You built a gazebo where I put him and then act surprised when he's there.

Loch is on the beach. The fisherman-knit aran sweater has been taken off the shelf and put on over his flannel shirt and waffle-weave long-sleeved t-shirt. His hair is tied back loosely, errant pieces too short or too stubborn to be coralled by a leather cord make for a halo of red around his face in the wind. His jeans are dark blue and wet up to the knees with saltwater and he is threatening to swim if I don't tell him exactly what's on my mind. 

Only it's too cold to swim and he is doing this to prove a point. The point is that I am so desensitized, inappropriate and jaded that it takes these big dramatic moments to get me to move on something. That I am all or nothing now. That I used to be content with the smallest of gestures and now I want it all.

No, you're wro-

Am I though? He scoops up water with both hands and sprays me. 

Stop it.

Tell me I'm wrong again. He's ready to soak me, too. Only I am holding our phones, my keys that were in the pocket of my dress from earlier and the lantern that was left the other night that we forgot. It needs more fuel so I'll bring it up, at least and then it's ready for the next twilight trip. 

I drop everything to the sand and put my hands on my hips. You're....WRONG.

I close my eyes waiting for the impending soaking. It takes four seconds and I am drenched and frozen, gasping for air as he continues to scoop water at me as fast as he can. The one fun thing about Lochlan is that he never ever bluffs, and I will never fail to call him on one. So I'll have to program a new keyfob and we'll have to rinse our phones in distilled water and hope for the best. The lantern can take it, much like the girl. 

He wades back in to me almost in slow motion and takes me into his arms, soaked or not. How am I wrong?

This. This is everything. 

Following a Big Gesture, you mean. 

Nope. You didn't need to do that, Locket.

Wish you'd told me that before I wrecked my phone. 

I feel like we should just buy them in bulk. 

So why did you say he was there? 

Because he is there. 

Don't scare me, Bridget. 

You said if I don't tell you it's worse. 

I'm sorry I said that, right now at least. How long has he been there, again?

Eleven years. 

Jesus, Peanut.

I'm FINE (Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional).

It covers the back of his hand, ink mixed with blood against alabaster flesh

 The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of night

I love it. It's from The Day is Done, one of the Longfellow poems I can easily recite from memory and most of the boys can too. Caleb had it tattooed this morning. He has a bunch of hand tattoos but this is a full back of his right hand, all the way across in three lines, a neat block of gothic script that suits him to a tee. 

I can't take my eyes off it. It's a nice cheer-me-up on a day that sees me in my Cinnamoroll pajamas, fever still chugging along, kidney infection raging on full blast this morning, after yesterday went downhill rather quickly all of the sudden because that's how I operate. I go go go and wonder if more sleep is all I need only to find out my body wants to betray me like my mind already has. Everything is just jumping ship altogether and I can't say I blame any of it, these days.

The tiredness is not only the not sleeping, the perimenopause, the mental exhaustion that never quits, it was far more sinister. Lochlan called the doctor who made yet another house call and now I'm on these giant bumblebee antibiotics that have finally slowed me down and I'm going back to bed here before eleven in the morning. PJ has the conn. 

Hey, Bridge, want to go car-shopping with me? Caleb's heading out to get his new vehicle which should be fun. With his hand wrapped up like that he looks like he's been in a bar fight. Besides, he's not shopping, he's just trading his in on a new one, and so it's just a quick drop and go. 

No, PJ can keep you company, as I said. I'm going back up to sleep. I'm not feeling good. 

Can I bring you home lunch?

Is it Vietnamese?

If that's what you'd like. 

Then yes. Duh. 

Ha. That's what I thought you'd say.

You're the one place I call home.

 He slept sitting up. 

I asked for help before breakfast and what I got was a rare and wonderful change in that he didn't find someone to babysit my brain, someone to hide all the weapons and keep me from running outside to jump off the cliff and shock myself in the sea until I felt something better than this. He made me sit on the couch in the bathroom until he was ready, hair combed back behind his ears while wet only to spring up into crazy curls no matter what the minute it's dry. I only wish I was as resilient as Lochlan's curls. Nothing could flatten me ever. I would just jump back up and keep going. 

But I got flattened. He shook out a pill and then he shook out another and he laughed bitterly but it didn't reach his eyes, which remained a green concern in a face fighting to keep a neutral expression, because if he worries then I worry and I'm not able to add any more load to the current right now. 

What should we do today? He's asking questions as he holds a glass of water in one hand and my chin in the other. Drink. I can't answer. I want to hold on to today so I don't get flung right off or trampled underneath it. That's what I want. 

