I spy five birds, a small safety-pin, a pinecone, a spring and a pumpkin's grin.

Something about being sick sees me spoiled rotten, if only I were well enough to enjoy it. Trust me, I'll enjoy it when I feel better but for now I'm moved to tears every time someone comes in and sits down on the edge of the bed and says I brought you something.

Ben brought me eggs Benedict take out from the place we go to sometimes. Extra hot. With potatoes on the side and juice too. He said Feed a fever, right? And I ate everything. Then I slept, the sleep you can only have if you don't have to get out of bed ever again. It was glorious. I'm up all night so I'm enjoying the drifting off during the day. It's like being on a boat that's been cut from it's anchor except that I am double-tied.

August brought me a bracelet to balance my chakras, tying it firmly on my wrist. You need to get yourself in order, he said. I asked if he would be back later with his singing bowl and he got all excited. I will! I didn't think you were interested in that!

PJ brought me I Spy Spooky Night because I used to spend hours searching for the things in those books with the children on snow days or when they were sick in bed. He helped finish the first pages and then left me to find the rest. It'll keep you busy, he said.  

Lochlan brought contraband Laphroaig, and we had a toast to our good health and then a good ironic laugh because who is healthy? Not I. I slept hard after that. Licking gravestones is exhausting. He said, Sleep, Baby Girl, which is where Cole got it from.

Cole came and fluffed his wings and left black feathers all over the floor. When my fever broke, they were gone. Sleep, Baby Girl, indeed.

The devil brought me a visit with my soul. It's got a few cracks and when I held it up sideways, sand poured out of it in a fine stream like an hourglass. You said you'd take care of it, I accused.

I did, he said. I left it the way I took it from you, from the beach at low tide. Time hasn't marched on, Neamhchiontach. It stands still. 

Duncan came up and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Want me to sit outside your door and keep these clowns out so you can get a little rest for a couple hours or so? 

Yeah, that would be great. I smiled at him so weakly I'm sure he thinks I'm about to die but instead of panicking he pats his iPad and leans down to kiss me on the forehead. You smell funny. Have you been drinking? 

Just a toast to my good health. Apparently that's how the Scots fix everything. 

Naw, Bridge, that's how they break everything. I'm not letting him back in. 

That's fine. But only for a couple hours, okay? If I sleep too long I'll be up all night again. 

When I do wake up I have missed supper and there is a small pile of offerings beside Duncan, out on the landing in the big easy chair with the ottoman by the window.  Flowers from Corey, A whole gift basket of treats and comforts from Sam and Matt, and the promise of a Halo 5 tutorial from Dalton, because there's no local multiplayer and that sucks. And Duncan is replaced by Schuyler and Daniel, who take up residence on either side of me in bed and proceed to spend the rest of the late afternoon watching movies on my laptop and snarking on my appearance until I kick them out, replacing them with Lochlan and Ben, who now complain that the bed smells like Chanel Number five and coffee.

It does.

We change it. I am just about to crawl back in when Ben stops me, saying I really need a shower. It's been two days. I smell like a boy.

This surprises you? I laugh and then cry because I feel too weak. He reworks it to be a bath for three and we strip down and pile into a steaming hot tub, with a boy at each end and I get the middle. Ben rubs my feet while Loch washes my hair and then we add more bubbles and hot water and I float until I'm weaker still. A butter not, because now I can't move at all and this was a mistake. It wasn't though, as Ben pulls me out, wraps me in a warm towel and sends me back to bed while they go downstairs to clean up dinner.

And now I'm wide awake.

Cloudy and seventeen. Not sure if you'll get gibberish or just poor editing here so humor me.

I figured it out.

I'm allergic to rain.

It figures, since I am also allergic to cold weather, snow, wind and too-hot sun. I told this to Loch before and he laughed and agreed with me. Today he just rested the back of his hand against my forehead, frowned into my eyes and then refilled the humidifier and checked to see if my juice was still cold.

It's the high point of the day now. I get fifteen minutes with my laptop  to do emails and everything before he takes it and I go back to sleep for the rest of the day, which is dumb because today is our anniversary and it's supposed to be a special, exciting day out of the ordinary, a day in which we celebrate our fourth anniversary as old marrieds, except we're technically not married because that's illegal here but we don't really mind because this is a choice not a birthright like gay marriage and I doubt there are ever going to be a lot of people fighting to be married to more than one person at once because as everyone always says marriage is hard enough with one other person, let alone two.

