Straight to voicemail.

Undead.

That's what I am. I keep getting up and plodding along looking for brains and something whacks me in the back of the skull and down I go, like a ragdoll.

I'm trying to out-perform one hell of a migraine and I lost the battle days ago but like I said, I'm stubborn and I'm determined to give one hundred percent even though only a good fifteen percent of me is actually functioning properly.

Lochlan watches me fumble around for a little while. He's amused, trying not to intervene as I spent a good minute trying to get my lipgloss just right and then wincing through trying to make a bowl of cereal.

Argh, I say and he takes over. He fishes in his pocket and finds something shiny to give me. A Nevada quarter. 2004. It has horses galloping toward the face of the coin and I love it and for the briefest second the pain vanishes. He used to find me cool things all the time when I was little. A shiny penny. A cat's eye marble. A smooth rock shaped like a heart. A tiny whistle or a compass. A ball. A ring. A human heart, still beating, painted in circus stripes and if you hold it up to your ear you can hear the music from the Big Top.

 The only other time the pain goes away is if he presses his lips against my forehead and just holds them there, while I ache with the knowledge that I can be bought for twenty-five cents. and nothing ever changes.

***

When the sun goes down and I can stand outside without squinting in pain, he walks over to me and whispers something in my ear. No one is really paying attention anyway. PJ and John are barbecuing some hamburgers and Schuyler and Gage and Dalton are doing a little last-minute yard work. There is cold raspberry lemonade for them in the fridge and I am simply waiting at this point for tomorrow, when Daniel and Sam get home from their visit with Ben for family visiting day. I have not talked to Ben in days and I asked Daniel not to call me unless he needed something because I can't stand it. I want Ben to do well but I don't want him to do it on my time, frankly. I don't want to wait anymore for anything. I want to have fun. I want to be in love. I want to be able to ask for a hug and get one without waiting for volunteers, clean hands, empty arms or a generous spirit.

I want Ben home. I am so selfish.

But I forget it for now (have to, self-preservation and all that, if it hurts, don't think about it, Peanut) and take Lochlan's proffered hand. We go up and change into our swimsuits, grab towels and and leave the house again. Loch tells PJ we're going for a swim, so PJ turns his attention to being in charge of the children and John takes over at the grill. I am almost to the gate when I run back and give PJ my hearing aids. He pretends to put them on and I laugh and run back to the gate. We make our way down to the bottom of the steps just as the sun begins to drop low against the hard line dividing the Pacific from the sky and I stop and stare at it. My head is still sore but there's a cool breeze and the muted sunlight helps a lot.

Loch walks out into the surf and turns around. He's up to his waist in the sea, and I am still dry. He won't go a single step further away from me this close to the sea proper. I step in and walk until I reach my knees and he turns away, heading further out still until he's up to his shoulders. He turns back once more but I am still at knee-level so he comes back in and pulls me out slowly, watching for the bits of rocks half-submerged by the tides. The water is shockingly cold and we walk until he is shoulder-deep again and my feet leave the ground. He pulls my arms over his shoulders and turns us so we can watch the sun disappear. I got you, he says. Don't worry.

Baiser vole.

Moments string the day together like bunting flags in a line.

Like Lochlan, who came up behind me as I was washing pots and pans and swore as he kissed the top of my head, pointing out my roots are coming in probably 90% white now. Yes, I know. It's all downhill from here, sweetie, please toss those strawberry curls around just a little more because pretty soon I'm going to look like a seasoned witch who stole the heart of a young fire breather who NEVER SEEMS TO AGE, at least not physically, though emotionally if he is sober he is practical and stubborn and has zero time for nonsense. Crotchety, handsome bastard. I know my hair is turning white and I know time is marching on, picking up speed on the downhill but I'd be happier if he wouldn't bring it up. Besides, when he presses his chin on the top of my head my ruined knees ache now. This is why I don't run anymore. I don't know or care if it's tendonitis or arthritis, I just know that it's pain that distracts me. Physical pain is easy to deal with, however so maybe I got lucky. I get another kiss on the top of my head and he leaves.