(And the kids aren't like this. They miss Jake like he's a close uncle they haven't seen in a while. It has faded for them though, mercifully. They are more sad for me. And I try so hard with them but sometimes I can't get it together and somehow they understand, the 'somehow' being useful, intensive therapy to make sure he didn't fuck them up to but by virtue of proximity to me, he did.)

He continued to ask me questions all day, and I was noncommittal and sometimes silent. Sometimes I had an opinion. Once I tried to wrench myself away but for that I was clotheslined by his arm that shot out so fast I didn't have time to take a second step but there must have been force behind the first. 

Bridget. Stay here. Stay put. He said it gently, outside of his usual penchant to bark things at me out of his own fear that creeps in when things get bad. He is so pragmatic, so necessary in an emergency but it's also the one time you won't find him, as he can't stand by helplessly and watch. If he can't lead he sure as hell isn't going to follow. That's one thing about Lochlan you might not know and people usually find that out the hard way. 

Let's find a new distraction. We painted a picture together. We went for a long walk along the beach, finding treasures and tiny sea stars. We napped. We made some pancakes together for lunch and then he cleaned up while I sat on the corner of the island and watched, because he just wasn't comfortable with me any further away. We did indeed watch a couple of really bad horror movies we found on Netflix and then we went up to our room. Lochlan poured himself a whiskey and settled in, pillows behind his back, jeans still crisp, flannel shirt still soft, always with the white t-shirt underneath. Still with his knife clipped in his pocket, brown hair tie around his wrist in case he has to get down to business. He told me to come and snuggle in with him and I put my head down against his chest, face in on the glorious winter flannel, his arm around my back. He took my sweater and tied it around me and his one leg, which was something else you didn't know. He would do that to childproof me when I was ten. To make sure he didn't sleep too deeply and fail to see if I got up or left. He was in charge and he wasn't going to screw it up and even though he did, we did, we ruined everything, we're not going to give up this incredible second chance to get it right, ghosts or no ghosts.

It was a comfort and I didn't wake up until this morning, still tied into the sweater, still with the lights on, him still dressed and still propped against the pillows. My head is an empty paper bag blowing down the road, my memories absent. My limbs are jello and yet my soul feels rejuvenated somehow, as if his presence alone was all I needed. Just an intense amount of time together like when I was little and I hung off every word he said, content to believe that he was right, that he knew everything, that all I had to do was listen to him and everything would be okay. 

After testing that theory I can tell you he's been right all along.

The only book on how to navigate this is the one I write for you.

 I almost took it down this morning. The post I just went and reread for the seven thousandth time. It's called Run like Hell and it's from October of 2007, detailing the night Jacob left. The night I never thought a single human could endure so much fear and despair and still come out alive. And I still have moments where I just stop and sob like a motherfucker for that horrible feeling of helplessness where Jacob had some sort of break with his handle on life and decided he couldn't handle my baggage when he had so much of his own and he left and he never came back and then the guilt ate him right through and he died by his own hand (there's a phrase I have never written before. I write that he flew because it sounds more magical and less final) and these memories are quicksand and lava and...pain. 

Sometimes the rabbit hole is so deep it goes right through to the other side. You can look in and see stars but you can't see Bridget. She doesn't even cling to the ledge just out of the light, she lets go. She falls right through, into the void and she's still in there somewhere.

Maybe I'm meaner now. Maybe I don't believe you when you say you're going to stay forever. Maybe I'm afraid of death now in a way that would make Jacob ashamed, because the guilt he felt for leaving when I needed him the most, when we were just figuring out how to live together and make it work, when my children had finally accepted him and settled in with a love for him that surprised even me, well, it's nothing compared with the guilt he would have had to see this now. To see what he's done. See how I've changed. I don't trust anyone. I will cut you off if you move too close or pry too hard. I will shut down without warning like a faulty robot and stop talking. And I'll hate you for taking that beautiful new stability and trust away from my children because you changed them too and I see it now. And they talk about it now with a horrible pain I can't take from them and this is your fault. You were supposed to be the strong one and you weren't. 

It was me.

Lead me down the path they went.

Come here, Bridget, said the Devil.

And I did, and I was lifted up into his arms and I didn't touch the ground for the next three hours and I didn't know which end was the sky and which was the sea or which hands belonged to whom and in my high I just focused on breathing and climbing out of the waves to get back to the stars, only to be pulled back in until my flesh was numb and my limbs exhausted. I believe Caleb and Ben did the heavy (or maybe I'm light) lifting and Lochlan drifted in and out of my periphery and Sam prayed right against me for his own soul in the face of temptation he could not fight off. 

