November 19th, 2001
Chapter 5 – Contingency
My room still smelled of new paint. The odor was permeating from the pale blue walls and seeping into my clothes and the furniture. A gentle breeze floating through the open window had caused the smell to abate somewhat, but I knew from experience that it would be several months before it faded away completely.
I had to admit that the new house was nice. Nestled in a small town about sixty miles east of San Francisco, it was bigger than the one in Alaska, and the forests behind it were full of new, secret places to discover.
But today I did not feel up to exploring. I was feeling annoyed, which was admittedly a very common emotion for me. Perhaps I wasn't as acclimated to irritation as usual, as the past few days had been so bright - a veritable flash of sunlight after so many dark months.
Two days ago, I'd received a package from Forks, Washington. It had been forwarded to me by my lawyer in Chicago. By the time that it finally made it to my doorstep, it had been months since an article on the school's website had caught my eye.
In a section dedicated to new projects, I had read that Isabella's class would be cultivating a small garden that year as part of their science curriculum. Along with growing vegetables and edible berries, they would also learn about plant life cycles, and how agriculture is an important part of human history as well as its future.
I was pleased when I read the article, hopeful that a seventh grade Isabella would enjoy the lessons.
It was with this in mind that I decided to make an anonymous donation. Isabella's school was so shocked by my generosity that at first they did not believe me. But when the twenty percent deposit arrived along with a contract on how the money was to be spent, the school wasted no time in breaking ground.
The new greenhouse was completed before Halloween, and Isabella's class would be one of the first to spend the winter and early spring planting seeds which would sprout high in the summer. The thought of her beautiful, fresh face surrounded by the fruits of her labor made my chest ache, but in a different, unfamiliar way.
God knows Isabella deserved some happiness. Because of me, and because of several others I was beginning to see now, she had known far too much pain for one of such a tender age. Even hovering now at the edge of her teenage years, she seemed so young and small to me. I'd never seen her in person, of course, but Alice's visions offered frequent glimpses of the growing girl. It's quite amazing, really, watching a human grow.
Still, I wondered how someone like her would ever survive in a world like the one that we live in, even with supernatural assistance.
Charlie, her biological father, continued to do everything he could to offer Isabella a normal childhood, but she was…difficult, to say the least. No one could blame her of course, especially not after hearing about her horrific journey.
Of course I knew that Renee had never been seen again after that fateful night in October not so many years ago. I myself had made sure of that. What I hadn't spent much time considering until recently was how long Phil had searched for her, or how hard it would have been to be a scared little girl living in a house teeming with people and loss and grief.
Nearly six months after Renee disappeared, Phil contacted Charles Swan to let him know about her suspected death. The news was an unfortunate surprise for her jilted ex-boyfriend, but the true shock for the young, small town police officer was learning about the existence of his daughter, Isabella. Phil admitted to Charlie that he began dating Renee when Isabella was a toddler, and when questioned Renee had disclosed her father's name but nothing else. Phil had always thought that the arrangement – or lack of one – had been mutually agreed upon.
In the days after that initial phone call, the pieces began to fit together for Charlie – the way that Renee left in such a hurry and in a flood of incomprehensible tears. How she had refused to return even when he threatened to sell the things she left behind, not even showing her face in town when her maternal grandmother, a longtime Forks resident, passed away in 1991.
Eventually Charlie called Phil back, still not entirely believing the whole thing, mostly just to ask a sampling of the thousands of questions that he had. Phil mailed Charlie a picture of Isabella soon after.
Alice had a vision the day that fateful letter arrived in Charlie's mailbox, she later confessed to me that with the vision came the satisfying clarity of a hundred new futures and paths clicking into place. She finally showed me the vision just a few weeks ago, and after seeing the look on his face as he studied Isabella's gentle countenance, there could be no doubt for either of us who helped to create her.
Charlie's own brown eyes stared up at him from an angelic child seated on a deep pile rug. He was horrified to see that her eyes were like his own in every way: the shape, the coffee brown color, even the thick eyelashes. Staring back at him in the slightly over-exposed photo, he saw his almond, haunted gaze staring back at him. The eyes were full of pain and quiet sorrow. His heart skipped a beat when he saw them, and a sob caught in his chest as he blinked tears out of his eyes.
Not a week after that moment Charlie was Port Angeles, watching Isabella play on a jungle gym in awe. While Isabella hesitantly walked across the drawbridge that spanned the metal set, Phil sat guiltily at his side, telling Charlie stories about the last few months of Renee's presence in their life. He told him about the drugs, even the other men though it was embarrassing. He figured if anyone could understand the bewitching power that Renee has always emanated, how she seemed to control everything and everyone around her, it would be the man staring flabbergasted at the little girl stumbling around on the playground in front of them.
