Keeping it chill for the next two weeks. Here we go, folks.

Henry is sick and convalescing at the boathouse today, playing video games and watching movies with Caleb. Ruth is working on some drawings with Daniel next door because she can leave her stuff all over the kitchen there and no one makes her clean it up at mealtimes.

I am waiting patiently at my place at the kitchen island here at home because PJ is making me a Monte Cristo. It's obvious who loves me most.

He turns around with the plate in hand, the perfect meal for me.

You know you want to marry me. I'd make these for you every day. 

Then we could share the same jeans, Peej. Because I'll be as big as you sooner rather than later. 

We should share them now if you want to get in here with me. 

You guys should get a room. Gage walks in because he smelled food.

You're absolutely right. PJ winks at me and I throw a grape at him. Perv. Hush now. 

Bridget, you just keep denying me, I'd be so perfect for you. I cook and clean and everything. 

Yup, the perfect wife. What would that make me?

Uh..spoiled?

No, it would make me the man in the relationship. 

I'm down with that. 

We should test that theory! 

Huh? It was figurative, Bridge! 

Why be figurative when you can be literal! Stay here and bend over the counter. I'll be right back. 

Where are you going?

To find Schuyler. Or Matt. Or anyone really. We'll just turn the lights out. 

You're a little monster. 

Hey, if I'm the guy I get to violate you any way I want. I just need a primer on technique.

You just...you just be quiet and eat your sandwich, little miss! Jesus! I'm shocked at the things in your head. 

Oh my God, PJ, I'm KIDDING. 

I know that, now like I said, EAT YOUR SANDWICH. 

Lochlan comes in. Wow. Bit harsh, Padraig. What's up?

The dirty mind on this one. WE'VE RUINED HER. 

Lochlan shakes his head. Nah, Brother, I think she ruined us. He takes half my sandwich and walks back out of the room, winking at me as he goes.

I DID NOT! I chase after him. I want my sandwich back.

Beginning of Six.

I didn't write yesterday. I spent it in a stupor after I looked at the calendar and realized, oh, yeah that was six years ago today that I walked down to the church late one night to ask Jake to stop working and come home and sleep already and he told me he was done.

Jake was never a person to put down roots past the windy cliff where he grew from a boy into a man. He lived with few possessions and traveled on whims that would have left most people clinging to civilization. He spent months in places like Nepal and India and Brazil. He stood high above every cloud, a blonde viking with a need to find God in tangible form and once he even said he found God in me but I'm almost sure now it was less of a revelation and more of a wishful thought.

Sam came to me last night and took the brandy away and said I really should read those remaining letters now, he made copies of everything, scanning them into the computer so that I could easily read them on the iPad or whatever but I've never opened them. They just sit.

Sam put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head and told me I am doing great.

He lies so easily. I think God gives him that power.

I told him it wasn't comforting so he shifted gears and told me to come watch television with him and we went and curled up on the couch like cats and we never turned on the television at all. He surfed emails on his phone without answering any and I fell asleep in his warm arm the moment my feet left the floor.

When I woke up this morning I was still there and so was he only someone had tucked a blanket around us. When I woke up I couldn't catch a full breath because the weight on me is so heavy. I hate Halloween. I hate that his birthday is right there and that we could have grown old together but we won't now because he took that, he took everything with him and it all smashed to bits on the pavement along with him. He took future memories and plans and my love for him and he broke it without asking.

He took Himself too. Capitalized because nothing says The Lord quite like a large nonexistent entity you pray to, worship and feel all around you all the time. God has a name and His name is Jake and He has forsaken me but I still believe in Him. Sam laughs and shakes his head and feels helpless and quiet and resigned.

Ben couldn't take the bend in my life right on this week each year that has permanently changed everything, preventing the past from colliding with the present, keeping the future just out of reach. I can't reconcile anything past 2007 so instead I retreat to happier times when I was young and knew nothing but hunger pangs and starry eyes, when I first learned that falling in love makes your body feel the same swoop of your internal organs flying out of place and your heart hitting your ribcage at a hundred miles an hour that you get when you take a ride at an amusement park and then later when you swing high above a crowd on a trapeze.

And then later still when the fear comes crashing in and everything is ripped away, including your confidence in a net below, and you are left cold, afraid of everything and stubborn as all fuck because life isn't a show after all. You can't pick your props, plan your acts or take just one more ride so you better enjoy it while it lasts. Revel in those lights, scream when your heart makes the leap and love for everything you're worth because you might turn out to be fool's gold and won't that be a goddamned surprise.