This morning I will join him, more than a little bothered that I can't with certainty tell you if Matt was there or not. 

Do I ask? My eyes drift to Caleb, who winks and lifts up his coffee cup to take a sip, never breaking his gaze. I shift my head and look at Lochlan's hands. He is reading the news on his ipad, eyes scanning the words on the screen. His breathing is even and content. He is relaxed and warm. 

Ben is still asleep. 

Sam went home (I think) and his car is gone so he's most likely at church. 

I don't dare go, lest I burst into flames inside the front door, one foot over the threshold, purse singed as it drops to the tile floor, the one who held it vaporized by God in an flash. 

An example, he will say, of the sinner I wish to purge from your precious souls. Unable to be sanctified properly I have expunged her from this heaven on earth because she's far too edacious and wanted too much to make up for everything she has lost, instead of understanding that by losing everything she now has everything. She can't be consecrated like this. Guys, I've got nothing to work with here.

Oh, well, hello, you're right, God and I'm sorry. No more early Sunday morning orgies for me! I have seen the error of my ways. 

Lochlan snorts abruptly and I realize he's listening in. 

But I still love you most, I think, not to myself but broadcasting it wide.

He smiles but doesn't say anything, kissing the top of my head for a long time instead. I stretch like a cat and get up to go get more coffee. Matt falls through the back door, in wrinkled chinos and a shirt that shows he maybe got dressed for church but then fell asleep and didn't make it. He meets my eyes and it's a vaguely weird but appreciative look on his face that I know well, oddly enough and I am suddenly grateful I don't have to ask.

Oops. Clearly he was there too.

The one skill I wish for now is necromancy (come listen to the words of dead men and the clinically insane).

 Lipstick on my headphone cord, coffee in my blood, Mick Moss crooning in my ears and the rain continues to soften the ghosts out on the lawn, making them easier for the boys to digest without rough edges. When the rain let up I studied Jake intently, and that's when I noticed Cole far behind him, standing in black, just on the rough sideline of my vision. He's hard to find because he is darker while Jacob glows with the moon. They were always night and day and now they are somewhere between but I didn't expect them to travel as a team now, of all times. At one point I thought they might even be friends but looking back, where things are always clearer I can see that that was wishful, selfish thinking.

You have it, if they're here. Lochlan's voice tells my brain. And it's the one gift I wish you didn't even know of. His voice disappears back into sleep and I turn back to watch Jacob, watch him frown as he gestures for me to stop chewing on the cord, when he knows damn well I don't bite on it. I just blot my lips and it's there for the tactile sensation. It grounds me when I get distracted.

God, Mick's on Liquid Light and it's the one with that line from my title (come listen) and he lets his voice break over the words like waves and I feel like he knows how I feel. If he doesn't then he's written the perfect accompaniment to my grief, which never seems to shift into anything workable, anything new. 

Anything even remotely navigable, ever.

Coastal Friday photographs, spilled on a hardwood floor.

Prisoned am I to this shell of the dust
It speaks of only fiction that I could never trust
Captured alive in this sinful estate
Vexed am I to see I do the things that I hate

 Rip out the framework leave no stone unturned
Until my heart forgets all that my flesh ever learned
Tear down the structure till nothing is left
God deliver me from this body of death

 

This morning before I woke up Ben pulled me backwards, underneath him, facedown in the quilts, lifting me up back up against his chest in the dark, practiced hands all over, until we were back to where we like to be. He turned my head to the side for a painful, thorough kiss just as he brought us over the edge into heaven and I looked for Jake (I always do) but then Ben pushed my head back down and brought us home. 

***

Sam sitting at the piano after dinner last night. Matt is helping in the kitchen but Sam has finished his jobs and so he sits, picking out the notes before Lochlan finally offered to play the song if Sam would sing. They proceeded to bash out an impromptu and beautiful version of  Wolves At The Gate's Lowly that saw us all stop to listen, almost at once. Sam was somewhat shy about the attention but unfaltering in his choice of song, Lochlan was not shy, never is. As ever Lochlan is a showman and will volunteer to entertain at any given moment but he loves to give the spotlight away just as much. 

(Someone asked me last week if I liked being a carny or a sideshow performer more. I would pick carny any day. I never liked the schedule for the circus. So much training. So much preparation and then you had to be waiting forever for your show to begin. In contrast, I had so much more freedom on the midway. I was a lot younger and far more naive and I just remember the lights and how I had to stay within sight of Lochlan, which gave me a good six hundred yard latitude in at least two directions from the wheel and I could daydream because I had no weight, no responsibility. Performing is focus and discipline. Fairs? Fairytales, through and through.)