After a few more weeks of introductions, Isabella returned home with Charlie for what he hoped was another chance at childhood happiness.
Charlie's intentions were nothing if not noble, but carrying out the task of raising a traumatized, six year old girl was difficult in ways he couldn't comprehend at that time. Along with the emotional burden of navigating through her grief and their introduction into each other's lives, Charlie sensed something even more deeply buried inside of his quiet, strange little girl. Something that, truthfully, he feared ever exposing. Maybe it was lucky for him that he never truly knew his daughter's past; it was a life-changing story and he very well may have been unable to handle it.
I surely wouldn't be the one to tell him. Truly, I didn't know much about what Isabella's life had been like before I stumbled and stomped all over it. I made a resolution to find out.
But I would never contact Charlie, I had gone to extreme measures to ensure that the wall between Isabella's world and mine stayed fortified, and that was a line I saw no reason to cross. Working together, Alice and I could monitor their well-being without ever making contact.
So imagine my surprise when the innocuous manila envelope arrived in my hands just two short, sunny days ago. While it smelled distinctly sweet and floral, it was practically bursting with another hundred different aromas that I couldn't wait to decipher.
I carefully opened the envelope.
Inside were hand-drawn pictures. As these students were a little older, the detail in some of the landscapes was surprising and pleasant. I flipped through the pile absently, smiling gently, until a page near the back of the stack caught my eye and I couldn't help but inhale the perfume emanating from the paper while studying the drawing closely.
It was a sketch of a jack in the pulpit, the lines simple and graceful. Rendered in soft greens and whites, it was nearly scientific in its detail, and other than the strange yet beautiful flower, there was no embellishment to the picture at all. Directly above its slightly drooping head were the words 'Arisaema triphyllum', written in graceful, defined strokes.
At the bottom right corner, there was a notation. 'Thank you' it said shortly, followed by a signature. Bella Swan.
Bella? Was that a nickname? Like with her full name, my chest throbbed and my stomach jumped when I thought about it.
Guilt is a horrible thing. It pervades every moment.
The sheet of paper smelled delicious and horribly familiar. Its floral sweetness was strikingly similar to another human I'd met seven years ago, the one who had changed everything that I thought I knew about myself.
The old adage 'Like Mother like Daughter' seemed to be the truth in this instance. Anxiety churned in my stomach when I thought of how much power this tiny, young girl already had over me, and how it just increased tenfold when I received this thank you gift. I lamented that we were indeed exactly the most dangerous things in the world for one another, yet something terrible and unyielding always seemed to nudge us back together.
Despite my melancholy musings, I meandered downstairs and found a simple wooden frame in a hall closet. Once it was sealed underneath the glass, the aroma seeping off of the paper was even more muted.
I sat the drawing on my nightstand, where I stared at it for several minutes before picking it up once again. Careful to handle the delicate piece of wood, paper and glass with extreme care, I ran my finger along the smooth lines of the thin, top-heavy flower that seemed to bend slightly in an unseen wind.
I sat holding the picture in much the same pose two days later, returning the frame to its rightful place only when I heard the thoughts of my sister and shortly after a car turn off of the main road a few miles away.
Reluctantly, I pushed myself up from my bed and listened to her obnoxious singing for several seconds before her car appeared at the bend in the driveway. A large portion of my vampire mind was already working to filter through the barrage of thoughts that always came with the presence of another, and the effort scattered away the wispy calm that I had managed to piece together only moments before.
I didn't bother to meet my sister downstairs. In truth, I was still a bit miffed over an argument that we'd had a few weeks prior, and I hadn't even pretended to be pleased this morning when Esme mentioned that she would be stopping by. Since she told me about Isabella, Alice and I have been waging a bit of a war between ourselves, constantly locked in a power struggle over the extent in which we would involve ourselves in Isabella's life.
Money was no longer a concern, as I saw to soon after Alice finally broke her infuriating silence. A sizable charitable donation and a few calls to campaigning politicians allowed Charlie to rise quickly through the ranks of the small Forks police force, and before Isabella was eight he had been elected to Chief of Police. The promotion came with a pay raise, but that became unimportant after a carefully planned trip to Las Vegas.
Charlie's longtime friend Billy Black had won a trip to the city on the radio, and when the two ventured out to gamble on the first night of their stay, Charlie hit it big. Very, very big.
It was one of the most spontaneous and out of character things Charlie had ever done. Leaving Isabella for the first time had been extremely difficult, but something had compelled him to make the trip.
Of course, he had no way of knowing that Alice and I had planned the night to the last detail, staying together in Vegas for months casing casinos and choosing the absolute perfect moment for Charlie to step in and win it all.
