Good people.

Spent the morning in court. The arbitrator has labelled Caleb and I high-conflict parents. She said that's just extraordinary considering we've never been married to each other and really for the resources and the support we have at our disposal we should have our acts together a little better than this. That this case was being handed unconventionally because we're an unconventional family. She then yelled for forty-five minutes about how we could do better.

And that we are immature and self-indulgent, that we have failed to put the children first.

I was fine with all of the labels up until those last eight words and then I lost my shit and interrupted her.

I'm a good mother.

I have no doubt, Mrs. Reilly. But you need to be a good person. You cannot allow your extracurricular relationships to supersede the needs of your immediate family. Parenting is not a part-time job.

I shook my head vehemently but she just. kept. talking.

I stopped responding after that, and she softened just enough. I really don't care what sort of bias she holds against how I live my life. It has nothing to do with Henry, short of giving him male influence and support where otherwise there would have been none. She thinks I'm out running around the city going to Eyes Wide Shut parties and sleeping with all of my friends and I'm not but I am secure in the fact that my lawyers and Caleb's lawyers know what's going on and she needs to spend a little more time on our files before she decides how horrible I am.

Caleb probably already paid her off. My lawyer has filed to allow new arbitration because this one is not objective enough to oversee this delicate operation.

Had Caleb not decided to suddenly start making good on his threats of challenging our arrangements in the first place none of this would be necessary at all, but last night after begging me for an hour of my time (for reasons I still don't understand), he was a no-show, not calling or texting or anything and then this morning I get an eleventh hour invitation to appear at the offices for a full review of our custody plan via mediation, agreed upon by all the lawyers collectively because it's Friday tomorrow and they have weekend tee times or something similarly asinine.

Lovely.

But you know what? I haven't done anything wrong. I don't threaten Caleb. I've never told him that I would keep Henry from him. I've never used him for anything. I've never made his life difficult. So I'm going to hold my head high and choose not to be threatened by this because if push comes to shove I have trump cards I can play now. I have all of that evidence that he harasses me and he is cocky enough to assume I won't use it. I have security in that when I have had enough of this all I have to do is turn on that light and the symbol will play into the night sky summoning the real hero who can save the day because at the end of it, Caleb is a small fish in a big pond.

I have Batman.

He's a big fish.

(And I'm a good person, I swear to God, I am.)

Aghost (Like aghast, but more transparent).

A drive.

No.

What the fuck, princess.

It's just a drive. Maybe he wants to apologize. Things got out of hand.

Bullshit.

Forget it.

This is total bullshit.

Ben and Lochlan are talking over each other and I'm just standing there holding my phone with the email pulled up. The one from Caleb inviting me for a drive so we can talk. Just talk. One drive. One hour. Maybe out into the Valley and back or up toward the ski hills. It doesn't matter. Talk without touching me. Listen without a legal team standing behind me ready to bring down the hammer.

Hmmm. I think for a moment and decide I am game. Caleb loves to drive. He loves his little silver Nissan and if he says a drive then that's what it will be. Ben and Lochlan are not game. They are the knee-jerks. The look-what-we-just-went-throughs. The only difference is they always forget that Caleb went away before. He went away for a handful of years there between when Henry was born and when I walked away from Cole. I brought him back and God, it was so weird and then it wasn't weird anymore and once Cole was gone he became Cole to me only he isn't but dammit if he doesn't just have enough Coleism to pass for the real thing and if I squint, if I'm drunk, if I'm low or if it's a day that ends in 'y' it's good enough for me.

Only he never showed.

I waited for several hours, giving him all the time in the world, but Caleb never showed. I'm not sure if he developed cold feet or if something came up and he had to put out a fire business-wise or if he just thought better of it and decided it was too soon (it is) but he didn't come.

No one ever stands me up. I am in tears and this is ridiculous because he's a dangerous, obsessive psychopath and he shouldn't be anywhere near me ever.

He is also Cole, he is history, and he is dad to one of my children. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I just wanted the part where he holds custody of my youngest child over my head like a flaming guillotine to go away. The scary parts where he does not have himself under control? Away, please, quickly, I am afraid.

