What had come as no surprise to me was equally not a surprise to Jacob who suspected and probably knew deep down all along, paperwork be damned. The children were the reason he pushed so hard for me to leave Cole and let him in.

But they weren't enough of a reason to stay. Like me.

Bridget, I wasn't strong enough to stay. I was a coward and a loser and I let the three of you slip through my fingers. 

I sat and stared at him for so long he asked me if I was alright.

Alright? Am I alright? No. I don't think I am. 

You should go back to the house. 

Ben will come for me. 

You were hoping that had I known Henry was my own that I would have never left and everything would have been different and things would be okay and I'd still be there to this day. 

Something like that. 

Life is messy, honey. 

It's a nuclear holocaust, Jakey. 

And just as if on cue I could hear Ben yelling my name. I stood up so quickly I saw black spots in front of my eyes. I'm late for the party. I have to go. 

Bridget. Don't leave yet. We-

The door is open. If you want to go you can go. 

Bridget-

Just know you can go. You don't have to stay here anymore. 

Wait! 

But I left. I didn't say goodbye or anything else. I need to go celebrate how fucking ridiculously human we are. I really need that lobotomy now, Sam. And I need to go marvel at how wonderfully this child of mine has grown in spite of his tremendously fucked-up parents.

Ghost recon.

Back to the concrete room this morning, slipping out of Lochlan's arms as he dreams of the midway, away from Ben's cool skin as he sleeps heavily without dreams. He doesn't dream unless he drinks. I run down the long hallway, muddy water splashing up against my legs as I go. It rained last night. It's cold and damp. It's always cold and damp down here. Why I made this place I will never know.

When I get the heavy door spun open Jacob is sitting in the centre of the room cross-legged, praying. The room is empty otherwise. My brain starts to wonder if Cole went to heaven or hell but then I realize I know better and I stop myself.

Jacob looks up and smiles gently, crinkling his brow in confusion.

Why are you here today? It's Henry's birthday. You didn't have to come today, Princess. 

I did, actually. There's something I have to talk to you about and I wanted to wait for today.

What if I need you? 

I'm sitting on the floor just inside the big airlock door shivering. The floor is damp, the room is downright icy. The single bulb hardly gives off enough light to see much of anything and Jake flatly refuses to move out of the way so I can talk to Cole in private.

Close enough, Princess. 

I've been talking around him for the better part of a half hour and I'm not getting anywhere. Cole won't respond anyway. He's not chatty like Jake. He's never been determined to be helpful or anxious to work with me to see them through this purgatory in order to make it to heaven. I don't know if I even believe there's a heaven anymore.

You can just keep going to the Devil until there's nothing left of you. Jacob interjects again, answering for Cole (he does that a lot) and I finally address him.

Could you not?! 

Oh but I can! This affects me as well. You keep putting me in here. Which means I've spent the better part of the past eight years stuck with him. I wouldn't exactly call that the purgatory of your brain, darlin'. I'd probably just skip to the chase and call it hell. And all the while I get to watch my best friends take turns holding my wife. 

If you have a complaint about conditions then maybe you should have TAKEN THE ELEVATOR DOWN, JACOB. 

Oh, there's the fire. Light it up, Baby. Watch it burn.

Let me finish with Cole. Before I implode. Please. 

FINE. But after today, I'm requesting a transfer. Anywhere he isn't. 

That's what I'm trying to do. Move him along and then you. So you're not stuck here with me anymore. 

He bristled and then softened when he understood. It doesn't hold the same weight for him that it does for me. The joys of being a figment instead of a fragment, I guess.

Forget the lake, let's make it a sea.

Ben walked right through the wall of flames round about four-ish and picked us both up by the backs of our necks. Like kittens.

You guys done? Can we have some dinner out on the patio? Maybe straighten up a little? Because every time I step aside and give you two a chance you both or someone else comes along and squanders it. It's hard to watch. I may as well stay right here. 

Yes, you really should. I'm so drunk right now I don't know if I remember what Cole looks like but I'm not going to double check with his big old doppelganger down in the boathouse. Who threatened Lochlan into giving me up for the week.

Harsh. Christ. Someone fix this please.

Must have been one hell of a threat, I said as I passed Lochlan the bottle.

You could say that, he said, white as a sheet. I never got the bottle back. Yes, it must have been one hell of a threat. Probably payback for the stitches necessary after Lochlan drew a line across his face with the watch after the last time Caleb hurt me because they don't seem to ever learn. Probably payback because Caleb thinks it's Lochlan's fault that I fell in love with Loch instead of Caleb in the first place.

