make yourself sick. Jake wouldn't want this. He wouldn't have wanted any of this pain for you.

Jake is just sitting there with a look on his face that is half-amazement that Lochlan is attempting rare comfort and half-incredulity that Lochlan is attempting to pretend he knows what Jacob would want at all. I see the look and I realize I don't know what Jacob wants either but he is fading and I have no time to ask now.

He always leaves when someone else comes around. I should take that as a hint but really I've been hoping all this time that we were having some sort of mind meld, and that he was far away, filled with regret and missing me so much he could venture into my thoughts like he used to when we lived in the castle and he was still breathing. There are things I still need to talk to him about, things I can't sort out on my own, things I need him for.

My voice comes out harsh, flat, slurred and quiet.

No one knows what Jacob wants because Jacob's dead, Lochlan. 

Between the buried and me (bring him back).

(Out of all the days I have endured, I did not expect the development that took place today. I'm drained and soon to be drunk so fuck everything and then fuck it some more.)

He threw a legal pad down in front of me and placed a fountain pen on it. The lapis lazuli one. My favorite one.

Write your own proposal. 

What? I sat up and put my wine on the table. I'm sticking close to the patient in case he starts choking again. I am assured he's fine but my head has trouble with things like promises and...words. What are you talking about? I was daydreaming, caught between the whitecaps and the clouds somewhere no one could find me. I followed his voice back. I should have stayed where I was.

Write down what you want and I'll do it. I'll either buy it or arrange it or make it or find it. 

Caleb, I-

He got down on his knees in front of me. Jesus, Bridget, I'm begging you. Do you know what this does to me? You're so close I can taste you. His thumb is rubbing against the back of my neck, his lips somewhere near my nose because he's still taller on his knees than I am sitting here on his sofa and when he says taste an electric shock kicks into my brain and gives me away.

Please. He closes his eyes. Anything you want. Just tell me and I'll give it to you. 

Since I am twelve I want to ask for a baby elephant and a candy apple but since I'm also an adult I marvel in silence at what power feels like and how sad it is in real life and I don't say anything.

He mistakes my helplessness for deep thought and looks so encouraged.

So encouraged.

I get up and scoop up the paper and pen. I write one sentence down on the page and I throw the whole pad at him in some sort of newfound rage. He is so shocked he doesn't duck and it hits him in the chest and lands on the floor. I put the pen gently down on the glass table and I watch him pick up the pad, smoothing out the pages. He orients it and reads my sentence. With incredible satisfaction and more than a little curiosity I watch as all the color drains out of his face.

There's your fucking proposal, Diabhal.

Oh, Neamhchiontach, he says.

With that my hopes are dashed. They weren't so much hopes as they were longshots. Like everyone I love. Like love itself. A fucking longshot.

It was part of the game, he whispers as he closes the distance between us in three strides, I'm so sorry.

I throw myself into his embrace and press my face against his shoulder. I hate you,  I tell him as I sag against his arms. I hate you so fucking much for everything you've put me through. 

I know you do, Bridget.

Boy on fire.

Oh, what a delicate balance I hold today on my rope as one side of the tent features a red-headed nightmare, loathe to embrace the new tenderness of my attempts to care for Satan. Yes, why do we fortify him so that he will become stronger than the rest of us once again?

That's a very good question, Lochlan.

On the other side of the tent rests Mr. Convalescence, who did in fact return to his side of the drive late this morning, and assures me that his medication was simply fucked up and too strong and no, he did not have a heart attack, even though I wondered if I was being protected, jaded in my acceptance of just about everything they ever tell me, keeping my childhood view of the world because it was safer there, for a time.

Caleb is being forthcoming. If anything, had this been more serious he might have proclaimed he could be dead before he turns fifty, thus opening the door for me to hesitate at the center of the tightrope just briefly enough for everyone to gasp with anticipation.

(That was for show, by the way. The redhead never would have let me off the ground if he thought for even a moment that I couldn't pull it off.)

Anyway, the Devil said he is feeling a million times better today (see what he did there? No? Argh.) and isn't that devilish at all right now. He's humbled, grateful and appropriate and I even went ahead and cancelled his upcoming meetings, rescheduling them for next week and I paid his bills listed on the ledger and I made a couple of phone calls on his behalf to explain he would be indisposed at least for next week to people expecting his schedule. I shopped for some groceries for him and cleaned up the boathouse. He was very pleased.

So pleased he put me back on the payroll.

Cue more redheaded indignation right there but really beyond, oh, saving Caleb's life, Lochlan's being a creep about this.  He's conflicted, surprised and shocked by how quickly he jumped in and took over the whole situation as if he does it every day.