Caleb is heading into the city proper to do some shopping and asks me for a list. What do I need? Better yet, what do I want? As if he can cross off a list like an evil, generous Santa Claus and win my loyalty with material wealth. I tell him I'll be there later in the week and he again asks if it wouldn't be easier if he just looked after it, as in financially. Because I am kept. Because he is sugar and I am the bee. Because he's rich and I actually have nothing. I tell him my list is on the calendar notes that we sync between phones and he nods and smiles and tells me he'll be back early in the afternoon and will meet me in the kitchen. My knee aches and I reach down to rub behind it and he asks what's wrong. I snap at him that I am getting old and falling apart and he says that's what stress does, it kills you just when you want to live most, and live without fighting for every moment in which you can breathe without clenching your fists. He's good at these descriptions, because that's exactly what it feels like. He tells me he can fly me to a specialist or have one come here and I tell him that if it hurts bad enough I will bite down on a stick and saw it off just below my thigh. He tells me to stop being provocative and I refuse. I get a kiss on the cheek as he leaves.

Batman calls and I hang up on him. John offers to screen my calls for me so I tuck my phone into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He pats it and gives me a kiss on the forehead as he leaves. I love my knights, especially the ones who make an effort to help and to listen. John is functioning as my sounding board while I am presently without August, Sam or Daniel to unload on. He's pretty awesome even if he does look like a runaway Allman brother. His beard is long. It's awesome. I want to braid it or hide under it. I want to grow one just like it. I horrify him. That's okay too.

Gage and Schuyler go shopping after lunch too, not downtown but at the mall thirty minutes down the highway and come home with a present for me for hosting Gage so sweetly. A bread maker because mine fell apart a year into living at the castle and I've often said I wished I could replace it because my hands hurt when I knead bread and it never seemed as effective to use the big mixer with the dough hooks. This one is a three-pound horizontal loaf bonanza and it makes jam too! I love the bigger size, since any one of the boys could eat an entire vertical one-and-a-half or two-pound loaf in one sitting from the old machine. I'm baking bread tonight for breakfast tomorrow. It's going to be so good. Hopefully it will last a long time, as I am always looking for ways to avoid grocery shopping. I told the boys if only someone would bring home some chickens, a goat and a cow I think we could go off the grid completely in very short order. I'm not kidding. Farm wifery comes so easy to me, you actually have no idea.

Schuyler kisses me right between the eyes and Gage lands one on my temple as they leave with a promise to return when the first loaf is ready. Possibly with livestock in tow.

I'll be here, but my whole head is dirty now from all the kisses today.

Physical Graffiti.

Every time Lochlan and I disagree on a matter of discipline when it comes to Ruth I pull out the fact that he let me get away with everything and then some, and it isn't fair to deny her the same freedom.

He will stand his ground saying only that times have changed. It's a mantra at this point.

I tell him the only thing different is that we hear more about bad things thanks to the internet but children are safer than ever. We're all safer than ever.

Then today he offers up that the freedom he gave me ruined his life and mine too and he has a second chance here to get things right. 

Oh.

That makes perfect sense but he still can't project my childhood onto hers. That isn't fair to Ruth.

***

It's a Led Zeppelin kind of day and I have a date with a blisteringly toxic lemonade cocktail, the front porch and The Lost Symbol, which I'm into, finally. If I can just finish the mending pile first and the drawing of the ship I'm working on and convince the children to have some lunch. It's never hard getting the boys to come and have some food. Of course, they don't sleep until ten in the morning like the kids do.

So when I grow up I think I'd like to be a little kid again.

***

I went down to the boathouse to take Caleb the receipts for Henry's school supplies and he held up his hand to halt me in my tracks and he said She's here. He held the phone out to me and I reached up for it. I don't know who it is.

Hello? 

Hi, Sweet-Bee. 

Oh, hey Asshole. How's vacation?

Wish you were here! Fuck, Bridget. I feel turned inside-out. 

But are you going to be sober for the rest of my life?

Working on it, Bridge. 

Work harder, Benny. Why haven't you called? 

I don't want to get too attached to you in case you give up on me while I'm gone. 

Then come back soon. 

I will the moment I get this all figured out, Peanut. 

Peanut now? 

He's on my mind. He's the only person I haven't talked to. 

Besides me, you mean. 

Yes. 

Want me to go find him?