Oneironauts.

I'm on the floor in the hallway, the pale light of the moon spilling across my forehead as I sit holding a bomb in my hands.

Lochlan holds his lighter out. The old scratched silver zippo. Take it, blow this world up already. I'll take whatever knocks come my way and we'll be okay after that.

Jake bends down in front of me and tells me heaven is such a beautiful place and at least when Caleb kills me I'll have that to look forward to, that eventually we'll all be there together again, except for Caleb, because he'll be in the other place. I don't think Jake is speaking out loud. He's talking in my brain again, the way he always has since he flew.

How do you know I won't go to hell too? I ask him. I wrap my arms tighter around the bomb and try to use my body to shield it from them in case they try to take it.

Because you're a good human, Bridget. Duncan leans up against the doorframe, aviators on at night in the dark. He's never very far away, bless his heart and the minute I finished writing yesterday he kind of appeared on the fringes, put down the fucking perpetual beer and tuned in again. I must be so special.

Because you haven't done anything wrong, Dude. Dalton's voice. Teflon Jesus, loved by everyone, sticks only to himself. For a long time I thought he was gay but it turns out he's just very discreet and not at all prone to the sort of boasting the others can get into when speaking of their conquests. He calls me Dude. He says it keeps him from getting too attached. I told him he was being ridiculous and he assured me that no, he wasn't.

That's bullshit. Cole scowls it from the corner, where he takes up the space from floor to ceiling with his glorious black wings extended properly. Everyone takes a step back and he reminds me that Caleb doesn't let go. Never has, never will and I only encourage him even as I think I'm weaning him off me somehow or letting him have what he wants in hopes every time will be the last time but it never is. You couldn't be faithful if you tried. I think the brain damage you blame on my brother is from the endless microscopic attention you've had from all of us all these years. It turned you into a tiny little pleaser with zero interests in anything but that attention. It doesn't matter who loves you because it will never be enough.

I hope his voice is only in head, because his words are humiliating and true. Growing up, nothing fed my ego until it was full like a handful of boys fighting over me. Even then, the rumblings of its hunger practically knocked me down as I stood in place.

Do it, Peanut. Take the leap. Please the crowd! Loch swings nearer on ropes now, holding out the lighter. I hear him over the roar of the audience. No one ever lets the juggler up on the trapeze. This is an unbelievable moment in the history of the show. And I am a part of this special moment. Holy cow.

I'm thinking about it! I make him promises so old they're covered with dust. He reaches down and blows the dust away. It gets in my eyes and now I'm blind and deaf. You won't, Bridget, because you know I'll be collateral damage. Why don't you worry about you for a change?

Any satisfaction I get won't be worth the cost. Didn't you tell me that once? Weigh the cost against the reward. Sure we can pickpocket the expensively-dressed marks but they're more likely to have lawyers and press charges. Charges stay with you forever. Kind of like promises that don't keep even though they're supposed to. 

Christian turns his head away. Enough. Let her be. She's not old enough to make these decisions. Should have left her home. 

I told you I'll look after her, Lochlan steps up and flicks the lighter for the hundredth time and I cover the fuse of the bomb with my hand so he can't light it.

But you really don't, and that's why we're in this mess. PJ snorts his derision. Ben leans forward from where he sits silently (because he isn't here he's never here he should be here) and kicks PJ in the shin.

I can fix this with money. Caleb steps forward, scratching his car key against his nails. He's taller than Lochlan by a head but Lochlan gives him a shove anyway. Stay out of this, Diabhal. She's mine. Besides, don't you have a law exam to study for?

She doesn't belong to anyone. Therefore she gains nothing by blowing up everything. She's smart. She knows exactly what she's doing. Have faith that we raised her right and she'll do the right thing. I nod at him, pleased that he has complimented me and so I give him the bomb and he takes it and holds a gun up to my head instead.

Besides, if she tries this again I'll light the bomb myself and make her swallow it whole. 

Jacob cries out in protest and disappears as I struggle against the gun. Caleb squeezes the trigger and the gun goes off but it isn't pointing at me anymore, it blows a hole in Lochlan the size of his heart and he drops like a rock.

