16 Years Later...

Sitting in the departures bay at Phoenix Airport, I watched as my mother nervously paced back and forth as we waited for the gate of our flight to open.

"Calm down, mum, all we're going to do in Forks is clean out that house and sell it." She looked to me, then sat down in the chair beside mine and heaved a sigh.

"I know, Bella, I know. But when I left Forks, I left a lot of things unresolved, and I'm afraid that going back there will just open so many cans of worms that I'm not prepared to clean up after..." She looked off into the distance, and went into the zone that I call 'Renée's Realm', which she often did when she was stressed or upset. I knew that no amount of talking at her would gain her attention, so I leaned forward and searched through my carry-on for my i-Pod. I went through my playlists, and decided on smooth classics for the journey. As the opening guitar riff to Guns 'N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine" began to play, I allowed myself to relax, and for the first time I wondered what the town of Forks would have in store for us.

xxxx

One plane ride and a long car trip later, I found out. The house my mother used to live in was nothing like how I had imagined. In my mind I'd seen a small cottage, something similar to our house in Phoenix, but this place was huge. It wasn't the biggest house in the area, we'd driven past massive mansions on sprawling estates on our way here, but the place looked like it could house five people very comfortably from the outside.

All whitewashed wood, with a small porch that lead to the front door, quite a few windows spread out across the three storeys, and if it wasn't run down from neglect it would have been a beautiful house.

"You ran away from this?" I turn to my mother and ask. She lowers her sunglasses and stares at me like that was the most stupid question I could have asked her, then pushed them back up her nose. There was no real reason for her to still be wearing them, as one of the few facts I knew of Forks was it's notorious wet weather and national parklands.

"Come on," my mother said as she walked up to the front door, "let's get my repressed memories over with shall we?" I followed her up to the front door as she pulled out the key that had been mailed to us with the news of her father's passing. She hesitated a moment before taking a deep breath and unlocking the door.

Inside the house was not as run down as the outside, proof that someone had actually lived here until recently. There weren't any pictures hung up along the walls, and very minimal furniture in the living room that was just off the entrance. Down the end of the hallway was a kitchen with a few pots and pans scattered around, almost as if the person who lived here had just stepped out for a moment before putting them away. It was a very open plan, something I wasn't expecting from a house like this.

My mother walked slowly around, taking everything in, while I decided to go up stairs and claim a bedroom. There were two big bedrooms on the second floor, one was bare and empty except for a bed, desk, chair and dresser covered with sheets, while the other one obviously belonged to my grandfather. Clothes were scattered haphazardly around the room, and food cartons from Chinese take-away and pizza were piled up alongside the bed. The bathroom down the hall looked like it had years worth of mould on the walls, and I almost gagged just looking at it and I definitely was not brave enough to enter.

Down the end of the hall was a ladder, and my curiosity won out over my concern of my general clumsiness, especially in regards to climbing, so I went up. What I had expected to be an attic used for storage was in fact another bedroom. This one looked like it jumped out of an article in Teen Magazine on a girl's dream room. It was huge, and filled wall to wall with pictures of actors, musicians and sports stars, all of course for their looks.

"This must have been mum's room." I said to myself as I walked further in. Among the pictures there were general bits of furniture, all in pink- one of my least favourite colours- and a big closet with mirrors on the doors. Stuck to one of the mirrors was a picture of a guy laughing, who couldn't be more than 18, surrounded by a red magic marker love heart. I felt like that picture reminded me of something, but I chalked it up to him being some celebrity my mother had liked at the time. The amount of dust in the room started to affect my nose, so I walked over to the window to try and open it.

I struggled for about five minutes before I gave up. Then I noticed a police car pull up at the front of the house. I decided to go downstairs and see what was going on. When I got to the bottom of the house my mother had barely moved from where I had left her, caught up in the past memories this house contained.

"Mum, there's a police car out the front of the house." When I got no response I decided to go to the door myself. I reached it just as there was a knock. I knew the procedure for dealing with cops, experience from growing up on the not so nice side of Phoenix, so I opened the door with a huge smile on my face.

"Hello Officer." I said even before I saw him. The first thing I noticed was that he stood before me with a relaxed stance, meaning he wasn't looking for trouble. When I looked up to his face, I recognised him immediately. He was older than the picture upstairs, naturally it had been 16 years since then. But seeing the man himself before me made something in my head click. I knew why I'd recognised him, why he'd seemed so familiar to me. It was stamped all over his face, and mine. This man was my father.

He was about to say something to me when my mother came to stand behind me. He looked up and for a moment he was stunned silent.

"Renée?"

"Hello Charlie."