Naw. I left a message on his phone. I said what I wanted to say for now. I wanted to talk to you. 

So then why did you call Caleb?

He always knows where you are. 

You're smart. Maybe you'll kick this yet. 

God, I hope so. 

God can't do this. You have to do it yourself-

I know, Bridge. 

Sorry. I was married to a preacher once. Old habits die hard. 

Pun intended?

Ouch, Ben. 

Sorry but you earned it.

God, I hope they fix your totally inappropriate sense of humor while you're down there. 

No you don't. 

You're right, I don't. It helps make you who you are.

Who am I, Bridge?

Ben, no one knows who they are.

You seem to cope with it so much better than I do. 

You see, this is why we still call you the new guy. Because it's been almost twenty years I've known you and you seem to think I'm mostly bulletproof. 

Well, you are. 

Shoot me and find out.

And so well-adjusted. 

Aren't we? We totally are. So come home, you big freak and let's get on with the show.

Northumberland straight.

Sandbars were the best. I could walk for miles and miles before the water came up to my knees. I knew how to tell the time by where the sun was in the sky and how red my skin was. My hair turned golden-white and my nails were pitted and dull from the sand. I poured sand out of my shoes each night, I wriggled on the seat in the diner for not having..er, rinsed it all away and I crunched on grains of it in everything I ate. I was a toxic cocktail of sunblock and orange pop and aloe cream. I slept when the sun went down and rose to meet it on the shore in the morning. I ate Pixi Stix for breakfast and lunch, french fries and lobster legs for dinner. I had ice cream ten times a week and I had no use for popsicles whatsoever. I couldn't work those and would wind up with a slushy grape puddle at my feet every single time.

I ruined my mood ring, so I scraped it off my finger over wrinkled, puckered skin and I threw it far into the waves.

I went through a bathing suit a month and lost more towels than I can count, leaving them somewhere on the beach when I went into the water and having no idea where I put them when I came out. I learned I have amazing, difficult diseases like Fresh Air Syndrome and Wanderlust and Beachcombitis.

And Wanderlust remains the one we can't seem to cure.

I would walk so far toward the horizon I always expected to begin to greet people coming towards me who might speak a different language. Lochlan was forced to spend forty-five minutes to an hour in a slow-jog through ankle-deep water at low tide to tell me to turn back, chastising me for throwing my watch into the water because I had transcended time and errands and chores and home. Home? What the heck are you talking about? I am home. This is home. 

I felt lifted above the constraints of life out of the water, buoyed by the heavy salt smell and the curiosities below the surface. That's what it is, then. I thought to myself. I'm a mermaid! And he must have figured it out to because he doesn't seem all that irritated at the lengths he has to go to reel me back in, to bring me reluctantly back to dry land.

Tell me why I'm discontented
Will I die without the details in my hands?
I feel these vines surrounding my heart
I fear I'm moving at a slower pace again
Tell me how this all unfolds

I can't find the secret to survive
To grow old safe and sound
Life is sifting through like the sands in the hourglass
There's not a moment to relive my time and space
There's not a moment to undo anything

Less than 3 (okay, no just 3 and then I'm offline for the day).

And...Happy 4th! My husband is American. Well, one of them is anyway. Half my friends are too. But we already had Canada Day on Monday so aside from strawberry shortcake there will be no holidaying indulged in today except by Schuyler, who gets a four day weekend because for some reason y'all tossed Friday in there too and he can't work if all of the offices are closed.

Lochlan got me a feel-better present.

If you haven't seen this your life might possibly be sorely incomplete.

Less than B.

Sam and Daniel are packing to go and visit Ben. I wanted to stow away in Daniel's carry-on bag but he said my toes would be sticking out and oh, Bridget, if they see the toes then you know how it goes. All downhill from there. 

Ptooey. Fuck. Balls.

I want to see Ben too.

(I would have been just as thrilled had he recited Goblin Market and he knows this.)