I could make this easy and cut off all contact with Caleb but he fucked me up so bad I can't. 

Why. Why is it even possible for someone so smart to think he can order someone to love him?

The children had been dispatched to spend the day/evening out with Daniel and Schuyler and the army still had a lovely wall up. Joel skulks on the wrong side of it, thankfully. Claus is near enough but more on call than anything and since I only have the plaques in the sea that they took away because they were too dangerous to look at and the memorial trees that are trees and kind of boring and no benches or anything else I looked through some of Cole's photos and his voice came back to me, not like Caleb's at all. Lower. His radio voice. Smoldering, simmering. I took out his guitar. The one I never let anyone touch, still with his fingerprints all over it. I put on his big grey sweater and for fifteen terrible awful seconds I contemplated joining him and then I took the sweater off and I put away the guitar and the photographs and I filed his voice away where the memory thief won't be able to destroy it along with everything else and I ordered a stack of pizzas (the usual, for the Point) and August caught up with me, kissed the top of my head and I think Loch's so drunk and so relieved we're going to have to put him to bed early to sleep it off and Sam's looking after Claus and keeping an eye on everything and Ben is finally back where he should be and I very carefully climbed up above the lake of blood and fire when no one was looking and I unpinned Cole's wings from where I had imprisoned him and I put him back in the concrete room behind Jake for safekeeping.

Just for a little longer, I promised as I closed the door against their protests while they both looked at me with accusing blue eyes.

I turned and smashed into Ben, bouncing off him, landing on my ass, hard. Jesus! He's the only one who's not afraid to follow me all the way down here.

You can't keep them locked up forever, Bee. Even Cole deserves better than this.

I need to deal with them later. Right now I have to tend to the living.

I think we need to tend to you.

Possibly. Little drunk right now. Can't do it. And I swayed and bailed on standing up altogether. He caught me up in his arms and carried me back down the corridor and up into the light.

Set them loose, Bee. Soon. It's been way too long.

Don't push, Benny. Please.

I sat at dinner, profoundly sad. I wanted to stick around, to see where Cole goes when I'm not there. I wanted to see how Loch feels when I don't take up his whole life and I want to know why Ben does pretty much everything Ben does.

How are you doing, Bridget? Sam asked me finally as I picked up my blood-soaked coffee cup full of whiskey and drank it all, again. Someone's keeping it full. Remind me to thank them.

This is a zoo. 

I beg your pardon? 

We live in a zoo. This is the monkey house and down there is the apex predator. I point to the boathouse and start to laugh.

Jesus, she's still drunk. Loch puts on his glasses. Mr. Perfect has sobered quickly. Must be the extra sixty pounds he has over me.

You know when you do that you distance yourself from who you are. You're suddenly civilized. You're Clark Kent. I tell him.

Monkey indeed. He smiles at me. You're so fucked right now, Peanut. It's bedtime. 

But I'm hungry. 

If you eat now, you'll be sick. 

Wait, maybe she should eat and get sobered up. If she goes to sleep now she'll just feel worse. 

I don't think there's worse than this, Sammy. This is Bottom Rock in the monkey house. I tell him and keep laughing. I watch PJ turn sideways and pour the rest of the whiskey into his own glass. Then I watch Lochlan catch him. Oh SHIT.

There goes the table. There goes the food. There goes Ben to save PJ from the red monkey and there goes Bridget, off her chair because the table was the only thing holding her up.

So this morning, I feel GREAT. Because I didn't get any dinner. I didn't get any water, I didn't have any aspirin or good ideas. Cole is still dead. Caleb is still the apex predator of my nightmares and Lochlan is angry that I called him out for distancing himself from helping me and from being who he is instead of trying to be someone he's not. He should be happy that we found out he was being coerced within an inch of his life into giving me up, to the point where I can't even describe it here, instead detailing it to my baby lawyerlets to see if they have any insights whatsoever because you can't tell me threats like that aren't at least punishable somehow, and yet at the end of the day he's still there with his back against the wall watching me fall apart and refusing to pick up any of the pieces.

That's the problem. Right there. 

Bridget, look at him. Look what the Devil did to him. Don't think he isn't just as damaged. 

That's just it, Benjamin. It's not a pissing contest. 

Are you holding him up? 

I can't! 

Exactly my point. Maybe he can't hold you up either. That's what I'm here for, stupid.

Decemvirated.

My heart has stained my sleeve red. Blood drips down my wrist, forming a pool around me until I can no longer stand on my feet and have to tread, kicking to keep my head above the surface.

Big feels, PJ says. He swims over to hand me the biggest cup of contraband black coffee I've ever seen.

