LL Chapter 10

'The moonlight lights the way into the forest of knowledge'

If I had ever considered having kids in the near future, tonight would have surely put me off of them. I was fast asleep until the whole house was woken by the shrillest, loudest scream known to man. And it would not stop. It had been over a half an hour and I was just contemplating going out to my car so that I could escape the noise and get back to sleep when there was a knock on my door.

When I opened my door I found Bella standing there with a screaming Tanya, she was on the verge of tears herself and she was begging for me to help her.

"Please Edward, could you please hold her for just a minute. I wouldn't bother you but neither your parents nor Alice will answer their doors, and she won't let me put her down, and I really, really, really have to pee so badly. PLEASE! I'll just be one minute. I promise!" She was literally bouncing up and down. So I did the only reasonable thing that I could and I reached out and took the screaming baby from her arms. She was gone faster than I could have imagined.

I looked down at Tanya, sighed, and walked down the hall to the guest room, sat in the rocking chair, and started trying to soothe her. She calmed down in a matter of seconds but had a serious case of the hiccups from all the crying she had been doing.

When Bella stepped out of the bathroom she was startled to see me sitting in the room with Tanya.

"That was three minutes." I teased her.

"I am SO sorry. I forgot to add in the time I needed to wash my hands."

"Well, since your tardiness was hygiene related, I guess I can forgive it…this time." I said with a smile.

"Seriously, thanks for holding her. The whole idea of taking her with me and holding while I-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…I get it. No need to elaborate."

"I can take her back now, if you want to get back to sleep."

"Nah, I'm up and she's good. I do need my phone though to see if Mom and Dad called or Alice. There is no way that they slept through that screamfest."

"I'm sorry she woke you. I can get it for you if you tell me where it is."

"I'm pretty sure that I left it on my desk." She left the room and I rested my head on the back of the chair and closed my eyes.

I knew Bella had entered the room again before she even had a chance to speak. "It was still in the pants you were wearing today." I thanked her and scan through my messages. Sure enough there was one from mom and dad. They had had one too many margaritas at the Webbers and decided to crash there instead of driving home intoxicated. I swear when my parents and the Webbers got together they reverted to their drunken college days. But there was no message from my sister so I sent a message to both her and Jasper's phones in hopes that one of them would respond.

I looked up to find Bella looking at me strangely, like I was an anomaly or something. She quickly looked away and moved to lie down on her bed not far away from where I sat in the rocking chair.

"I have a question that I was hoping you might answer for me."

"You have just one question?"

"Ok. I have a lot of questions. But most of them would be very personal and none of my business."

"Ask your questions. I have nothing to hide. I have never been ashamed of anything that I've done or was done to me. Most everything about me in public knowledge back in Phoenix anyways."

"Why did you bring me the notes for the classes I missed?"

"What?" Given the confused look on her face it was obviously not the question that she was expecting.

"I mean, why were you being so nice to me after I was so nasty to you?"

"I did it because I was feeling guilty."

"What did you have to feel guilty about?"

"I was deliberately trying to piss you off. You told me that you think of yourself as the smartest person in the school and Rose reaffirmed that and told me that there was no way that you would be able to graciously tolerate someone else being smarter than you."

"But you kept doing it when I got back."

"But that was different."

"How?"

"Because it was who I used to be. I used be the outgoing honors student before all this crap started happening to me."

We talked for the next hour about her life in Phoenix before her life went to hell, as she put it. At least, we talked until she fell asleep on me. Well, not on me, she was on the bed and I was still on the chair holding the baby. I sat there for a little while longer, holding Tanya, and thinking about the things that she had said and the things that she did not need to say. I knew that something wasn't right. The way that she had talked about her life before she got pregnant did not add up the type of girl that ended up pregnant and alone as a teenager. Lauren and Jessica, those were the types of girls that one would to expect to end up this way. This girl reminded me of my sister or Rose. I wanted so badly to ask her who Tanya's father was and where he was but I just could not get myself to ask that question. There was a part of me that did not want to know, that believed that remaining ignorant of the truth would be better, easier, because if my new suspicions were right then I had seriously misjudged her but someone had seriously hurt this girl.

Tanya was sound asleep, so I carefully put her in her crib and then I covered Bella with a blanket before I left the room. Unfortunately, I ran into Alice in the hall as I was leaving Bella's room at three in the morning. Crap, this was not going to look good at all. Alice just stood there starring at me with her eye brows raised. I just ignored her at returned to my room and back to my bed.

A/N:

So there you have a little more info on Bella and a sort of confirmation to some theories? Another update tomorrow is possible but I am not promising anything.