He doesn't. He was never a volunteer firefighter with the others. He's never had any first aid training past laughing and telling me that what to do when he burns himself is swear because 'it bloody well hurts' and we all know his ability to Be There in an emergency is staggeringly lacking.

And yet there he was. Making sure Henry doesn't lose any more fathers. Making sure Bridget doesn't lose anything either because it would be too much. Too soon. Again.

So back to my leisurely unpacking of clothes I didn't wear on our break at the farm, waiting for Gage to decide if he is going to stay on past the end of next week, since Halloween was his departure date, planning for upcoming anniversaries and listening to Loch talk about how glad he is that the devil is out of his house, our makeshift circus tent, our sideshow stage, my highwire so far up you can't actually see it until the lights come on.

Your house, Lochlan? 

Oh, the look.

Shiver like a chickadee.

(It seems the only dull moments around here are the ones in which I blink. Also, I'll now be playing the role of Personal Assistant to Satan. Again. Indefinitely as requested. Sorry.)

Caleb's thumb continued to trace my ear for two more songs and then he sort of tapped my face and I looked up at him and he asked for help.

Help because he felt so sick and he didn't know what to do. And it's not like I knew what to do. Just because I'm a mother doesn't make me a general practitioner but it seems as if I'm the expert most of the time on all these things.

He said he felt as if he would throw up and I managed to get him up and was leading him to the bathroom when he fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway, taking me down with him and he threw up on the floor.

The first thing I thought was, so he really is sick and the second thing I thought was OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. And then I slipped and fell because his weight was incredible on my shoulder and he just kept on dry heaving. He couldn't catch his breath. He was struggling and I just started to scream.

For the record, I have an epic horror-movie-calibre scream.

Loch was the first one there and by now I had Caleb on his side, propped up against me and I'm trying to hold him there. The rest of the boys show up and within moments Caleb has color again. I was sent back to the main house to clean up and I stood in the shower and cried and cried and cried.

And then I couldn't cry anymore and the water got cold and I realized Ben was sitting on the other side of the shower door holding a towel for me. I realized I am paper-thin, water-soaked and torn. Fragile like a little bird with too many choices. Eat? Fly? Hunker down in the nest and ride out the storm? I don't know, for my brain is the size of a pea, my lifespan a whopping two years, if I'm lucky.

Caleb is sleeping now. Here, in the main house because I'm loathe to leave him alone and Henry is worried too but we have assured him that Caleb is okay. It was a reaction to some of the medication they keep changing to try and circumvent the headaches he's been having, which was already a bad reaction to the medication. And the bourbon he keeps drinking, even though he said he wouldn't. He'll be okay. You know, for now. Whatever that means. He's mildly dehydrated and exhausted but I know just what to do for both of those.

He will be livid that I wrote about this at all. I don't think he minds being viewed as evil, but he would never want to be seen as weak. But I had to put it somewhere or I might have exploded from the tension and from the strange turn of events that saw me go over there on a night where normally I would have chosen not to go at all.

Capitu-early, Capitulate.

But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall

I found the envelope later than usual. Lying inside the front door on the floor where I would find it easily but no one else would look and I waited and waited forever, past dinner and tea and guitars and a short meeting with Sam and some cuddle-time with Ben and then when they had all drifted away on books, music, film and quiet talk I slipped out across the driveway to the boathouse.

The door was unlocked and I slipped in quietly. No lights on. I wondered if maybe Caleb was out but I passed his car in the drive.

I walk into the living room and I see him. He is lying on the couch, blanket bunched up around him. Not just dozing but deeply asleep. The stereo is on low, abandoned to an easy-rock station singing songs from 1983 that remain seared into my brain for how ridiculously profound they were to me when most people considered them little more than pure drivel.

I sit down on the floor close to his head and reach up one hand to stroke his cheek.

He isn't scary like this.

He isn't aging like this.

His heart is perfect, like this.

It's so incredibly rare to see Caleb sleeping, it's like a gift that helps me not be so afraid of him or so quick to condemn his motives. He can't hurt me when he's sleeping. He can't inflict the damage that leaves scars that last a lifetime when he doesn't even have his eyes open. He can't unnerve me with his insistence that he isn't evil. His unconscious soul poses no threat and in the growing darkness of the unlit room his slumbering form is a comfort to remind me that I won't be alone if I don't want to be. It's a promise of a different sort with a weight that feels different. The three decades between us stretches down a different road and is so much more painful than you could possibly understand from a few recollections on a screen, written at my kitchen table with total and utter disapproval from all sides, lest I get too close to the truth. Once you arrive there, you can never leave again.

I put my head down on the couch beside his chest and close my eyes. With half an ear exposed I can no longer hear the music but my brain is filling in the lyrics with the melody just fine, a skill I continue to work on for the inevitable day when the music stops on the outside and never returns.