My success was Charlie's luck, and the knowledge that Isabella would be well cared for was a weight off both of our minds.
The windfall had several advantages, one of which I considered to be the ability to distance myself even more from the Swan family now that their financial stability was assured. After all, now I had no discernible reason to involve myself in their day to day lives.
Alice didn't quite see things my way.
The tension had come to a head a few weeks prior, when she actually had the audacity to imply that one day Isabella would live with us.
In her mind, I saw that she thought of Isabella as my lover, and the idea absolutely disgusted me. I had jumped up quickly when she made the internal slip, and I flipped over the recliner and then approached Alice with clenched fists.
Suddenly Jasper was there, a deep growl vibrating in his chest. He stood between us but I shouted at Alice, who he was pushing back with his arm.
"She is a child! A child! Don't you ever go there again, Alice…do you hear me?"
"But Edwa-"
"No! If you can't accept the boundaries that I set, then stay the hell away from her. I swear to God, Alice, I will kill you if you ever go near her!"
Jasper growled again and pushed me further away. My anger spiked but I could feel Jasper trying to diffuse the rage that continued to build in the air. After a few moments, Jasper broke the heavy silence.
"Enough, Edward. I won't listen to that again. You don't have to agree with her, but I won't let you threaten her."
Carlisle had entered the room then. "Is everything OK?" He queried, as if the entire house couldn't hear our fallout.
Infuriated, I stormed off for an extended hunt, and since then I had successfully avoided Alice and Jasper. Alice was unaccompanied in the car, which given our last altercation I admit surprised me quite a bit.
I could have left then before she came up the stairs, but I didn't, instead listening with resignation to Alice's repeated bleating of some ridiculous rap song about ladies who don't act like ladies at all and butterflies, of all bizarre things. When she got to my door she knocked, and I rolled my eyes before answering.
"Come in."
She opened the door and smiled at me guiltily. Our relationship had suffered several blows since the day I realized she was purposely hiding something from me. I cocked an eyebrow at her expectantly.
"OK, so you know that I'm sorry. Do we have to do all this? The apologizing and re-hashing of the whole thing?"
I did appreciate the upfront approach.
"I should make you properly apologize, but I won't. And as for how things will be from now on, I guess you get to decide that."
She's quiet for a moment as she remembered Jasper telling her something very similar a few hours before.
"Where is he?" I asked her, trying to sound nonchalant.
"He's hunting. He trusts me."
What she didn't say out loud was that she had only persuaded Jasper with a vision of her returning to him before nightfall. I simply rolled my eyes when I saw that truth, because of course she was manipulating this situation for her own devices. Nothing would ever change there.
"She hurt herself."
Her words caught me completely by surprise and my dead heart jumped up into my throat. "What!" I screamed.
"It's bad", she answered absently, still singing that infernal butterfly song in the back of her mind. Acting as if her words weren't causing my bones to shake. I shot off the bed and snatched her off the bed by her shoulders.
"What happened? Why didn't you tell me?"
Because its not true. I just made that up.
I dropped her back down then, stumbling back and lowering myself to sit on the bed while rubbing my chest.
"Jesus Christ, Alice." I said, suddenly exhausted.
But it could have been true. And eventually, it will be true. Money doesn't solve everything, and you know how clumsy she can be.
I did know. I worried about skinned knees and broken bones more than I should.
"You would see it, and tell me." She would, right? The acidic panic began to rise up in me once again.
Even if I did see it, what would you do?
What would I do, indeed? If I did as good of a job saving her as I did her mother then – then she would be…
If I could vomit I'd have been doing so, and I bent over at the waist and rested my hands on my knees, letting my head hang forward as I swallowed back venom and anxiety.
"I…Why are you doing this to me?" I finally whispered.
I'm trying to protect you. I need you to understand that it's better to be prepared. Just in case. One day she may need us.
Damn Alice. She always knew just where to prod me.
"I'll always be ready to help her. We can watch out for her without influencing her life. Or at least we can try."
And what if she needs you to be there for her one day? In person?
The truth was, I didn't know how I would react, but I knew from her drawing that her scent was devastatingly similar to Renee's.
The seeds that Alice had been cultivating in my mind really started to take root then, and the various scenarios that she had planted caused my panic to grow. As if she could see my meltdown coming, she silently vacated the room, taking the air with her out the door.
Thankfully, I was alone when I finally let my emotions overtake me, my mind spinning and my chest aching while the scratches Alice made in my armor began to fester.
Before she got back in her car, we both knew that things were about to change for me yet again, regardless of what I wanted.
I'd never been as scared in my long existence.