When I wake up screaming Lochlan is beside me and the hole in him is gone. I touch the spot on his chest where the hole was and start blubbering about dreams and big round black cartoon bombs with white-string fuses and Duncan's sunglasses. Loch pulls me in against the not-hole and puts his head down on mine and he nods. He nods and he says the most ridiculous thing.

I know. Cole was there too and I think the lecture he gave was the most I ever heard him say at once. Freaky, hey?

The music soared up and over and then right through me as I walked in the door.

Oh My God! What IS that? I asked the Devil, who sat in his favorite chair with coffee and his laptop.

His whole face broke into a smile. I think of this as your theme song these days, Bridget.

He wasn't kidding.

When she was just a girl
She expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
And the bullets catch in her teeth

Life goes on
It gets so heavy
The wheel breaks the butterfly
Every tear, a waterfall
In the night, the stormy night
She closed her eyes
In the night, the stormy night
Away she'd fly.

And dreamed of paradise

When it was over he turned it off and stood up. I know what you're going to ask and the answer is no.

You didn't even hear me out.

Bridget the point of toying with Ben's resolve is that it brings more gradual results. Do you remember what happens when Lochlan is tested?

He gives up. 

He gives up! Indeed he does! Caleb is shouting now. Maybe you'd prefer I bring Ben back so I can work on Lochlan instead! Is that what you're asking me to do? At the end of the day, Princess, you have to ask yourself, who is the strongest one of all? It's like Snow White only it isn't. It's Cole Black and you don't get to be the fairest anymore, nor is this a story with a happy ending. It could have been once, but you just refuse to cooperate. 
 

Ben and Bridget hatch a plan.

Ben has had a haircut and a decent shave at the same time. I only know about the shave because when he does it himself he misses the entire ridge underneath his heavy jaw and the barbershop doesn't.

The things you notice, being five feet tall.

He is sitting up straight and open to whatever castigation he thinks he is due. Maybe Batman has rubbed off on him, Ben is staying with him at the condo downtown. Or maybe not. Ben is wearing my favorite T-shirt. The one that says Pipers do it with Amazing Grace. His bagpipes have been sitting on a shelf in the closet since last summer. With our marriage, his pride and my ego for good measure.

Do you know what you're doing?

No, Ben, do I ever? 

He smiles. God, he looks so tired it makes my heart ache. Be careful you don't get bitten, Bee. 

He does not mean this figuratively. I won't. He only comes close now. Still hurts though.

Bridget-

I'm fine. 

Are you?

No. When are you coming home?

I thought you had given up on me. His face is ashen.

Nope. I'm still waiting for you to grow up and be the man I've caught glimpses of in tough times. Are you telling me the only time you have your shit together is when you absolutely have to? 

You tell me. You know me better than I know myself. 

I thought I did, but I'm not sure anymore. 

His eyes fill up. Whatever hope he had a minute ago is gone again. So what do I do now? 

Come home and grow up. I will too. We can graduate together and join the adults.

They'll never believe you're a grownup. You're just too short. 

I'll wear lots of makeup and say 'Motherfucker' every second word. 

That might work. 

Let's hope. I'll talk to Caleb okay? Cross your fingers. 

I don't think adults cross their fingers for luck.

Oh, then forget the whole thing. We'll stay kids.

He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. It disappeared into his huge angular fingers and I took my turn to drown in the view.

Don't you cry, Bumblebee, we'll get there. He holds my hand up to his lips for a moment and then he gets up and makes his way out of the coffee shop. I stand up because I want to follow him but I forget PJ is at the next table until I take a step and he reaches out and grabs the back of my coat.

Don't make me chase you too, Bridge. If you're as fast as Loch is, I'm in big trouble.

I debated it anyway. I'm much faster than Lochlan and all I wanted to do was run after Ben. Instead I took PJ's hand and went home.

Motherfuck.

The boy with the blue-collared shirt.

The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame

It was eighty thousand dollars.

That's why we took it. That's sort of enough money to sock away for a day so rainy an ark appears on the horizon to bring us to biblical safety. Not sure if you've ever been poor or ever been sweetly coerced into doing something you can't help doing because it's so compelling but lets just say I earned it all, rounded down to the nearest nickel, because every penny no longer exists to count now, does it?

Caleb offered that amount because he knows I wouldn't go for less. I'm now the Linda Evangelista of Executive Assistants, since I won't get out of bed for less than twenty thousand dollars a day and sometimes you can't get me out of bed at all.

