Author's Note: This is my first FanFic. I have been reading Twilight FanFics for almost a month now, and I am hooked. There are so many great writers here! So, I am going to try my hand at this. As far as reviewing, I won't be pushy, but it would be nice. :) And please, don't hold back. I deeply appreciate your honestly.

Disclaimer: I do not own and of the Twlight Saga nor it's Characters. I am merely borrowing it all :)

Also, any direct usage from any of the Twilight books will be in Italics.

Chapter One: Welcome Home

*~*

My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt- sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry on item was a parka.

In the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington State, a small town named Forks exists under a near-constant cover of clouds. It rains on this inconsequential town more than any other place in the United States of America. It was from this town and its gloomy, omnipresent shade that my mother escaped with me when I was only a few months old. It was this town that I'd been compelled to spend a month every summer until I was fourteen. That was the year I finally put my foot down; these past three summers, my dad, Charlie, vacationed with me in California for two weeks instead.

It was to Forks that I now exiled myself- an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.

I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city.

The situations that have lead me to this decision,a decision of love and sacrifice, are not bad, nor are they ominous. I am once again doing the right thing for my mother. The role I was born into was not an easy one, but it wasn't the worst either. Raising an adult as your child had it's downs, but it also had it's ups. That is one thing that I can now look forward to, is a break from playing the Mom role.

I will miss her, no doubt.

I will be unaccustomed to waking up each day without my mother rummaging through the house looking for the keys she held in her hands or the rock music blaring from the bathroom that most women her age cringe at. But I will survive. She loves Phil, her new husband, and I am at a place in my own life where I can rightly sacrifice myself for a new experience to allow her the freedom to have her own. I know how hard it has been staying home with me while her new husband travels around the country playing ball and having so much freedom. The type of freedom that my mother craves with all her whimsical soul. We will make it.

After the numerous hugs and more hugs at the airport terminal, I boarded my plane waving one last time to my erratic mother who had silent tears pouring down her face. They were tears of joy and guilt. A very domestic and motherly concoction, that made my heart twinge, but I knew this was best for both of us.

It was a very good thing that Phil was there to help her find her car in the massive parking garage.

The trip was long, but not quite long enough. The landing in Port Angeles came sooner that I thought it would. And this wasn't upsetting, neither was the rain that met me outside. This was just how it was going to be.

Charlie met me and ushered me into his squad car, quickly loading up my sparse luggage. Living in Phoenix left much to be desired when it came to my winter wardrobe. Renee had helped me buy a few things here and there in preparation for this trip, but it still didn't amount to much.

The ride home, to my new home, with Charlie, my dad, was quiet. This also was not unexpected. I may look like Renee, my mother, but I acquired my old soul, as Renee calls it, from Charlie. We are the suffer in silence type, and neither of us minded.

"That is a nice parka, Bells, it'll do you good here." Charlie said, finally breaking the silence. "Thanks dad. Mom and Phil bought it for me as one of my many going away presents." I replied, quietly. And that was the extent of the conversation.

There really wasn't much to say, as all of my arrangements here in Forks had already been made. I had planned on buying a car once arriving, even saved up a nice chunk of cash to do so, but Charlie called a week before my departure from Forks to notify me that he already had that taken care of. I am sure he could hear me blushing through the phone, but I made sure to thank him profusely. School arrangements were complete as well. All I had to do was show up at the tiny high school the next day and pick up my new schedule. Easy, right? Sure.

Suddenly, we were pulling into the gas station in Forks. I missed most of the drive, delving in and out of my thoughts. We were already home, in Forks. I even missed the faded turquoise sign that welcomed me so dimly into Forks, population 3, 564... now 3,565. "You getting out?" Charlie asked. "Sure, I need to stretch my legs. I didn't realize we had made it so quickly." I replied as I opened his creaky car door.

Stepping into the small store I felt slightly claustrophobic, but it passed with a few deep breaths. Charlie was paying the man, in cash, for a fill up on pump one, the only pump. Why even bother numbering it? I walked to the back of the cramped store and grabbed a vanilla Coke. I am not really the soda drinking type, but it had been a long trip and I could use a sweet pick me up. I stepped up to the counter to pay for my drink, when Charlie took the drink from me to pay for it himself. I obliged, awkwardly. I wasn't use to people taking care of me.

While the cashier counted his change back, I glanced at the array of fliers and business cards on a small cork-board by the door. I noticed a particularly creepy card advertising for a dentist in town. A large smiling mouth, mainly teeth, glared back at me. No other facial features, just the mouth. Maybe it is odd that it creeped me out, but it did. I thanked Charlie and the cashier for my icy beverage and began to leave the store, but not before reading the name on the mouthy business card. "Dr. Carlisle Cullen, DMD" was written in plain type followed by the address and phone number of the practice. Surely, in such a small town, all that was unnecessary. But who am I to judge?

"I see you guys have gotten a new dentist since my last stint here in Forks." I lamented as I hunkered back down into Charlie's police cruiser.

My last stint, yeah. That was entertaining. Being accident prone Bella, my last summer here, I spent a good three hours with the obviously previous Dr. Oscar Maddox, DMD. I had tripped, over my own feet, and gracefully smashed my face onto a nearby trash receptacle at the gym of the high school. Charlie had taken me to watch the basketball team during one of their many summer practices. The tooth that had to be crowned wasn't a big deal, but the stitches in my lip and four days of bird beak-like swelling was ridiculous.

"Yeah, Dr. Cullen. He is a great guy. He and his wife Esme moved here about three years ago from a town in Alaska." He commented brightly. "He and his family keep to themselves mostly. I thought I would have a good bit of trouble out of them, with them having all those adopted teenagers, but it's nothing compared to the crap these hometown boys give me."

"Well, I certainly hope I don't have to visit him anytime soon. But we know me..." I trailed off, as I stared out the window for the remaining three miles to my new home, in Forks.

*~*

It only took one trip to get all of my stuff upstairs. I got the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was familiar; it had belonged to me since I was born. The wooden floor, the light blue walls, the peaked ceiling, the yellowed lace curtains around the window-- these were all part of my childhood. The rocking chair from my baby days was still in the corner. The only changes that Charlie had ever made were switching the crib for a bed and adding a desk as I grew.

That desk now held a computer that Phil had sent ahead of me. A very nice rig that he built himself. If I couldn't do it with this computer, it didn't need to be done. He even jazzed up my case with neon purple LED inserts. Charlie reluctantly added high speed Internet to his cable package so that I could keep in touch with my mother and friends back in Phoenix; it had been a stipulation on my mother's part. It made me glad that she can be pushy; I am sure I will need something to pass the time here, in Forks. I had visited the library here in the past, and I already knew that I had no need to go back there. If I haven't already read what their shelves held, I didn't want to. Which also means the money I saved, by Charlie buying my get away car, would come in handy for trips to the book stores back in Port Angeles and in Seattle.

Thinking about the aforementioned get away car caused a brief feeling of excitement and I expedited my unpacking and hurried back downstairs. There really was no reason to mope around, not today anyway. There would be plenty of time for that each night I was exiled to bed to sleep away the time until the next day started. Even my weekends would be left wide open for grieving, outside of the trips I am planning to the not so local bookstores.

I bounded down the stairs to find Charlie leaning against the kitchen counter, on the phone. He held up a finger to motion he was almost finished with his conversation. "Yeah, sure. We are going to go grab some dinner, then we'll probably be back about the same time you get here. Okay, see you then. Bye." He said, closing up his cryptic conversation, and then laying the ancient cordless phone onto the counter. "Well, Bells, lets get some supper. I'm famished."

*~*