When I was very small (okay, not so small but slightly smaller than I am now and a lot less worldly) Lochlan would to bore me to sleep with lessons in literature, philosophy and astronomy. Astronomy was my favorite because the sky was so huge. A close second was poetry, for I was so impressed with how the romantics could make me feel so many big feelings with such shortened bites of words strung in tiny bracelets instead of endless spiderwebs of information, after devouring that Poe book translated by Baudelaire and winding up more fascinated by the man behind the man, as always. It's as if he was fated to eat at that diner, find that book and bring it back, where we would sleep in the bed of the pickup truck on hot nights and three decades later be tossing around entire poems as ammunition, deployed from our hearts as we try to live in the present, a place I'm not all that sure we belong.

To this day I mostly stick with Baudelaire but ever the showman, Lochlan knows how to bring a crowd to attention. Easily so when the crowd is one person and she wasn't expecting it as we quietly inspected the new grotto that is now finished and quite unlike anything I have ever seen. We waited until the heat of the afternoon when everyone else had disappeared for some creative endeavors or naps or catching up on books and sun. He smoothed down his curls and then his vest over his rumpled white button-down shirt and he stepped up on the wire chair and then onto the stone table and he cleared his throat and stared at me until he had my full attention. Oh, Rossetti. Sigh.

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? My love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows naught of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Caleb stepped up beside me and clapped. You really do have a gift for performance, Loch. He smiled. The whole display of generosity was nothing more than an attempt to change the direction of the wind. I'm pleased I could give you a good venue from which to recite the work of other people.

I have my own works as well. Bridget knows..

Yes, I'm well aware. Not as if I haven't had the last five years to discover all there is to know about you as an adult. It didn't take that long, of course. Not much there below the surface, is there?

Stop it. I step in front of him.

Caleb simply looks over my head at Lochlan, who has stepped down off the table and changes the subject. Well, since you're both here I can detail some of the features I had installed. If you want to stop the water, just turn this lever toward the wall. This switch operates the lights. He flicks it and hundreds of tiny white fairy lights come on. It's shady enough to see them. And around the entire perimeter to the gate and then meeting the wooden fence is electrified netting. I will tell the children but I wanted you to know in case you decided to venture into the woods or something from the woods ventures down into the yard.

You put an electric fence around me?

If you belonged to me I would do a lot more than that to protect you and the children but perhaps I'm just more conscious of your safety.

You're fucked in the head, Diabhal. Lochlan tells him. He is done with the digs, jabs and barbs, and heads back to the house riddled with scratches and holes.

I'll be right in. I call after him and he turns, pointing at me. He holds up three fingers. Three minutes. I have three minutes.

(I am twelve.)

Well, what do you think? The Devil looks so pleased with himself.

I don't think we want or require an electric fence, Caleb. That's dangerous.

No, it's dangerous to have you or Ruth oblivious to the world with your headphones on all the time with the endless parade of black bears and coyotes down the lawn. Sometimes I have to take matters into my own hands.

To keep me safe.

Yes, he whispers.

Safe. I repeat louder than before. We've had this conversation already.

Bridget-

Is this for me or for you?

For you, of course. 

So you're tightening my leash, making my world smaller. Give me everything right here so I will be safe? 

No, I'm giving you a quiet, shady place to draw, Princess. Cole always talked about having a dedicated space in which to create. 

I like it. But I have to go. 

Maybe you can come down later? For some dessert? 

Maybe. I turn away and hurry into the house. I don't want any more grand gestures. They're just stirring up the sand on the bottom of what was easily a clear blue sea at one time and is now opaque and black.

Good enough.

It's cooling off a little, finally. The wind has picked up and a lovely breeze keeps us cool. I had Eisley's Currents album playing through my headphones and kept swapping it with Pallbearer for a little Heavy versus Light for my brain to play with. I was drawing caricatures of the boys on a new sketchbook that I stole from Lochlan's desk drawer. He won't mind.

I painted my nails green, though I expect it to last about two whole days because I'm terrible with polish and worse once it chips. Besides, PJ already grabbed my hand and smudged the polish and I snapped at him and he snapped right back before apologizing. He's not fond of Lochlan's methods but Lochlan has reminded him twice already today that there's nothing underhanded about the way he's going about things and he would do the same if Ben were here. PJ snorted and Lochlan said under his breath that he should shut the fuck up and mind his own business.

PJ heard that (He has giant ears) and roared back that Bridget is his business and if Lochlan wants to give half-cocked orders PJ will paint him into the floorboards with one stroke, flattening his pasty Scottish ass.