Caleb's hand comes down over my hair and his thumb strokes a curved line across my ear while the song swells into the final verse in my skull.

I can make tonight forever
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn
And I can make you every promise that has ever been made
And I can make all your demons be gone

But I'm never gonna make it without you
Do you really want to see me crawl?

He is not asleep after all. Never was.

All technically roses.

Every Saturday morning, early-early when the sun came up and we made lunches with fifteen minutes to spare because there was never enough time to come all the way back out to the lot to eat, I would take the strawberries outside the camper to hull. I sat on the bottom step and carefully used Lochlan's pocket knife to flick the caps into the grass. Every town we left saw a neat little pile of strawberry stems left on the grass. Composting on the run.

Once Lochlan had washed up he would return quickly to me. I slide over so he can make it up the steps around me. He turns to tell me I might be taking off too much of the good stuff. He crouches down to sit on the top step, his legs and arms coming down around me as his hands reached out to guide my fingers with the knife. Like this, Peanut, he would say, and he would curve the knife upward just a little to scoop out just green, leaving behind red and a tiny little bit of white. Then he would let go and watch as I tried to duplicate it and when I had it he would steal a single berry from the bowl between my knees and smash a soft kiss against my ear, saying we should hurry a little, that he would go make the sandwiches.

And I would go back to chopping the tops off straight across because it was so much faster and less dangerous to my fingertips and because I didn't like strawberries the way I do now. I liked apples because I could pick them up off the ground underneath almost any tree, polish them off on the hem of my t-shirt and take a bite right where I stood. A whole one would make me feel full and still I could pick up as many as I could carry back to the trailer any time I wanted, which was actually only late at night when I could hardly keep my eyes open and even the rumblings of my belly didn't lend to wanting to carry anything home other than my body on rubbery legs.

***

We now eat strawberries every single morning because they're a treat. They're still pricey in that decadent way that says you wouldn't pay four dollars a pack for anything else that would only keep for two days and because a whole bag of apples, five pounds at least, is the same price and will go that much further.

Lochlan is in the kitchen at the sink, hulling a big bowlful for the day for everyone, because he has strawberries again after I went away and didn't buy any, and he wouldn't go buy any in some sort of solidarity move to me being away and unable to share his breakfast. When I went to the store yesterday and came home, holding them up victoriously so he would have some comfort he said póg ma thoin (which means kiss my ass) under his breath but loud enough that I caught it and fired back tóg bog é (which was a warning for him to watch himself) and Gage walks in and asks what language again and Lochlan says Romanian and laughs.

Asshole.

I frown at him and tell Gage we like to keep our Gaelic up because nothing says immaturity like a secret language used around everyone else. To me it's akin to walking right past someone to whisper in someone else's ear. Gage said he didn't mind, he's seen enough in-jokes and odd allegiances here to hardly notice. I bet. Lochlan laughs again but it's bitter. He recovers enough to offer Gage some berries and Gage accepts. He's hungry.

In any case, when Ben and I came back midweek, Lochlan was waiting nervously around the front of the house, flicking his lighter, pacing in circles, juggling rocks from the garden and then the tennis balls we throw for the dog. He walked up quickly when we pulled in, opened my door and pulled me out of the truck straight into his arms. Not a hello, not a once-over, not a word, just a crushing blow of a hug that left me breathless and I held him tight as I felt every single ounce of tension rolling out of his limbs in waves. He squeezed tighter and tighter until I saw stars in the daytime and then he let go and shook Ben's hand as if he was greeting a firing squad. Ben pulled him right in and kissed the top of Loch's head and told him he was sorry for staging such an obvious coup but we would talk with Sam maybe and get past the rough parts as a team instead of factioning off. That he made a mistake but that we had been apart for so much of the summer he kind of panicked.

Kind of, he said. Huh.

Lochlan kept his nervous relief in check. He scratched his eyebrow and looked from Ben back to me, nodding. Saying we do need a little more regular help to live this way with such strong personalities in play and so many emotions involved. We all nod. This will take work. They fight for time and we need to fix this and Boom, the switch is flipped back from temperamental, demonstrative back to practical because that's how Lochlan works. No in-between, no balance. Just always getting every bit of usable strawberry or not having any at all.

We are home. I'm sure that's obvious. Eventually I always turn into a pumpkin, for moments as a princess are fleeting and happen in dreams. I can see the glitter washing away, the rivers of water slowly clouding in with streams of dirt, mud caked into the seams of my dress as they become the ribs on the rough skin on a gourd left to rot in a field somewhere.

Ben laughs when I say this but he looks sad because he's frustrated that his charm couldn't override my stubbornness.

Someone should have warned him.