Everything else can be left well enough alone.

Going to bed now.

Fuck it.

Riding the Subway.

Last minute stop for lunch. We're starving. Out of energy, out of time. Okay, Subway it is. It's always empty, always good though so we pull in and run inside and all I'm thinking is fooooooood. I need foooooood. So I ask for a foot-long sandwich. On parmesan oregano bread. No way in hell I could eat all that but I may try. Suddenly there's a lineup a mile long behind us. Phew. Got here just in time, Toasted? Yes, please. And to go, we're not eating here. We'll take them home.

Everyone watches as the bill is tallied. Ben is paying and he says really loudly,

You got a foot-long? Jesus, Bridge. You should have told me how hard-up you were before we left the house. I could have given you a footlong.

Only he said it with that grin just as I had taken a sip of my rootbeer. Oh woes, out my nose it goes.

Snort.

Ow. It hurt.

(Not as much as a footl-oh hell, you know how this goes.)

Placeholder.

Okay, Internet? Stop worrying. I'm not naive enough to think that this is the end of my woes. Not by any means. But maybe it's the beginning of the end of them. Let's just go with that. Caleb has his entire life invested in me being his singular focus, don't think I'm dumb enough to imagine a world where he just walks away from all that.

Also? Secrets. We've got 'em. Jesus help me.

In other news? Ben. Vacation. On it.

On him?

You betcha.

Abdicating evil.

What a difference a day brings, though I think I knew on Saturday, today has brought a bit of a deeper sigh of relief all around.

Caleb.

He can no longer threaten me. He can't threaten Henry, he can't do a damn thing except for run this magnificent business with the flair he has shown thus far, and be a good father when he feels like it, since Henry is already rich in fathers and doesn't need more.

He can't touch me anymore. Saturday's threats were a final taunt. He already knew it was over.

It will be a tense symmetry like it has always been. The boys will continue to farm their talents collectively and the harvest will be split equally. The relationship will remain cordial, effective and friendly. I still need to be able to deal with Caleb. I still will be working for him. The difference is he won't be able to hold my son over my head in order to spend time with me doing things he has no business doing.

I already have a husband. And frankly I have a boyfriend too, sometimes. That's enough. That might be too much for some of you but that's okay because this isn't your life, it's mine. And when I got the call from my lawyers today telling me that Caleb has agreed to my terms and the only counterpoint he requested is that he not be referred to as Satan hereafter in my writing or in person, I jumped for joy. If you know me, I don't do that. I never do that.

No more devil references? I think I can manage that. Unless they meant in all languages, and then I'm probably screwed.

One thing we're going to do is leave history buried in an unsuccessful cornfield in Eastern Canada, because some dogs are better left sleeping. Even Lochlan is fine with that. Good, because I really can't manage more than one event at a time anymore.

It took me a very long time to gather up my proof. Letters, emails, notes, witnesses, phone calls, video. Some of it was legal, some of it was not but Caleb's reputation means an awful lot to him and he did not wish to refute anything I had. He didn't wish to have his debaucheries aired in a more public eye, and he didn't wish to acknowledge how incredibly myopic he had become.

All of it was presented to his legal team. And then he was advised how to proceed. But he's a lawyer. He already knew. It just took a jury of his peers and a set of closed doors to really hammer home how tenuous his life, his career was becoming thanks to his obsession with his sister-in-law. He needed a very loud and persistent wake-up call. It has come. This is finished.

Maybe I was just lucky. I like to think I am. I put myself in some awful positions recently but it was time. Enough was enough. And I'm okay. I'm relieved. I will deal with my own proclivities concerning Caleb and my memories of Cole the best I can. That wasn't the right way. Nothing about that was right.

But who is going to argue with me? No one ever tells me no. Ben will not start to impose limits because that got Jacob nowhere but he won't turn a blind eye like Cole did because then things just get worse. So Ben acknowledges and allows and he fights with me anyway and then he worries himself sick and I couldn't do that to him anymore. Ben deserves better. He deserves everything.