What's in it? I ask him.

Courage and foolishness, he assures me and I float it nearby so I can throw myself at him for a hug. He's a great life raft. As I said before I'm a mostly terrible swimmer.

In the cup is eight ounces of whiskey with a shot of coffee for color. That's the foolishness part, I'm guessing. Works for me. I'll be on the floor before lunch.

August had other ideas and swam past me, pouring the cup into the pool, diluting my blood anyway and making it work even faster.

Well, shit, that wasn't what I had in mind, he laments, but we'll get it over with and get you back to rights.

I float on my back. Again, it works for me. I didn't want to feel any of this. I open my eyes and my angel Cole is pinned to the ceiling by his huge black wings. He smiles kindly at me. He's not frightening anymore but I'm so scared anyways because I can't remember the sound of his voice.

Just listen to me, Caleb whispers in my ear, and you can hear him through me. 

Fuck this, Lochlan says. He pulls his zippo out and lights it, throwing it into the pool to make a lake of flames. Let them burn, Baby. Let it go.

At least I can pay for the damages.

This morning I received a text congratulating me on receiving my share of the sale of the marble monstrosity which closed this week and is not my problem anymore. I'm so glad. Besides, even after we moved the gate that house was too far up the hill and the gate's been moved back and well, he spends money like water so no matter, right? Besides, it's a really good time to have real estate to unload here in the GVRD.

A really stupidly good time.

Caleb's timing is great if he thinks he can butter my ass with cash. Unfortunately he can't because money can't buy actual happiness. Only stuff like new alternators, camper tires and stove parts. We need all of the above but that only actually came to $312.72 at Canadian Tire yesterday so the rest can sit in the bank.

I get half of everything the Devil profits from. That's the deal. Which is great if you don't mind dealing with the fun prospect of being me. Which as Claus puts it, is like trying to heal a burn victim while she's still on fire.

To top it off, Lochlan is the one who sold me out to Caleb and I don't know why because he did that and then within hours warned me not to go over there this week and that there is indeed some sort of cut-off time limit on grief.

I DON'T EVEN.

He made himself the bad guy, and then made himself the bad guy and then yup, made himself the bad guy. 

Fortunately for both of us, August and Sam are WAY ahead of everyone because PJ made sure they would be. He has all the major holidays planned out far in advance, deathiversaries being right up with the rest. So Claus is here. Joel is here (URGHHHHH). Pretty sure they just backed up a truck full of tranquilizer guns/tanks and helicopters to the house and the army is all geared up and ready for battle. I should probably run now before they tie me down but I'm so curious about Lochlan's motives, I'm going to go find out about that first.

I'm also really calm and relaxed and happy so YUP. They're already drugging my food. I've got to hand to PJ. He's getting way good at this shit. He can see me falling a mile away. And weirdly I think if I look beside me Lochlan is falling too. No other explanation to be had, frankly. Unless there's a really good one I haven't heard yet.

My shallow heart.

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

He worked doggedly, stubbornly through the night, torches burning all around us in his efforts to pin me to the dark, to keep me right there in that place where he knows where I'll be but no one else can find me easily, if at all.

He steps back and wipes his forehead across the back of his arm and staggers slightly against the uneven ground. He takes a sip of his drink and points at me.

Now you don't move, Peanut. His eyes are so glassy, I can't even see the green, just the flames reflected in them. Flames and fear and rage. Don't you go anywhere. You stay right here where I can see you. Don't even move a hair's breath or I'll...I'll...

You'll what? I duck down out of the first set of ties. I'm smaller than he realizes and better at this than he remembers. This was part of the first act. Tie me up, close the doors and set the box on fire. Outside he's hoping to God I can get out. Inside I'm getting the fuck out and going through the door in the floor, dropping seven feet into a dusty crawlspace hoping to God he remembered to put the padding on the cement floor so I don't break my legs.

Here I'm hoping to God there's a fucking door in the floor so I can escape but when I hit the ground it's solid and the fire's getting so hot we're burning alive.

Read between the lines
Of what's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

He turns around to pick up the bottle and I duck behind the night and I wait. I hear him swear and the bottle smashes into the dark, shattering into a million stars, showering me with whiskey and tears, bathing me in his terror, breaking my hiding place wide open.

There you are. He says it but it isn't nice.

I nod. I'm afraid but I refuse to show it.

Come here.

I shake my head.

Now.

I shake my head again.

NOW, BRIDGET! He screams it and I take one step forward and the flames from the torch nearest me jump to my skin. I burst into flames and he smiles.

