Friday 2 May 2014

Thirteen hours with the Devil.

I staged a bit of a sit-in last evening and had I known it would run past an hour or two I would have planned better and ordered food, kissed the children good night and told Duncan and PJ not to sit in the kitchen waiting up for me. Lochlan sat out in the driveway for most of it but he doesn't mind the hot sun and then the cool moon.

I had to pinch myself to stay awake, at least four times Caleb yelled at me to stop fidgeting so much because he jumped every time I jumped and basically we never even talked, we just sat and stared each other down.

My vote is all or nothing. Everyone is to know. Come clean. Fess the fuck up already and then the questions will stop, take whatever punishment they have for you and let's get on with our lives. Maybe things will be better, after all. Because all the things we've tried so far, time, money, absence, didn't work. What do we have to lose?

Everything, is the answer. I don't like his answer. I go back to being quiet in hopes that he, too, will shut the fuck up.

His vote is to continue to the course, to find out what it will take to win absolution from Lochlan.

You can't ask for absolution from Loch. Loch can hold a grudge forever. Loch is an elephant, he never forgets. He's loathe to forgive and stuck in his ways. Be kind, be quick and be good. The thefts, the bad things we did were so we could eat. He always told me it was only for enough to eat, or pay for a safe place to sleep and I believed him. His pride is larger than his brain, trust me.

So I sit back, sipping a bourbon watered down by an ice cube that disappeared an hour ago. I sit and watch the Devil and I think about the things I do that drove him to show up and ruin things and then to have him stand here and tell me he thought it would be the worst thing I ever went through and that I was young and resilient and would soon forget and move on and life would be a fairy tale, just as soon as he got rid of Lochlan. Once we were apart, once I was Cole's or anyone's just as long as it wasn't Loch, that everything would be okay.

His brain is smaller than Lochlan's, apparently.

Watch here now as I fire up my flamethrower and leave a path in front of me that reaches a hundred miles in every direction because that's how I feel and that's what Jacob was. A break from this. A break from Cole and from Caleb and from Loch and from everything I know and everything I am.

God has other plans for me. I wish he'd drop a note. I don't know what they are.

Caleb asks if I want a refill. I wake up and snap at him that I don't, I want an answer. 

I don't have one for you. 

Then I guess I'll wait some more. Until you do.