But this was something I had to change on my own. Just like Ben said when he asked me to be with him: he couldn't fix any of my problems but he would hold me while I fixed them myself. Almost three years later he has kept his promises. All of them. Anything else wasn't a promise made.

I can spend as much time as I want standing behind my row of knights. God love them, they've done everything for me. Absolutely everything, fighting all of my battles, raising me, helping raise my children, holding us up when I have been a thankless, selfish little monster in return. Standing by me now as I have lost whole years being silent grief, unwilling to help myself or listen to them. Demanding that they fix this, fix everything, turn back time, bring me the good parts and make everything else go away.

It's been like surfacing at last, after diving into the deep blue ocean and swimming down until my lungs might burst and then staying there. For too long, until my head ached and I had not a single molecule of air remaining.

Rescue arrived and she surprised me. A petulant five-foot tall blonde with circles so dark under her faded green eyes you might stop and stare and wonder if she ever sleeps.

Well, she doesn't. Yet.

That might change.

(Do I really think this is the end of Caleb's provocation? I really don't know. I hope so. Maybe I'll just start with that and see what happens. I have to see him several times each week and I'm just going to take it one minute at a time.)

Please don't ask because I don't get it either.

(I am not a champagne and truffles girl, and I don't know why I'm telling you this.)

I think I proved it last night in spades with my tilty, beautiful belligerence that led to an abrupt reorganization of my dance card and saw the devil ousted in favor of the carnival comfort. The original freak. The one who doesn't look like a freak at all.

The big freak approved. Maybe, because just like me he chooses the lesser of two evils, and Lochlan isn't evil at all. Not in that way. Not in the way like Caleb is evil.

But anyway, back to the champagne, which seemed to be interspersed with heavier drinks that left me cursing the French bastard who invented stiletto heels and alternately chatting up the Russians like I did this every day or something. I don't. Jesus. I'm a deaf little freak girl who lives in the dark in a commune full of bearded musicians and artists. I have few interpersonal skills and endless affection. I hate to cook and I love to love and...and I don't belong here, so yes, I will take another drink, thank you so much.

At some point I was convinced the stilettos were the reason I was still standing. Propped up with beauty rebar, I was. Reinforced concrete blonde. So thoroughly drunk and really not able to even string two thoughts together when Caleb walked me out by the railing and put his hands up to check for the hearing aids and then smoothed my hair over the collar of Ben's suit coat. Usually I leave my hair tucked in. Now it doesn't matter, it just barely reaches my shoulders. I curse in his face and smile sweetly, swaying just a little and he smiles and leans in as if we are sharing secrets.

All I can think is that I can't feel my tongue anymore. I want to laugh but I can't.

Having passed the hearing aid and wardrobe check I am held closer while I stare out to sea. I could will it to splash over me now, drowning me. Saving me from him. Instead I am treated to his aftershave, intoxicated by the power positively writhing under his dress shirt. I am fluttering and I wish it would stop, but again, more concerned with my tongue and where it might have gone and where is Ben?

I hear him. He is singing. In the salon. Just to my left if I can push off from Caleb and walk straight through the glass. But I can't because Caleb has me in his arms and I am captive to his threats, sorry, to his 'suggestions' whispered in my ear, melting it with his laundered-money dirty soul, bending it down with his expectations, all of which are just as realistic as my fucking shoes. I still don't know what Ben said to him last week or where we stand or if there's any reason at all for me to be here right now at all.

I square myself in his embrace and focus on his eyes. No small feat. My useless tongue seems to be taking my other features with it to sleep. My eyes are all over the place, but not in the same place at the same time so I plant my hands on his chest and nod up at him.

Lochlan. I am still nodding, slurring. Ben. Not you, Cole. Sorry, baby. I stick my finger against his chest and I jab it in hard. Twice.