Being sick is harder though so I'm going to try to get better. Rest. Fluids. Blah. The flu sucks. They let the Russian doctor (the old one, they don't trust the younger son in emergencies such as Our Princess Is Sick) all the way into my inner sanctum (bedroom) because I couldn't walk to the bathroom even and Ben helped me and then I couldn't pull the covers back up because my head hurts so bad so Ben did that too and he didn't like it so he called it in and nope, it's just the flu because there's a lot of people living here and I'm never a very good fighter so I just get everything and go down for the count while they generally work through it or fight through it and come out okay. Ben joked that if I doubled my weight I would probably be okay but then I pushed away the toast I couldn't eat. It's not going to happen any time soon.

But I still remember that morning on the cove when the fog was still low and it was chilly at sunrise and Lochlan took my hands and told me I was his heart and I thought good when he said that because mine had liquified and absorbed into my body and my hands shook because I thought my head might explode from happiness because it doesn't know what to do with that feeling, it's fleeting and unfamiliar but somehow we persevered when we were always fractured before, we made it through when we usually get so bogged down and we still have Ben with us and he's a gleeful sort of happy that doesn't go away easily anymore so maybe I can let my guard down for thirty seconds or so and just enjoy it while I get better. They've promised me scary movies and pizza in bed later and maybe a champagne toast if I'm still awake after that and god knows Ben can't keep his hands off me but Loch will probably yell at him for pushing too hard while I'm too sick to meet him halfway and that will be par for the course because that's how it goes and I don't mind, I'm just pinching my grey skin today and marvelling at how happy I am (and how pale too). Geez.

Here comes Loch. Fresh juice, grim face, a late rose from our garden in a vase, and the ipad because I can read it lying down. Things have changed from the days in the camper when he would steal bags of ice from the bin by campground office and pack them so tightly around me that he would have to sleep on the floor for the lack of remaining space.

God love him, we finally found some first-world problems to have. Don't think we don't know how lucky we are here.

Princess of good intentions.

This is what cancellation insurance looks like but it's okay, we have an open invitation to reschedule our trip (pending availability) which involved a long drive to a remote but exceedingly well-appointed mountain cabin for a close but far getaway for three. A staffed cabin with wi-fi and a huge bathtub and four fireplaces so 'cabin' might be selling it short, here.

Except I woke up with a fever of a hundred and four and chills and delerium and hallucinations and can't walk a straight line to save my soul. Caleb told me I'm allergic to being without him. Ben said he knew the fact that I had the sniffles and was uncharacteristically draggy and uninspired this week was going to result in something awful and Lochlan said You have the flu. We'll go another time.

I laughed and told him I said already I wanted to spend our anniversary in bed and it looks like I got my wish.

Netflix and chill it is.

Or I suppose, Netflix and chills.

Microjunkie.

I sat through my sessions this morning with Claus,  then with August and Sam and then with Joel too and then finally I was released to Daniel who helped me soak off the nail tips and all of the acrylic goo. I wound up with my fingers wrapped in acetone and tinfoil for the better part of forty minutes, all told, but there's no damage to my actual nails and I can feel my fingertips again.

What an awful feeling. I can only imagine what breast implants feel like. God.

I promptly painted my very short nails black and now I feel like me again.

***

Lochlan was gone for the morning, heading out with Ben for a monthly No Girls Allowed breakfast in which they discuss me (I could tell because my ears were burning) and then he worked for a couple hours and now he's home. I have to pack for our trip but he won't tell me where we're going, only that it involves a little bit of everything so dress comfortable.  I will probably just let him pack for me then. Ben came back in between and said Loch seemed lifted and confident, happy instead of defeated, humiliated and in turmoil. Then Ben looked up and said he didn't mean to say that and I said he should have, that if everything is sugar-coated then nothing is good for me, right?

And he said if you're finally fixed after all these years what are we going to do with all of this new free time, Bee? 

We're going to fuck, Ben. We're going to fuck like rabbits and it's going to be so good you won't remember that there was a Before Normal and After Perfect.