***

Late last evening the rain held off so we had a bonfire on the beach, bringing our picnic basket with glasses and a forty of the good whiskey for those who drink, and bottles of cream soda for those who don't. We sat around the fire and talked softly, if at all, eight of us available to wash ourselves in smoke and salt, the stuff of dreams and the best way to fall asleep, bathed in the acrid sting of fire and water. It's magical to me and I'm pretty sure it's what set Ben off this morning, still on a high from yesterday's strides and major victories, both physically and mentally. He is almost at his best at this point and my heart has stopped skipping beats, trembling, hesitating and tripping, running flat out ahead while looking behind me just in case he isn't keeping up. 

He is again, at last.

***

 I went down and had a coffee this morning, early, after Ben went back to sleep and Lochlan failed to stir at all. In the dark by myself. I sat on the bench where we put on our wetsuits by the big patio doors in winter (when it's too cold to do it on the docks) and I watched Jacob pacing the rock wall at the end of the yard. At first I'm annoyed that he didn't let me know he was here, didn't come in, didn't wade into my dreams, pantlegs and sleeves rolled up but still soaked from the surf, didn't wake me up. Now he's just there and I'll see him all of the sudden and that's how I know my brain is still broken, tenderized and then stuffed with my own heart, rolled up, pinned and burned until blackenend, whereupon they will tell me to 'smarten up' and 'stop scaring us' but I can't help it. 

I run and run, as always looking back over my shoulders for the monsters to catch up with me, and I turn and fall flat on my face. When I jump up, yelling I'm okay, he shakes his head sadly and then I can't see him any more because the rain is too heavy.

And Caleb? He's a retrocasuality. Or something. LOL

 No, we're not baby x-men over here. Okay, maybe we are. A lot of you asked about the pyrokinesis mention made yesterday, as if you simply fell from the sky, opened the internet and read the first entry of mine you've ever seen.

*rolls eyes* 

If you ask Lochlan directly he's a fire 'artist', nothing more, that's all. 

I know better. 

Jacob bent forks, the more stress he was under the less chance we had of returning the forks to a usable condition. I'm an easy clairvoyant, automatic writer and a reluctant but completely proficient psychometric (the paranormal kind, not the scientific kind). 

Sam is a prophet. He doesn't need anything else but he talks to us from his mind too.

All of the boys are practised in divination and varying levels of psychic abilities and telepathy. By the telepathy levels I mean most of us can have entire conversations with each other without speaking and that's one of the problems I reference continually when I talk about privacy here on the point. 

It's also one of the reasons we all have such a ridiculous, close bond with each other. It's one of the ways I've picked my friends and it's another way that I can shut you out completely (see Corey. Mark. Rob. Anyone I've talked about who doesn't live here currently.)

No one can teleport though, sadly, and I've been trying to raise up my mediumship skills for exactly fourteen years and it's rough going and I'm not at all happy with where they are, clearly. I talk about that every fucking day so if you haven't noticed by now and need it all spelled out like this then go away. 

You can hone your own psychic abilities if you work at it. It's just easier for some people. I don't choose to believe we are special. We are to each other, of course but to you we're nothing. We just have opened ourselves to a lot of things most people wouldn't dare. 

***

Speaking of the retrocasualist, Caleb came roaring back this morning with an armful of mea culpas. Apparently he has a whole plot on the other side of the orchard where he grows them because this year has been a bumper crop for sure. 

I overstepped. 

Dude, you went off in a flat run. 

Dude?

Blame PJ. The more time I spend with him the more I'll call you that. 

It's funny. 

Probably. 

Bridget, I don't mean to hurt you. I want to make new memories with you. Fun ones. The kind of memories that last forever and make us think fondly of each other. 

We have the ones that last forever but they're all wrong.

Not from my perspective.

And we know your perspective is warped and twisted. 

Help me straighten it.

Go help yourself. 

He walks away. He knows I'm not in the mood to accept a thing from him, let alone his charming words as a way of asking for forgiveness. I am a brick wall today. An unmoving stone cliff and he can bash his head bloody against it but it doesn't move. That is me today. Strong and beautiful and I have no time for your bullshit, can't you see I'm over here holding my own heart up in both hands, blood and sinew dripping down my elbows, making an offering to a ghost who keeps his own schedule and shows up only when I'm at my weakest? 

No, of course you can't, and I'm far worse at this than I thought I would be.

White fire is made with magnesium or melamine, and ethanol. Don't try it unless you have a pyrokinetic at home.