I don't have to justify it, he is becoming known for moving large sums of cash to get me to cooperate because Lochlan's too practical to refuse and yet I am becoming a little too worldly for my own good here at home where we live in a palace of marble, hemlock, slate and glass by the sea and still I hang-dry all of our clothes on the drying rack in the laundry room because it knocks fifty dollars off the hydro bill every second month, and that makes me really proud.

It flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught, and so when I die you'll probably find my body frozen in a little house that ran out of wood for the fire because I was too cheap to buy more. A house wallpapered in hundred dollar bills.

Case in point, Lochlan came into the kitchen not far behind me to help with lunch. Did I mention the almost-visible tether? He was so angry. So, so angry. But resigned. Or tired. Or just demoralized. I don't even know but no more anything until he feels better. No more bullshit foolishness until he has restored his faith in my loyalty to his own satisfaction. I am now bound to him until further notice. I don't mind.

I asked him if he could get the prosciutto from the fridge. He opened the fridge and stared inside. The package was right in front, on the shelf at eye level.

Loch.

Yes?

Can you hand me the prosciutto? Maybe his mind is wandering.

The ham?

Prosciutto. Yes.

This ham? The thin-slice stuff?

It's called prosciutto.

We call it ham, Bridget. His voice is a warning and I heed it.

Pass me the ham, then, please?

Sure, Peanut. Coming up.

The look on his face is fierce. Fucking fierce. I think he liked it better when I knew nothing. Like the first time I tried beer when I was in Grade three.

What is it?

It's a drink made with grains and yeast.

Oh, like pancakes!

No, not like pancakes, Bridget.

Like Apple Jacks?

No. Not even. Here. Try a sip and you'll see.

It looks like liquid pancake bubbles.

What kind of pancakes are see-through, Bridget?

Magical transparent pancakes, Loch. Transpancakes. Pancarents. This beer is yucky, by the way.

You'll like it in a few years, I bet.

Nope. Can I have orange juice?

Orange juice? We don't have any juice on the beach. Why would you want juice at nine at night?

I always have juice with pancakes.

He tipped the beer up and finished the whole little bottle all at once. I watched him. Why did you do that?

Because you're frustrating.

I'm sorry.

Don't be. I like the way your brain justifies things you don't understand yet. If you can hold on to that, it will make for a great coping mechanism some day. 

What's a coping mechanism, Loch?

It's a...it's like always having a magical pancake in your pocket in case you need it. 

Oh, then I'm gold.

He just opened another beer and laughed.

An aside:

You can stop sending me your dizzying parallel conclusions to the new Bridget Jones' Diary in which supposedly tragedy has ensued. I haven't read any of it, since this Bridget has her own diary. I read a blurb in the paper about it today though. Apparently widowhood is an "underexplored area in literature" and is going to be an emerging 'trend' because of an aging demographic.

Thanks. We've been writing about it over here since 2006 but not because it's trendy.

Metachisms (acknowledge the power if you use it).

She gets the magic power of the music from me.

Thought control is such a bitch, isn't it? It's exhausting and unpredictable and difficult when there's a redheaded conscience inside your brain fighting every last suggestion with fists and grit and heart. That's what's missing here, because Lochlan's heart pumps a gazillion gallons a second of indignant, mischievous lava through his veins and Caleb's is icy cold, faulty, slow, proper and wizened.

There's no heart in this. No desperate love, no incredible tilting lurch from my own chest when he makes his moves. It's not a game, after all and I am so slow to learn. So slow I think I might be learning-disabled.

And I told Caleb all of this on the way home and he kept trying to get me to shut up, to just listen. To stop. Just stop, Bridget, and catch your breath and stop trying to rationalize things that are meant to happen. 

Fuck you. This isn't a thing. This is a business arrangement and I hate it. My candor surprised and unhinged him and he didn't say much else for the remainder of the flight. He sat and read and checked his phone and his watch alternately and pretended he wasn't upset.

 Ten minutes before we landed he hands me a cheque.

I rip it in half and he rolls his eyes. Isn't it worse if you do it for 'nothing'? 

I don't know yet. 

Oh. Well. Maybe Lochlan will tell you what answer to give me. 

Lochlan did indeed. He took the money first though. Or rather, he made me take it.

Mad cash.

When you wake is everyone dreaming
When you wake you waste away
Heaven says that you are a sinner
So go back down you can't come in

He's so good at reverse psychology. He told me I wasn't safe with him and so I set out to prove him wrong.

