Pacific Ghost Trail.

We did indeed drive out into the valley to our super-secret stargazing location, discovered by accident on a drive a few Christmases ago. We were at kp4 heading to a lovely 5 or 6 number and all signs seemed good but then by the time we got there everything shifted away back towards the East, dropped to a solid, unyielding 3 and we knew the night was a dud. 

But was it? I danced down a dirt road in the starlight. We stopped for late-night burgers and fries on the way home and we had a good time, out after dark, which seems like such a rare occasion these days. 

Everyone is still asleep this morning even though it's Halloween-day. 

There are leaves to rake. But instead I took the dog for a long way and then warmed up a muffin and had another cup of coffee under the watchful eyes of PJ who is fulfilling his initials this morning, still in pajama pants and his favourite Opeth t-shirt and he swears he's only on watch until Lochlan wakes up and then he's going back to bed.

Niche Bees.

 I slept last night despite the vague stomach ache from half a jar of smoked olives. Or maybe it was the vodka. Maybe it was Lochlan's incredibly dark and beautiful acoustic rendition of Kryptonite on the front porch long after dark. 

You called me strong, you called me weak
But still your secrets, I will keep
You took for granted all the times, I never let you down
You stumbled in and bumped your head
If not for me then you'd be dead
I picked you up and put you back on solid ground

 

If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?
If I'm alive and well, will you be there and holding my hand?
I'll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite

 

Today we're going to harvest the seeds from the pumpkins we haven't given away and we're going to drive way out into the valley tonight where it's dark to see if we can see the Aurora. It's been so long since I've seen them with my own eyes. I need a miracle and they seem like a good choice.

Okay. That's it. Last round of doctors and surgeries and bullshit and we're down to a week or two of meds and a few days of healing. PJ and I walked in with relief and the weight of a thousand hearts on us seemingly all at once and we had a shot of vodka each and then he made a chart for pills and I had a very fast cry and then pulled my shit together, onwards and upwards. 

I didn't even sleep for five minutes last night so I'm glad this is behind us now and we can heal our patient and get rolling again on life. This weekend is Halloween. The Aurora Borealis are going to be visible and it's supposed to be clear skies besides! Jacob's birthday is coming up but I don't feel stressed about that at all, maybe the distraction was good even though I would wish it on no one, not even Caleb and this is a strange life indeed. 

PJ's put a plate of smoked olives, cheese and crackers in front of me since I wouldn't eat breakfast and then I'm going to go out and rake some more leaves. I got some really great blister bandages and have good vodka so it's a celebration of sorts, I guess, maybe, as we are that pathetic and that grateful, today.

Fished out of the water, annoying as heck. Yes, that seems about right.

You look like Paimon. 

I complained about my hair. The cute french bob had grown into a boring, blunt lob and I hated it so Daniel cut some layers into it and that was Schuyler's observation after the fact, now that it has some life. It's like a messy/wavy shaggy bob now and my bangs persevere to the end of my nose, as always.

I laugh, delighted. Paimon is my favourite character in Genshin Impact. Henry and I play it on our phones religiously. He is obviously better at it. He's a true gamer. This is one of maybe five games I have played in my life and I keep getting sidetracked and start exploring randomly. Paimon keeps me on track as my traveler is usually confused. But the boys all like to come and peer over our shoulders as we play and they know more about it than I do, it seems.

Daniel and Schuyler have co-opted me for a spa-day in which they get to cut my hair, paint my nails and try different outfits on me all afternoon while we drink cheap red wine and watch shallow television. We already had a long sauna, then a leisurely swim and a really good lunch that was vegan burritos with sprouts and fried potatoes inside instead of rice because why the hell not? We did a little online shopping and I helped them plan a spring getaway for a few months from now, if the world goes well.

I slept last night too and it shows, heavily drugged by Lochlan, timed perfectly to not have any trouble falling asleep but also able to move and think when I woke up this morning, piggybacked against Ben, who was also having a really good sleep or maybe he was just faking so I would snooze even longer than usual. Either way I'm not complaining. 

My hair will be good now until sometime in February when I can actually tie it back and I'll probably curse the layers then but for the winter it's perfect. 

I wonder what the ghosts think but I'm sure I'll have their feedback before the day is out. 

Not if I can help it. Lochlan just arrived to regain custody but Daniel has offered to paint his nails so we get to stay in the paradise of their room just a little longer.

It's because they're deep too.

I did not get Chipotle. I had like three Pringles from the can before someone stole it and then realized how hungry I was by dinner time and decimated a huge plate of pork fried rice with onions and peppers and carrots. There's still a little bit left so today maybe I'll get lunch. 