He laughs. Bridget, let's go cool you off a little. Maybe a long shower. He has my arm now and it hurts and I am being led down to the master suite and I don't want to go but my voice is under my tongue and I can't seem to pull it out. I see the hunger in his eyes but it's guarded for some reason. He has another drink and he gives it to me, saying it is juice, have some, sober up a little. I drink it down and then cough. It isn't juice. It's whiskey and lemonade and my new grand plan is to make myself sick, though I'm probably about to be sick anyway. Not drunker, oh, Jesus, no.

Congrats on the project and my condolences on the state of your personal life. I amuse myself saying that in a slur. I laugh out loud and almost fall down. At this point Caleb is holding me up, dragging me down the hall, eliminating a scene altogether when I think I would prefer to have one. I don't want to be alone with him. My kids are asleep in a stateroom at the end of this hallway, and what in the fuck does he think he's doing?

He opens a door and thrusts me inside and closes the door. What? Lochlan is waiting. Lochlan catches me in his arms and then Ben is there too and I am safe. Safe. I don't know why though, everything happened too suddenly. This is Lochlan's fault. I point at Lochlan and I tell him he should have trusted me because if I love you I will say so. I thank Ben for allowing me the chance to love Lochlan too and then I hit the floor.

I wake up late. The sun is licking the edges of the blinds and there is orange juice and aspirin on the table beside the bed. Ben's arms are wrapped around my neck. I am hot and sick to my stomach. Lochlan rolls over and smiles gently at me and I close my eyes and fall back to sleep for a while. Safe. When I next wake up I feel human and Lochlan is gone and I'm not sure if he really was there or if my brain has simply made room for him. Ben is kissing me, asking me if I feel better, anxious to start his day with a bang (snort) and I still can't feel my tongue.

I sit up and Ben sits up too. I lean back against him and his arms go out around me like a cage. I am not sure if it's to keep me safe from everyone else, or if it's to keep everyone else safe from me, I just know that something is off, something is different and inclined to be distant, he won't talk about it other than to reassure me that I am not a monster and that everything is fine.

I believe him.

I believed Jake too. He said this. He did this. 'Don't worry, princess. Everything is fine, just let me deal with it.' And look what happened, Ben.

It happened so fast. I am pushed away from Ben. The lamp hits the door and smashes into a million pieces. I can hear people running down the hall. Toward the noise. Toward us. I turned to Ben and he just shakes his head at me, desperate. Frustrated to the point of no return.

I'm not Jake, he says. Why won't believe in me? We're the freaks. Why would I lie to you, Bridge?

Caleb bursts into the room and smiles at the carnage. His work here is done. Payback's a bitch, Benjamin. You keep underestimating him, and I don't understand why.

This wins worst post ever.

Hi.

I'm here. It stopped pouring. I broke my finger when the fridge reached out and grabbed my hand, pinning it between the freezer and fridge handles which closed completely together and now my finger is all black and puffy and horrible and painy and I keep sticking it in PJ's face to say Look! Look how blaaaaaaack! and he recoils. And then my internet crapped right out. Then the cable went out and then @Shaw_Sean on Twitter got us rolling again because I wasn't going to wait on hold and use up forty or fifty minutes of my cell minutes to be told to unplug things I can't identify (A modern? Oh, a MODEM? Which thing is that? Lights? They both have lights. Is it rooter or r-out-er?) and Lochlan wasn't home to just fix it and then I collected the kids from school and just got settled down when the Welcome Wagon lady arrived! Because I FORGOT she was here in June and so she finally caught me home.

Now I have fridge magnets and possibly a vet for Bonham but nevermind all that. Seriously useful things though. A furnace guy. Pens even. Three new ones! I'm a serial pen-stealer. Ask my insurance agent. Or my lawyer. Or anyone who works at Safeway.

It's hard to type one-handed. Damned hard. And I have a huge headache and in two more hours Ben should be gearing up to come home and really that's all I want right now. Him. Home. With me. For days and days and days and days to come, right through to Thanksgiving.

That's all.

Wait. Advil. I want advil.

And I just made my daughter cry, listening to Relient K.

Great.

You cried wolf
The tears they soaked your fur
The blood dripped from your fangs
You said, "What have I done?"
You loved that lamb
With every sinful bone
And there you wept alone
Your heart was so contrite

(I should have written porn instead. MY APOLOGIES.)