No, I said, as I tried to limber up my stiff fingers and aching joints. I'm fine. You won't hurt me.

He didn't say anything. It was as if we had chosen to ignore the glaringly obvious in favor of embracing my defiance like the sun emerging from the clouds after a week of rain, stubbornness burning our flesh into cinders and ash when it was so very simple to nod and turn around and run.

A clear memory smacks me across the brain just then of a day when I was nine and Caleb held out a huge bouquet of wildflowers at the ball field. 

For the little princess, he said, and he took a drag from his cigarette. Player's Light. He was almost seventeen and so cool we had freezer burn. 

Thanks, I said as I took the flowers from him. I spun with them in my sundress and as I turned I saw Lochlan hurrying across the field to us. 

Bridgie, come here! He called. 

I dropped the flowers and ran to him. My nine-year-old self knew better than to be close to the Devil. Not like anything has changed. 

Except everything has changed. Cole is dead. The boys are divided into loyalty camps, set to deploy at any moment. Jacob and Ben have since come and gone and now I am here trying to maintain an existence for us without any marketable skills.

Marketable skills, I said. Know there is a difference.

I didn't say it would be pretty and I know it's against Lochlan's bombproof judgement but it needs to be done and if it takes fifty percent of me then there's still fifty percent of me that might make it.

No one is happy but I'm stubborn and ready to prove everyone wrong. I can handle this, I think. I'm a professional at difficult lives and frightening moments with the Devil. I almost believe him now when he promises not to kill me, because he smiles when he says it, crossing his heart, hoping to die. And sometimes, in the dark, far from home, when my hands are clenched into knots I hope so too.

Standing on the edge of a feather.

I'll ask myself
do you need to question everything?

He sits back in his chair, loosening his tie with one hand, pocketing his phone with the other.  Caleb is off the clock now. No more working lunches, no more meetings and hand-pressing and introductions and due diligence and charm. Just this beautiful table with candles and quiet conversation all around us. It's dinner time and it's very late. Neither one of us are hungry until after eleven. The time difference is hard.

He orders sparkling water. I barely got cleared to fly and he's not supposed to drink so here we are with the Gerolsteiner and a basket of bread I want to demolish with my bare hands but I wait obediently while he plates a slice, tears off a small bit, butters it and holds it out to me. I'm a handfed mouse. A pet.

I reach past his hand and grab the whole slice and stuff it in my mouth. It makes me laugh and I can't close my mouth so I clap both hands over my face and dissolve into giggles.

He's amused and horrified all at once. You're all savages, aren't you?

Yes. Yes, we are. And you can't fix it. But in my house the bread is fought for and hard won or you don't get any at all.

You keep me young.

You're not mine to keep.

Yes I am.

Well I don't want you. I wink at him and pick up my glass.

You're here.

This is business.

And cold.

That's how I survive you. I don't get sucked in.

There's no tenderness here, is there? He sits forward abruptly, his eyes sharp. Blue daggers stabbing me over and over until I'm dead but still sitting pretty.

Why would there be?

I think there are unresolved feelings between us.

Well there aren't.

Your tough-girl act won't hold up long tonight, Bridge. He signals for the bill. It comes within seconds and he signs his name with his usual CXC in a blocky flourish. We're off before I can finish my second act. Before we have had chance to order food.

He squeezes my elbow far too hard as we're walking out of the restaurant to the point where I start looking for escape. But this city is too big for me and I see none that isn't a bigger risk. When we are safely back in the suite he orders up champagne that I resolve not to touch. So he drowns me in it instead.

***

When I wake up I can't swallow or unclench my fists.  My brain sifts through a grey powdery fog and finds nothing. I can't talk. I stare at my hands. They won't budge. Music pounds through my skull and I think, oh, here we go, my brain has finally rebelled and my lobotomy will come from within.

I pull the headphones out by the wires and flex my hands. Caleb comes through the door with a tray with coffee. He looks fine.

Everything hurts, I tell him through gritted teeth. One eye watches him warily, the other wanders lazily around, inspecting the shabby reproduction antiques at will, pulsing to the beat of my heart, speeding up as I try and take a deep breath but that hurts too. Oh my God.

He stares at me for a long time and then he almost smiles as if he can't believe his good fortune. He seems amused and amazed, surprised at himself just enough that one of my eyes catches it.

You aren't safe with me. 

I know. 

Then why are you here?