a/n: OneShot of when Renee left Charlie. Inspired by the jazz standard "How Insensitive." Obv Renee and Charlie and their failed marriage belong to Stephenie Meyer.

"How Insensitive"

How insensitive I mus have seemed
When he told me that he loved me.
How unmoved and cold I must have seemed
When he told me so sincerely.

'Why,' he must've asked
Did I just turn and stare in icy silence?
What was I to say? What can you say
When a love affair is over?


This was it. Today. The clock was ticking.

"Now or never." That's the old saying, right? The saying I had been hypocritically pondering for the past few months of my life. "Now or never." It had to be tonight.

Charlie would be home within the hour, and he probably would have no idea at all what was going on. He would walk into a nightmare the second he was home. Would he even be able to call this place 'home' anymore? I really wondered. Had it been me, would I have been able to?

It didn't matter. I wasn't the one staying behind in this stupid, awful town. This wasn't home. Not anymore.

No, knowing Charlie, he would hang on as much as possible to something that never really even existed. A family that was never right. A love that was ill-defined from the beginning. It hadn't ever been love. There was, at some point, recognition of cooperation on both our parts. But it was never anything worth hanging on to. Just because two people could sit in the same room without wanting to kill each other didn't mean they should keep sitting in the same room forever. It just didn't make sense.

I had been stuck in the same God damned room my entire life. That room was the town of Forks, Washington, a town of so little consequence, the only people who'd heard of it were people who had been unfortunate enough to have personally experienced the place. It was the most mundane, lackluster place imaginable: The people there held all the judgment and criticism of a small town, and I swear everyone that lived there must have been related, since their families went back so far into the town's history together. It was the worst place, in my opinion, to even consider forming a settlement. It rained almost every day of the year, with the rare exception; the sun shining was a sight practically unseen, and nothing ever dried out there. It stayed soaked to the core, no matter what it was. The trees, the ground - I'm pretty sure even birds were just constantly bathing.

I sat at the kitchen table alternating between staring at the clock that was propped against the wall and the rest of the kitchen. The clock told me I still had at least twenty minutes before Charlie would arrive at the house. The cabinets told me something much different - something that I should have acknowledged the second I got myself into this mess of a marriage. They told me just how pathetic I had been, trying to make something of nothing for such a long time. They made a mockery of my efforts to turn a train wreck of a situation into something much more enjoyable. A fender-bender, perhaps?

The intense yellow filled my sight, and I just stared straight into it until I had to look away. It was almost like looking straight into the sun - but not for the same reason. It wasn't because the yellow was so bright, or because it was so ugly. It was because it was so painful.

Just like looking straight into the sun.

That's what life was like with Charlie. What it had almost always been like. Even when precious Bella came along, things were just flat out painful. Charlie worked his life away - he was never home, and never spent time with us. He didn't even know that Bella loved playing peek-a-boo, but hated people making faces at her.

To be fair, he probably could have been a good father. But he just wasn't ever there. He was married to the police force of Forks, and he wouldn't have given it up for anything, not even his wife and daughter.

It was hard to watch Charlie unknowingly fuck up over and over again. He was so predictable, it almost hurt. Again with the pain. He would wake up in the morning before I did, and he would be gone before I could even get out to the kitchen to make him breakfast. He wouldn't get home until late evening, when I would have already fed Bella and myself, and he would have driven by the local diner. We couldn't even have dinner together as a family.

In some ways, I just felt pity towards him. How could he really not even suspect that the end of this was near? How could he think everything was just okay? Did he think all families were as disconnected as this? Poor guy. If he were around more, maybe he would have known I was feeling that way. Maybe I wouldn't have felt that way.

Well, okay, I probably would have still hated Forks. I probably would have still wanted to get out of there more than anything I had ever wanted before.

But I might not have wanted to leave him behind in Forks.

The sound of Charlie's cruised pulling up in the driveway interrupted my mental diatribe. I reached for the stroller sitting next to me which held my daughter, and spoke quietly to her sleeping form, "Bella, this is the last time you will ever have to call Forks your home."

I heard Charlie open the front door and clomp around in his boots. My suitcases - all two of them - had already been stowed away in my little car, so there was literally nothing to tip him off to what was coming.

He walked through the door, and I just had to say it then. Before I thought of a reason to talk myself out of it. "Now or never," right?

"Charlie - we need to talk." He looked confused and slightly nervous at the prospect. Just another example of how painful this life was - the idea of talking was strange to him.

Within eight minutes I had told Charlie the news that I was leaving, with Bella, and that I did not want him to follow us. At some point during my explanation he had sat down in a kitchen chair, letting his head drop to his hands which were propped up by his elbows on the table. Once I was done saying all I had to say, I stood up and started pushing the stroller towards the front door.

I turned around at the kitchen door and said, quietly, "Goodbye, Charlie."

I made it through the front door, and almost off the porch before Charlie got to me. Part of me was a little surprised that he had enough emotion to go after me, even if it was on his doorstep.

"Renee. Don't go. Please, don't go. I can take time away from the force, I can be home more often - I'll take care of Bella and you can go out with some friends. I'll fix everything. I just want this to work --"

"-- Just let me go, Charlie. It didn't work out, okay? I really, really hate Forks!" These words were my last resolve, I had rehearsed them in my head since ten o'clock that morning. The look on his face finally reflected the pain I had been seeing for months.

He was only taken aback for a second, before begging again, "Don't take Isabella with you. I know I don't say it enough, or even ever, but I love you." He paused to breathe. "I love you."

At those three words, I turned around and stared at him. Stared in icy silence. What was I supposed to say? What do you say when a love affair is over?