In my own sweet time.

Here's your video for the day. I am so in love with this.

What was it brought you out here in the dark?
Was it your only way of making your mark?
Did you get rid of all the voices in your head?
Do you now miss them and the things that they said?

No worries, no one (else) is dead, besides me, Cole and Jake and really I can pass for the living quite easily these days with enough lipgloss and my lowjacked frown.

Today is sort of okay. I am deleting your emails, doing some office paperwork and making large quantities of banana bread and testing the limits of the stereo and my neighbors good graces, though we have tested those already with the Marshall stack because it's one of the loudest noisemakers in the house (aside from Ben himself) and you couldn't hear him forty feet up the drive so I think I'm safe.

I'm wearing my bulletproof thigh-high black stockings and my you've-done-it-now dress. I mean business. Well, I don't actually. Actually I mean ridiculousness and mayhem twenty-four hours a day, sometimes twenty-six and I'm thinking that this is going to be a fine slide right through into Thanksgiving.

Why? Because Ben will be on holidays at last. Finally taking a break because he's been getting comfortable with near-exhaustion and really Caleb rides him like a....oh, I had such a delightfully pornographic allegory to put there but I think I'll leave it off because my mom always reads my posts and then emails me small suggestions on how maybe I should write about happier things/times/moods and be less...perverted.

Then she tells me I look good in black.

And I should turn down the music.

And oh, Bridget, maybe you should eat a little more, you're looking so thin.

Yes Mom, check this out.

Who is that?

David Gilmour. Isn't he dreamy?

Yes, he is good looking, isn't he? He looks a little like Andrew.

No he doesn't, don't ruin it for me, mom.

How is Ben?

That's all anyone wants to know. How is Ben? Slayer of the darkness, husband of the cotton candy princess, patience of a saint, appetite of a sinner, biter of bunny-heads Benjamin.

He is delicious, as usual. Some things do not change, one of which is my lusty appetite for that man.

Luckily the larder is fully stocked.

Snort. (Sorry, mom.)

In any case, Ben will be home for two solid weeks to rest and the kids are in school and really right now we have no interest in going too far anymore or doing too much, we're exhausted and still living in fast-forward and majorly fucked up by the never-ending, always evolving dynamics of life here and everything it entails, including a commute that rivals the 'drive around the goddamn harbour' in Halifax that we've never missed for even a second, and we probably won't even get out of bed, save for trying a few new restaurants and maybe taking in a concert or two.

(Mom, come back after Thanksgiving to read, okay? I'm sure the only news for the remainder of the month will be x-rated.)

The rest of you carry on as you were, bunch of fucktards. And yes, I know I never wrote about the other night when Caleb showed up and Ben decided to get into it with him. Ever think there's a reason for that? Well there is, and there's also a reason for my steady stream of Lochlan-stories lately. Don't like it? Go read something else.

I don't want this anger, burning in me
It's something from which it's so hard to be free
And none of the tears we cry in sorrow or rage
Can make any difference, or turn back the page

Five provinces and eleven thousand miles later.

I can't change you
So I'll change myself
And I can't save you
So I'll save myself

So what if you remember me
You knocked me out with one in lies

I'm not the only fucking one
I'm not the only one

He learned how to ride it out in the field behind the big tent. In Shediac, where what wasn't ocean was dust, it seemed. He had bought the bike for a hundred and seventy-five dollars from some kid on his way to college. The kid threw in a couple of beat-up helmets and wished Lochlan luck after showing him the basics.

Hop on, Bridge.

Okay. Are you sure you can ride this thing?

Anyone can do it. Hell, you could.

I didn't want to though. It was a big old Kawasaki 900 and I was afraid of the noise. I would get on the back and Lochlan would holler at me to hold on and he would rip up and down the back roads, threading us around the potholes and sometimes off the road entirely, through the trees. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed myself against his back. Every time he went around a corner he would yell something at me but I never really heard him properly. I wasn't sure if it was lean with me or lean away from me. I still don't know to this day but Lochlan's a lot bigger and more muscled than he was as a scrawny underfed teenager so it's no longer an issue.