I love it when the strangest, filthiest things come out of that perfect little mouth. 

Come out? 

I mean go in. 

Jesus, Ben. 

You started it. 

***

What happens when he comes looking for you?

I keep doing what I've been doing, Loch. We've had breaks before. 

Is that what this is? A break?

I don't know what this is, to be honest. I just don't want to hurt you. 

Maybe we're even now. 

Maybe. 

He squeezes my hand and I squeeze back as one of those concrete-kisses lands against my forehead. Every kiss, each word has weight with this one. Every gesture has a meaning a thousand layers deep. Every emotion is turned inside out and worn for all to see. If ever there was a mate to the soul I used to have then it's definitely his.

Part 2: Death of a Party.

Ben looks at me in the candlelight but doesn't address me directly. It's like I'm not in the room but no way is Lochlan going to take his eyes off me for a second.

Let her have what she wants, Brother. Be generous. It works. 

I can't. Loch is stoic and anguished. He'd like to be as confident as Ben but most of the time Ben finds his courage in a barrel, bottled after twelve or twenty years.

He can't have her the way he wants and so all this does is function as a transaction. She keeps her predictable routine, he goes away for a little while. You don't want him leaning on her or you, for that matter, if she puts him off indefinitely.

I don't want him touching her.

Don't think about it like that. Think about her coming back to you.

Hey. I almost shout it from my place beside the window and they both stop and look at me. If you don't want me to go, we won't go. If it's not a good time or you think I can get around it some other way then I will. I don't want you to be so unhappy, Loch. 

Since when do you listen to me. 

I'm trying to be...um..useful. Proper. Righted. Less insane. 

You're not insane, Baby-

I know exactly what I am. And you still want me anyway. You think I'm going to risk that now? 

***

Five in the morning and I crawl into bed with the Devil. He left lights on and glasses out. He really thought I would cave in and come to him but I didn't. Not the way he wanted me to, anyway. He wakes up slowly. I watch his eyelashes flutter and his head lift in confusion, arms coming down around me. The horns are hidden, the goatee gone, and all he is now is a man in pajama pants and tangled sheets. A restless sleeper. A devil with his stinger removed.

He clutches me tightly against his chest.

I'm going to miss you, Diabhal, I whisper but I don't think he's still awake to listen.

Part 1: Death of the party.

I could hear people as I moved from room to room, checking to see that food was being circulated, drinks refilled and everything was clean. I don't have to do this, it's technically Caleb's job once I make the calls, but it feels like my responsibility all the same. Plus I hate mingling with people I don't know but who know me, or at least like to pretend they do.

Someone grips my elbow a little too tightly in her claws. I turn to see one of the wives of Caleb's former partners from Ontario, with garish makeup settled into the lines on her face that even a stellar plastic surgeon couldn't erase.

I hear you are the party planner? Can you tell me more about the fire juggler? I think I'd like to hire him for a night-or maybe a lifetime! She cackles as I move to the window and look out, ignoring her. Loch is in the driveway surrounded in a half-circle by Caleb's cronies. He's dispensed with the flowy flammable shirt but kept the vest on with those tight jeans (not mine) and is throwing his batons to raucous applause. He's concentrating but charming too. Smiling, and keeping up a banter with the crowd but sometimes letting the conversation fade as he does more difficult throws.

He looks damned hot.

(Mine.)

The woman with the claws chases up behind me. Maybe you have a card for him?

I turn and try not to glare at her. That's my husband.

Oh, I didn't know. I thought you and Caleb were-

No, Caleb is my brother-in-law. I don't want to do this right now. I want to escape.

Oh, I was mistaken then. I heard through the grapevine that you were together. She looks doubtful.

No, sorry.

Maybe you can play matchmaker for me then, if Caleb is the eligible bachelor?

Isn't your husband out there? I point toward the driveway crowd and she laughs harder and pats my arm sympathetically, because I don't get her joke. I excuse myself finally and head outside to watch Lochlan, with a bottled water for him. He gets warm, unsurprisingly, when he performs.

He sees me and wraps it up. Maybe later on I'll do a little more. Thanks for the attention, kind folks. A hat is passed. They don't realize he isn't hired entertainment. He collects some six hundred dollars and change, several business cards for people who want to hire him and far too many admiring stares from the women in the group.