I'd kill you so they couldn't have you anymore. 

No you wouldn't. 

That's the sad part. I would. I would because I can't take it anymore. 

I woke up screaming. I woke up screaming with the sound of that stupid ominous chugging guitar sound at the very beginning of Boulevard of Broken Dreams in my head. Loch said he would have woken up screaming too if he had Green Day stuck in his head and didn't take it seriously but underneath our easy dismissal is a slow moving river of pure dread.

Ten is a number I suddenly hate with everything I've got. 

CYOA.

All of the distractions in the world aren't going to keep you from me this week, Neamhchiontach, the Devil reminds me, and with that statement I see the ground beneath the cart as the Ferris wheel tips us over the top and comes around clockwise once more, gaining speed.

I nod into his shoulder. His arms tighten and I take a deep breath and let it out.

Caleb adores my tattoo. He traced it with his fingertips in absolute awe, as if it were in reverence to him, as he shared Cole's initials and appetites, and has appropriated his life and efforts with ease, without permission.

You're glorious, he tells me.

I shouldn't even be here, I tell him and he nods.

I know. We'll finish this midweek. He kisses my cheek, smooths down my dress and pulls me back up with him.

I don't know if I can get aw-

It's already arranged, Bridget. He tells me. I wonder what the cost was and who arranged it. Just no more near misses with your poet or your thief or any of your other keepers in the meantime. I've got big plans for you. Ten is a big number and we will mark it appropriately. 

I already did. I pull my dress up again to show him my giant X over my periwinkle blue cashmere underpants.

I meant together, but I do love that. He has an X as well but his is a beautiful script and he's had it for almost as long as Cole has been gone.

He lifts my face up with one hand and plants a gentle kiss underneath my chin before letting go and looking into my eyes. I can see why we love you. What I can't see is why they let you go. 

He didn't. They made him. 

He should have come to me. 

He should have done a lot of things, Diabhal. 

If you could go back, Bridget, knowing what you know now, would you have left him? 

The answer snapped my brain like a rubber band, so instantaneously that I cried out in alarm and Caleb stepped in close wondering if he had broken something else with a sensitive question. I brushed him off with some excuse about him being cruel, and that I really did have to go. I pushed him off and left rather quickly. I don't know why it didn't cross my mind before or maybe it's just that I take so ridiculously long to sort through things. Most people take a few days. I take a decade or so. Always. It's maddening.

Would I have left him knowing that it probably is what killed him? Would I have gone with Jake knowing that I would have had seventeen incredibly painful months ending in Jacob's flight too? Maybe had I never done that Jake would still be here and then I could have gotten a sane, slow divorce and eventually married Lochlan on my own time frame. Maybe things would have been vastly different, no one would be a ghost and the only thing to deal with would be the endless inevitable stockholm syndrome that only ever bothered everybody else and never really bothered me at all. 

Worst/best conversation ever.

Duncan is trying skip rocks on a roiling sea this morning in the rain. I'm balancing on a rock nearby with my teacup and we're somehow not mortal enemies.

Because hope still exists, Duncan says.

For what? I ask innocently, but I know better as he winks at me.

I'm teasing you, Bridget. And frankly, I don't know what I would have done had you invited me into that room. Part of me would have grabbed you on the spot, the other would have sent you upstairs with a lecture and a smack on the arse to make you cry for being tough on Loch again. I'm here but for the grace of his generosity and nothing more-

No, you're here but for the grace of MINE. 

Damn. Wish I'd known that yesterday. And he smiles a rueful smile and I smile back really big and we're okay, we're just plain awful.

It's raining, Duncan. We should go back and make coffee. 

Yeah, we should. Think they hate us?

The plebes always hate the beautiful people, I tell him and he laughs harder.

For the little fragile miss, you've got a 'narse streak a mile wide. 

It's an act. 

That's the sad part, but you're a great actress. 

I know. Suddenly the levity is gone.

I wouldn't of turned you down, Bridge. 

I would have offered, Dunk, but I couldn't. Are we good?

We're always good, Babe. I think somehow keeping ourselves on our toes works. 

You do realize they had a pool going. 

Bridge, there's one for every guy you haven't slept with yet, my brother included. 

Wow. Nice to be known as the point whore. 

Well, you are the only woman here. Slim pickings. Not like there's much of you to be had even if you did go around. 
 

They had a pool going. PJ said he's out hundreds. He was sure. SO SURE that I would cave in and sleep with Duncan. But that he's so glad I didn't that it was worth the money he lost. That I can pay him back in sexual favors. And they wonder why I'm so fucked up as an adult. Seriously.