Instead PJ and the boys were dealing with a midnight-black bear the size of my jeep who climbed over the really high fence beside the upper flower gardens and seemed incredibly content to walk around sniffing things and it wasn't until I told them to clap really hard that they figured out the noise part. I guess bears are habituated to their voices since he wasn't even responding to their shouts.

Finally after a few rounds of applause the bear got what he wanted and left. And now the chaperones come out of the woodwork since it's been a minute since we've seen one on the property. I never did refill the bird feeders and there's no garbage and we don't leave the garage doors open so he can't peruse the big deep freezer so he really picked the wrong house save for giving me some quiet lumbering beauty to gaze upon while I watched him from the porch. 

I have another hurt hand today anyway as I was outside raking leaves between storms and the rake is a heavyish metal number and I had a glove on and was using my left hand to kind of cajole the piles of leaves into order and used my broken casted hand to press the rake down and now I have a blister that is worn through to *bone* on my left thumb and it fucking HURRRTTTTTTS until Lochlan put antibiotic cream and a big bandage on it. 

Now it feels fine as long as nothing touches it. 

I wanted to pet the bear but Lochlan had me by my hood because he knows. I'm fast and exceedingly foolish and absolutely in love with the bears here and how they come down off the mountain and show up for dinner and find nothing and wander off again. 

I like to think he (or she) was checking up on me. 

I know what day it is.

But I'm not doing it. 

I even got a pass, for according to Tik Tok it's a No Bones Day, and that's sorely needed right this second. 

Bad anniversaries are just that and you don't have to acknowledge them aside from seeing how far you've come, if you've made any headway at all and maybe I'm ashamed that I haven't. Maybe I'm angry that I let him continue to leave me mired in grief and doubt and self-sabotage. Maybe I'm supposed to be ashamed of the way I live my life. 

But I'm not. I'm not any of those things.

PJ's promised me Chipotle for lunch and Lochlan and I are going to watch shitty horror movies. Perfect.

A little grace this morning, as we didn't hear from Sam, urging us to attend church. He only sent a message for me to text him and he'd be here in seconds if I need/want him. Everyone's doing that weird thing where their ideas for sanity and safety dry up and their words disappear on the wind and become muddied in the rain and there's nothing left to say and all we can do ride out the storm. All I can do is cover my ears against the voice in my brain, against the memories as they fly out of the cabinets, singed and sooted from years of fighting destruction at the hands of my beloved boys. 

You've missed him longer than you knew him, at this point, Lochlan says and I begin to hear a high-pitched noise behind everything else. He covers my ears with his hands and pulls me in close. I don't have to get up today. I don't have to talk. I don't have to do anything except tick off the minutes as they go by.

Hell is like Vegas, actually. Seems larger than life until you get there and then you just want to leave.

Got up at nine-thirty this morning, only because one of the cats got locked in our room last night and walked across my head to wake me up so she could get out. Lochlan is awake, and runs a sleepy hot bath for us. He washes my hair and his own and conditions it and then the tub is almost overflowing as he adds more hot water and then we are clean and dry and wrapped up in towels. 

He combs my hair, parting it in the middle. He tells me to sit on the couch and then he goes into our room and is back in a few minutes. He has my clothes. Chosen by him. Warm black leggings (hard to put on with one hand so he does it. Like putting a mannequin in tights, if you ever worked retail) and an oversize sweatshirt, also black, with a sprig of flowers and a sign emblazoned that says 'Hell was boring'. It's a dig on the previous night, I know but it's also warm and comfortable. 

We head downstairs quietly, cat in arms, as Ben sleeps in a little longer on the weekends again and the whole house is quiet, save for PJ putting his dishes in the dishwasher and Duncan is looking for his keys. 

They're on your hook in the front hall. 

Did I put them there? 

No they were in your jacket. It was on the floor so I washed it but I checked the pockets first and your keys were there. 

Oh. Thank you. Want anything while I'm out? I'll be back in a couple of hours. He's heading to a meeting. 

Can you get some banana bread? 

Slice or a whole loaf?

Whichever is easiest. 

Will do. 

He is off with a kiss on both our cheeks. PJ smiles at his back and then frowns when the door is closed. 

Where's my fucking kiss?

Lochlan heads over and gives him a full french and I am dead. 

Maybe if you're lucky you can have some of the banana bread too. 

PJ laughs. Who needs sustenance?  I think I can live on love now. He bats his eyelashes at Loch. It's like old times and I adore it. 

Also banana bread to look forward to. Damn.It's going to be another good day. 

Is it? Jacob's voice crowds into my brain. Is it really though? It's like he's trying to hurt me, now.

I shake my head to clear it. I hope so. 

What? Lochlan says, suddenly alarmed. 

Oh, I said I hope so, as in I hope PJ can live on our love. That's why we're here, right?

Gaslight flames.