Late that night in the camper he said we had to grow up now. That we couldn't sleep under the stars in the back of the truck because the truck was going back. His father needed it to haul wood and so he was going to get saddlebags for the bike. We had to pare down to just some clothes and our toothbrushes. My hairbrush, he could borrow it. I would have to give away or try to sell my books, the circus snowglobe that he gave me, the portable tape player and tapes that we played to fall asleep at night. I could keep the walkman though, even though we didn't have any money for batteries. You never know when you're going to have a really good week. Any money we got would go toward getting the bike highway ready. Matt would continue to rent his camper to us in each town.

And so Lochlan got on that bike and he rode it fine with me on the back and he's been riding ever since. He's never taken a course, never had a lesson and somehow along the way managed to get grandfathered in on one of his out of province moves and is fully licensed and insured. He's ridden drunk, sober, in the snow and rain, in the blazing sun, all night, all day and through arctic air masses that wouldn't quit. He has driven coast to coast seven times and I believe at night instead of dreaming, he rides.

He's had every kind of bike there is. Currently out back there's a Harley, a Victory, a Ducati and a Honda that all belong to him. I dropped a Harley on my first lesson from the boys and never got a second but any time I want he is happy to take me out for a long drive. Sometimes I am taken when I don't want to go because for some reason he seems to need me attached to his back to enjoy it. Die hard, old habit, die hard.

He pulled my hands up to his face, kissing my fingertips warm as we huddled together under the blanket for warmth. The camper was unheated and it was the last day of summer.

I'll buy you a new snowglobe. I'm so sorry, Fidget.

It's ok. I love being free with no earthly possessions. We are nomads. At least for now.

Wayfarers! That's it, baby. I'm still going to replace it.

You'll probably never find another one like that.

I'll see when the time comes.

Many years passed (exactly twenty-five to this day) and this morning through the rain and the bad blood in this house and all of the things that happened last week and last night, Lochlan came back after leaving the house for three hours and not a minute less. He came in and shrugged out of his backpack and then his wet gear and then finally his sweater and then he reached into the pack and pulled out a cardboard box. He put it in my hands and then sat down to watch as I opened it.

He found one. Another snowglobe with a tiny big top inside. Identical save for the fact that the one I left behind was chipped and this one is beautifully intact. Ironic, since I am not.

Unbelievable. It looks almost the same!

And then I turned it over to see if it played music (just like my old one!) and there was the chip on the bottom in the same place as my old one, in the back so it never mattered anyway and...my initials are written on it in pencil: B. L.

Just like on my old one...

How, wait, why did you keep this all these years?

I figured by the time you were this old you might have your shit together. I was wrong but you can have it anyway.

You knew.

I knew? Knew what? That you would still want it?

No, that you would still be around. That you would know where I was twenty-five years in the future. That you would do this for me.

Lochlan didn't say anything more. I turned the snowglobe over and wound it. And then I shook it hard and set it down gently on the table, watching the blizzard spool up over the circus. Driving all of the townspeople away and the performers back to their campers or tents. I watched the two teenagers run to the bike and jump on and drive up the highway out of the storm, the girl clinging to the boy driving, trusting that he wouldn't spill them to the pavement or put them in any kind of danger. That he would look out for her the way he managed to keep the snowglobe intact all these years. Carefully and with intent. He would find a place for them to ride out the storm. Someplace safe, warm and dry. Because you can't hold a circus in the snow, and you can't keep history under glass.

You knew too, princess. You've fought pretty hard to keep me in your life.

For the life of me I can't figure out why, Lochlan.

Me neither, Bridget.

We sat there and rode out the end of the storm, sitting in a tiny little truck stop diner seventeen miles from nowhere, eating chicken soup paid for with a twenty-dollar bill Lochlan found in the parking lot, warming our hands in the steam rising from the bowls.

Nomads.

Waiting for the circus to begin again.

This would be the part where the devil and the rock star disagree.