He hands me the hat and shrugs. I don't know who it belongs to. And then he kisses my forehead and wraps his arm around my neck. Several people remain, watching openly as he stares at me, with that look that we exchange that apparently makes other people burst into flames on the spot.

Case in point as Caleb steps forward, putting a hand on Lochlan's back.

You're a hit, he says. Caleb is dressed (not at all ironically) as the Devil, but in a seventies cut three-piece pinstripe disco suit and he has shaved his facial stubble into a goatee. He added horns from a theatrical makeup kit and all-black contact lenses that color his entire eye surface. They're bottomless and hungry. They're frightening too. His costume seems so normal and yet out there for him. He rarely dresses up.

He is frightfully drunk as well and has forgotten Lochlan hates his guts.

You two. When Ben goes to bed, come back for a nightcap.

Not tonight, asshole, Loch tells him and picks up the torches.

Maybe. We'll see. I'd rather leave Caleb twisting in the wind then outright angry at our refusal.

Bridget- Loch's warning is predictable.

We'll see how tired I feel. I smile at Caleb. Trying to keep the peace and pull the rug out from under him at once. I bat my giant fake eyelashes at him and he grins dazzlingly back at me.

Go have a coffee and some sugar, baby. That will perk you up. He kisses my cheek and heads back into the house.

Save the night.

Lochlan leans back against the headboard and closes his eyes, the quilt pulled up to his waist, a stupid sleepy smile on his face. Had it been 1985, 1995 or 2005 he would have lit a cigarette by now but it's 2015 and he doesn't smoke anymore. No one is allowed to smoke in the house anyway.

Bandraoi-

I smile. Come on. We have to get ready. It's late.

It's true. You are.

I know.

***

Caleb is throwing a party tonight, at the new house since it's staged perfectly (still, having come with the few pieces that populate its rooms) and isn't a place where anyone lives, therefore being perfect and mysterious for the man who loves keeping people guessing all the time. The theme is the 1960s and so I'm going as Twiggy, which mostly involves platform boots and eyelashes. Ben is being Elvis, but from the bloated Vegas years with prescription bottles spilling out of his costume and a toilet seat glued to his behind, and Lochlan is going to be..

Wait for it.

Janis Joplin.

Because he can, though I suggested he borrow my skinny jeans and go as Robert Plant. He didn't think that would be as fun.

Our escape plan is simple. Eat some salmon canapes with capers (flesh d'oeuvres), have a couple glasses of blood-red champagne or black punch and then run like the fucking wind when all of the networking people have left because the minute they do the devil puts a target on my back. Halloween is his thing, only Loch put the kibosh on that already earlier in the fall by planning a little romantic getaway for the three of us to celebrate our anniversary next week. We won't be here, so Caleb acted quickly and threw together this little shindig and surprisingly had a great amount of positive RSVPs. I arranged for the decorator and the caterer myself and didn't have to buy a thing for my outfit save for the false eyelashes.

Ben had a costume in his closet.. Because...yeah..stretch satin with sequins. We don't go there. I want to hope it's from Halloween years ago but..you just...never...know.

We're not even going to talk about the whole Janis thing but if you saw Lochlan's hair right now you would nod enthusiastically and say yes, that's perfect. I straightened his hair for him this morning already and the humidity brought a little wave back into it and it's well past his shoulders again and nothing short of hilarious so why the hell not?

(And yes, we'll pat him down for weapons before we go.)

The best part of this party will be the scary SWAG bags I have for everyone as they leave. I stole the idea from a tech party I went to at the aquarium once and it's going to be awesome. They have glow sticks, masquerade masks, white candles that drip red wax when lit, a candy apple, chocolate eyeballs, lady fingers and gift cards for the movie theater with free popcorn but only if they use them for horror movies. They are wrapped in a bag with Frankenstein's monster silk-screened on the outside. It's reusable but I'm guessing only someone like me would use it as a daily driver.

I did good. The Devil is proud.

Let's see if he will be harmless.

Better yet! Let's see who he dresses up as!

I'm sorry for breaking your heart.