All these broken souls
Each one more beautiful
They don't, they don't know my heart
They don't know my heart

I'll send out my soul
To worlds more beautiful
But they won't, they won't know my heart
It's the darkest part 

When I came in he was already hungry. The fire roared in the hearth, biting back the chill of the night, reflecting in his eyes, making him look like a lion in the dark. He pulls me in for a kiss and then walks us backward, pulling me down into his lap, kissing the space up underneath my ear with a groan that sent a shiver right up my spine. I reached my hands up into his curls to hold on to his face when he came back for the kiss on the lips and he laughed. 

There's my girl. 

I forced him all the way back and his eyebrows went up, the grin remaining on his face for the next hour or two as we devoured each other in our practised familiarity, every curl, every freckle, every tattoo so well known at this point we have forged a well-travelled route and if you look closely in the light, beyond the scars and the burns of the past you'll see a worn path along our limbs that shows where we travel and how we get home.

There's my Locket.

His eyes fill up suddenly. Jesus, Bridge. How did I get so lucky? I have nothing to give you. 

You give me everything. You give me you. That's all I want. 

And your ghosts.

Only in the white fire. 

I'll only ever throw the red, then. 

I look up at him and he's no longer smiling. Sometimes he gets very serious and we have very meaningful talks and we make promises and plans and fun of each other and then we're back on track. We fight too much. We struggle too much. We call each other horrible things and we wish we had never met. And we wouldn't have it any other way at this point. 

I might save Ben first. I might wish for Jacob on an absolutely hourly basis sometimes and I might dance with the Devil a little too close but if I take one step backwards I will crash into Lochlan and he's promised me I always will. 

Even as he hates all of it. So, so much.

***

Caleb never threw the mug, never brought up how much he loved me being high, how much he adored being in control, dusting me with angels or snow, watching me check out in slow motion. He listened to my unspoken directive as I attempt to control my own narrative with him for what always feels like the first time in my life even though it's been nothing but a magnificent struggle over the past fourteen years since he came back into it. 

I never thought he'd come back. I never thought it would be this hard to get past certain things. I never thought I would fail so spectacularly at it most of the time. 

I didn't yesterday though. So I'll call that a victory and hope it's the first of many.

(They also call it 'embalming fluid' on the street but that's just fucking wrong.)

 I can fix you. 

I bet you could fix me but it's never for very long and never in a way I want to be fixed.

Caleb stares at me, holding his whole coffee mug in his hand, ignoring the handle part in a way that makes me think he's about to throw it. 

We used to be able to block out the world. Easily. 

 Ah. He's looking to reminisce about the good old days when happiness came in a needle or a vial or a baggie and he would sound out the name of what it was and while I couldn't get my brain or my mouth around that word (phen-cyc-li-dine) I fell in love with the nickname for it. I thought it would solve all my problems. But instead of that happening I would get almost two days of real live Disney birds around my head and an unwillingness to say much, because I just wanted to enjoy the happiness and not worry about everything but then it would all come rushing back far too soon.

Caleb decided eventually that it was time for a change and switched to cocaine or heroin or whatever looked like fun and moreover, could keep Bridget dancing all night every night until the party stopped (or Caleb said it did) without creating any permanent problems (but it did). He wanted a machine to match his own but I'm not a robot and he would give me the same hit he'd give himself in spite of the close to a one-hundred-pound weight difference between us.

And he couldn't understand why it hit me different, and to this day he thinks it would be fun to revisit the past, as if we had such good times instead of what it actually was, including whatever permanent brain damage I suffered being given so many drugs for so long. I still stare off into space. I still have weird cravings for bad things, and I still have debilitating depression. Apparently half of that is from the drug use and the other half? His abuse of me. One cancels the other out but honestly, I'll take the latter because at least it's now predictable behaviour. Sex addiction and the fears borne out of that pivotal time period are far easier to manage than the holes in my memory and the ridiculous sadness because of the fucked up chemicals, burned off on a street paved with gold, snorted up the holes in my head with a holler of recklessness and abandon.

Angel dust, I would point out, fingers in my own mouth, eyes wild. 

Touched by the heavens, he would whisper and I would laugh and laugh. 

Not true, I shake my head, fingers still against my lips. Touched by hell. No one's laughing now but my worries have disappeared and left pink clouds behind for me to sail through.

It didn't happen like that, Bridge-

Let's go dancing. 

I never let him finish because I know he's trying to revise our history as we make it and I don't plan to let him. I wouldn't then, and I won't now. 

You want more coffee?

Yes, please. He knows the subject's closed. I know he'll bring it up again.