A hot cup of coffee and a blanket wrapped around me this morning from the wind and the rain, while I'm tracing tiny planets and little wobbly umbrellas all over the inside of the lightly fogged window overlooking the water in Caleb's bedroom. There's one light on this morning but it's so dark from the storm. He's checking stocks and reading emails and I'm listening to the new Starset album Horizons which came out overnight and it's exceeding my expectations by far. Another masterpiece of cinematic space alternative rock but better. I don't even know how to describe it but I know I love it. 

Especially the last minute and eleven seconds of Devolution, but I'm only halfway through and there's so much more to come, so I'm glad to be sober and present for this beautiful deviation.

He keeps coming over and surprising me with a kiss on my shoulder or the top of my head. Pulls off the headphones every now and then to my great annoyance, asking me if there are any ghosts and I shake my head to change the subject. I don't think he's going to get Lochlan's privilege of total honesty and even if he did I'm not talking about this with him. Not this morning, even after he was so sweet last night, and he kept me present and he was controlled and kind and when I said I was going to leave he said he wished I wouldn't but he understand so then I was touched and I stayed where I was, and he has a little time left and then I turn into a pumpkin again. A big goopy, rotten, carved-long-ago forgotten pumpkin on a porch step somewhere unsafe. 

Or so I imagine it. It's always on the metal pull-down steps of the fortune-teller's wagon, as that's the unsafest place I can think of next to the camper Lochlan burned but he couldn't burn the wagon because it didn't belong to him, but oh, how he wanted to. Instead I take one of the ripped-off doors from the room where I keep my memories and hold it in front of me with both hands, using it to push back against the thoughts that threaten to ruin another good day. An imaginary wooden shield and I am an imaginary knight-girl with my armor of tears.

Time to go, Caleb says and I turn, shaking off the thoughts now starting to run faster inside my head. He's holding out my things in one hand, an offering to the alpha gods he is ruled by, a volunteer in this army just so he can have a place at all. I take my clothes and let the blanket fall, but he grabs it, and rolls it up in his arms before putting it on the bed. He turns back and I am dressing quickly, or as quickly as I can with one hand. He steps in to help, hesitantly until I give my approval and I let him finish everything right down to pulling my hair all the way through the neck of Ben's big hoodie that I stole again. 

I hope this was a respite for you, he says, suddenly doubtful again, sad almost, from the ghosts and the living alike. I pretend I didn't hear him but he's used to it.

Truth. No I don't want to shop. I have to pee. Hey, there's a ghost over there.

We're going to have a good day. 

I got up, showered and dressed. Trailed Ben to the truck and then into the grocery store while he bought way too much food. We're operating three months ahead of schedule and bought Christmas groceries today. Turkeys, stuffing. Cranberry sauce in cans. Gravy packets to round out deglazing the pans and minty ice cream and chocolate wafers for dessert. Baking supplies. All of it will keep in the freezer or pantry and so why not? We also bulked up on pasta and canned things for whatever coming apocalypse is next. There's always one. Things just work better this way. 

Home and he and PJ and Lochlan put everything away while I tried hard to focus. Finally I woke up Henry for his school work and made some coffee. PJ dumped a good amount of Baileys in both my cup and his while Lochlan frowned at him. 

What? It takes the edge off. 

The edge of what, exactly?

The day. PJ looks at Lochlan until Lochlan looks away first. Pickled is better than fried, Locket. He says Locket in a baby-voice and I know he's trying to imitate me and instead of a punch Lochlan threw him a little mercy.

I know, he says to PJ and to PJ's credit he adds a second shot to each. 

What? It's only like fifteen percent. You add vodka to her lemonade that's forty right off. 

They don't say anymore but it's still going to be a good day. I take my coffee to the fire where Lochlan has built one of his all-day fires in the woodstove and I curl up in my corner, looping one ankle into the gap between the cushion and the arm. 

It anchors me so if I fall asleep I don't fall off the couch. 

But I won't anyway because Lochlan is finally gifted a doctored coffee too and he comes and sits next to me. Spreading out. Phone. Ipad. sketchbook. Elastic that he pulled off his wrist because they're too small for his bones but perfect for a loose bun. His sweater that I snatch up the second he lets go, pulling it over myself like a blanket. 

Don't fall asleep with that cup in your hand. He pulls a table over, taking the cup. I don't know why he said it if he's going to take it anyway. 

But it's going to be a good day. 

I look up and Jacob's standing right on the other side of the patio door watching us. I frown at his face and Lochlan follows my gaze. Close your eyes, Bridge. Just listen to my voice. It's your mind trying to fill in the gaps, that's all. 

Is it? 

Yes. 

Is he gone, Locket?

You know I don't see him, but give it a few minutes anyway.

I settle back, eyes still closed, warm sweater under my fists. Waiting out the ghosts. Because it's going to be a good day and Jake isn't allowed to wreck it.