I bought Adele's new single before I was even out of my pajamas. And then I tested the turkey soup from Christmas, thinking it was bad and it wasn't and I ate two bowls full and now my belly hurts but it's Friday so I'll soldier on.

Oh. When the chorus kicks in at 1:09. That VOICE. Jesus. She's amazing.

Did I mention it's Friday?

Did I mention they're all hovering close, being kind and quiet and sweet, waiting for me to self-destruct with regret over not reading the letters, especially since I am the Most Curious Person In The World but it seems like I'm tired of my own shit. I'm tired of dead people running my life. I'm tired of memories sabotaging what could have been perfectly good days if only I had let them see the sun, instead trampling them down flat and pulling a black cloud over the tops of them until they had no tools with which to thrive and I had nothing handy with which to change. Maybe I just reached a point with a plan to get through the future in case it doesn't go according to plan and a whole different plan to just be happy. Guarded but happy. Bearing my scars without any goddamned apologies anymore but smiling up front so you see it first, before you can see how horribly disfigured I am when the whole picture comes into focus.

No more apologies.

No more ghosts.

Temporary? Sure. I don't know. I wanted some of my own power back and I got it. Maybe it's just a strong day. Maybe I'm trying to hard to honor everyone, honoring those who stuck around and made the effort to put up with me and withstand my doubt, my mistrust and my terrible insecurities that drown everything within a seven-hundred mile radius, a veritable tsunami of refusal to let you forget I got my heart broken so badly it couldn't be fixed.

But it still works and that's the important part.

That's the bottom line.

That's the road home.

And now I honor myself.

Because *I* deserve it. I'm still here. I deserve to be loved. I deserve to be happy. I deserve this.

I also...really deserve not to be listening to these triumphantly sad songs at six o'clock in the morning, don't I?

Appearances.

Wowee. I get to spend the afternoon with Caleb and Lochlan at the high school for our parent-teacher interviews in which we are asked what we do while they prepare their notes on our children. Caleb always says he's a solicitor, which sounds pretentious as fuck and then I watch him pale when I point out I was a circus performer but now I'm a stay-at-home mom.

Executive Assistant, Caleb will correct me.

Temporarily, yeah. I'm a temp then. Everything is temporary anyhow, I tell the teachers with a smile and they wonder what I did in the circus just like they wonder what life is like at our home address because people talk and everyone knows Henry and Ruth live in a commune.

Caleb will be satisfied with Henry's high marks and efforts in class, while Lochlan will fret every last vestige of his quite unscholarly genetics that leave teachers telling us Ruth is such a sweet girl but she daydreams and if she only applied herself, she would go places. Loch will look up from a dizzying pile of hard-fought essays and say This is how I know she WILL go places. Because she doesn't want to be in here doing reports. 

Pro. Found./ Am. Lost.

I turned my head and Sam threw it all into the fire. Three in the morning, pitch-dark sky, bone-chill wind, unread words on pages I didn't even unfold. He dug until he found everything that remained (things I had no energy to look for because every time I did it felt like someone was standing on my chest, keeping me from breathing, proper) and then he burned it all. Loch lit the fire, Ben took up sentry duty, throwing his arms wide or taking a step to block me every time I moved.

I used that fire to warm my bones and I refused to give the momentum any weight at all. I refused to acknowledge this big thing, the fact that every time I walked in on him ostensibly writing a sermon over the course of eighteen months, that he was living a lie and writing me a goodbye letter instead, which is why this fire tonight burns so large, so brightly.

So many letters I'll never read. So many words, up in smoke. Ideas sparked and dead in the ashes. Like Jake. It serves no purpose to read his words any more. I know what it was. I know what he could and couldn't do. It still amazes me to think about how he wasn't strong in the end, something he raked Ben through fire for, because he was afraid the mirror would show his own face instead of Ben's.

Lochlan, bless his heart, hasn't said a word. The tears rolled down my face and he took his entire flannel-covered forearm and wiped my face and simply turned me back to Sam to watch the flames until they died too. Like Jake. Like the letters I will never know, or the man I didn't get to grow old with because I was tough and he was a goddamned chickenshit.

Be angry, Sam says. This is good. 

What is? Memory Rage? The only person I can take it out on isn't here anymore. How is this good?