I laughed out loud and iced tea came out my nose and I started coughing so hard at least Dalton bothered to get up off his chair and pound my back gently.

Duncan briefly considered (out loud) throwing all of us off the cliff, one at a time until Lochlan shut that down too. You're not throwing my girl off a cliff but here, let's see if the fat one floats. 

So PJ charged and before Lochlan knew what had happened he was cartwheeling through the air, followed by Duncan, Dalton, Sam and PJ too. I don't exactly think it's bright of them to all jump at once in case someone lands on someone else but the shouts of sheer delight that bounced back up over the ledge gave me comfort. It will take them ten minutes to swim around and climb the steps back up. I get up to head inside for a new glass of tea when Caleb stepped onto the patio from the side yard. He's in running gear.

Are you insane? It's too hot for you to run in this weather, Cale.

He ignores that. Where is everyone?

I indicate the sea and he nods, still keyed up from his workout. He hands me his water bottle and his phone and his shirt after he pulls it over his head and tells me he'll be back before pulling off his shoes and taking a running leap off the ledge too. I run to the edge and he has already broken the surface and is beginning to swim around the point.

Oh hell, I tell myself and I put Caleb's things down on the concrete path and I jump too. I know they will wait for me, alerted to my impending presence by the volume of my scream as I fall.

Fire in the hole.

I am a child in need watch me bleed
How can I live if I can not feel
I am a animal no one knows
I limp around on broken toes

Blood sinks down to the canvas
I'm going down, down, down
My blood sinks down to the canvas
I'm going down, down, down, down, down

The girl who loved the monsters
Traces black streaks in the sky
The girl who loved the monsters
Is the girl who wants to fly

No sleep. No phone call today and a surprisingly eventful day yesterday so yeah, you didn't get to hear the end of the story about Friday night and no, I don't know what kind of owls make those sounds we heard last night but they were very close and I was freaked out and excited to and so I just lay there all night long amazed and awake but mostly just freaking amazed.

Now I'm a small coffee-making zombie. Just picture a mini blonde version of the one in the lab coat on the other side of the door when Brad Pitt is trapped in the room in World War Z. I'm even making the funny chomping, clicking sounds with my teeth.

(That's going on to the list of Best Movie Moments for me of all time. No kidding.)

Lochlan is still doggedly working on his act which now involves feats of strength and testing limits.

Last night he pulled me up by my ankles and I fought to be released and he asked me very quietly why I liked to fight it. What was I looking for? Is it a habit now, with him, with them? Too many hard questions so I latched on to the final one. I nodded carefully, eyes wide. One thing he always taught me is that I can lie to anyone else and should, regularly but to him I should always tell the truth.

So he pulled harder on my ankles still and called me mo taibheoir beag (which means something like my tiny little clown and is a far more cumbersome nickname than Circus Peanut and so never lasted long anyway and true to form he stripped back the years and peeled back my flesh and wrapped his heart around all of the pieces of my heart that we could find in the dark and he brought me back to life, but just for a little while. All the way, baby, see the lights? We're almost there, safe and sound.

His plan is transparent and yet fireproof. Fill in the gaps and I will no longer need anyone else. They saw it in shadow before but he didn't give it his all. His all is a force to be reckoned with. He just couldn't be bothered. He's too busy. He's too focused. He's too jacked out on his own preservation, trying to weather the past, present and future without self-destructing and he'll do it the way he's done everything. With magic. Controlling fire. Controlling our tiny camper-walled-limit universe, a hard worker nailing down our hopes and dreams while I'm spun off on sugar and lights and loud music and daydreams. He's focused now, but on me instead of everything else. His timing is maddening and incredible and perfect.

Nothing changes when everything changes, he always told me. We do our jobs, eat at the same time every day, swim in the sea at least eight times a week, say our prayers to the stars when we go to sleep at night, do our laundry every second Saturday and everything else will fall into place. It's all in finding a rhythm, a routine on the road. A plan within the chaos, Peanut. Come over closer so you won't get cold. Did you have fun today?

I fear the rest of them are doomed, knowing what I know. It's as if they're locked in the room and I'm the zombie standing on the other side of the glass, smiling and chomping at the bit. Come out and I'll destroy you. Stay inside and die anyway.