WhatsMyNomdePlume betas and says nice things to me.
*0*0*
Angela spends all of her time over the next two days helping me set up. She says it's because we're old friends and she wants to help me out, and I'm sure that's partly true. But I also suspect that Angela likes the challenge. She likes the blank slate of my house and my life, and she wants to help me fill in the picture. Plus, I think it's entertaining for her. I've only been in Forks for two days but I can tell that nothing much of interest ever happens here. To hear her talk about it, my arrival seems like the most exciting thing that's happened in months.
We first hit the thrift store in Port Angeles and I buy some ugly but serviceable furniture. Angela knows the store manager from debate club in high school and manages to talk him into delivering it on the same day. After a trip to the Port Angeles Walmart for bedding and kitchen stuff, the house is livable, in the most basic sense of the word.
I can't imagine what Alice would say about it. The place is shabby, there's no way around that. And while the part of me that's gotten accustomed to money and the best of everything balks a little, the rest of me is oddly relieved. I don't feel any pressure in this place and the weight of years of expectations lifts off me when I'm at the house alone. There's no one watching me, no one judging. I can breathe here.
The house gives me something concrete to focus on, which is just what I need. Things need to be cleaned and arranged and fixed. I wash all the floors on my hands and knees because I forgot to buy a mop. I scrub the stove and refrigerator until they're spotless. I wash windows and pull weeds from around the porch. I endlessly rearrange my little scraps of furniture and the odds and ends Angela brings me from her basement to make the most of it.
I'm there five days when I discover my favorite part of my new-old house. There's a tiny wooden porch off the back of the house, opening off the kitchen. The backyard is an uneven patch of scraggly grass and weeds, hemmed in by dense trees. As soon as I see it, I remember that the Olympic National Forest backs right up to the property line. The yard slopes gently down to the tree line, but then the ground falls away dramatically, dipping into a deep valley just behind the house. The result is a wide break in the trees that provides a spectacular view of the distant mountain range, framed by dense evergreens on either side. You can't really see the mountains from very many places in Forks, but you can see them from my backyard.
It's funny that I don't remember such a remarkable, incongruous feature, but my sole memory of the backyard is of my dad constantly complaining about the forest's perpetual encroachment. Nature won't be denied.
Every morning, I take my coffee and go sit on the back porch, looking at the woods and the mountains. It's late October, and the weather is getting cold. The mornings are damp and sharply chilled. The air is crisp and clean, and smells of pine. It's my favorite time of the day. I feel a tenuous peace there that reminds me of looking at my favorite paintings. The forest, the trees, the mountains…it all oddly reminds me of Turner. The color and atmosphere is all wrong of course, but the scale is just right. There's just tiny me in my tiny house at the edge of the forest, with the vast sweep of untamed nature sprawling out in front of me.
Everything that's happened looms less largely in those early morning moments. I'm so raw and undone, but during those quiet hours, I catch glimpses of a future when I won't be. I'll be okay. I'll get through this— all of this— and make my life. I'll figure it all out.
Until then, I stay busy and I think about what I've done and all that's happened. I turn over the people and events and I try to make them all make sense.
Alec was doomed from the start. With a little distance, I can see that. When I think of him now, all I feel is guilt. I do a lot of soul-searching, asking myself how I could have ever gotten in so deep with him to begin with. I don't come up with any easy answers. I've spent too many years trying to be whoever I needed to be to belong, to be loved. When it seemed like I could find those things with Alec, I grabbed on with both hands. I'm ashamed of myself. But already, I know that the person I am now, even after such a short time, would never say yes like I did then, so I figure that this is progress.
In hindsight, the break with my mother seems inevitable. We've been pushing and pulling at each other ever since I re-entered her life ten years ago. We were never going to make peace with one another. I hate that it happened so violently, and at perhaps the worst possible moment. But on the other hand, maybe it happened in that moment because that was the only time I would let it happen.
As for Edward… I can hold Alec, my mother and Phil at a distance, examine what they mean to me and explore how I feel about them. But I can't do that with Edward. Everything about him is too raw and too recent. I can't seem to gain enough space to work through that. So I skirt around him in my mind, doing my best not to dwell on him too long. It's the best I can do right now.
The first Saturday after I get to Forks, Angela shows up at my door at 10 in the morning, pulling me out and into her car, insisting she's solved all my problems. My salvation comes in the form of a rusted red pick-up truck of indeterminate age with a 'For Sale" sign in the window. When I question her, Angela insists that I can't survive in Washington without my own ride. She's right about that. Plus, I can afford it, and I can't say that about too many things these days.
So within days, I own not only my little white house, but a truck as well.
The truck frees me in a way I never expected. I'm still terrified of driving, but I manage. I learn the small circuit of streets that make up Forks and I learn some of the surrounding state roads. It's beautiful here. So different than New York or any other place I've been. It's cloudy almost all the time, cold and damp, but everyone tells me it isn't so bad in summer.
As I wander through Forks, I run into a lot of people I know. It's such a small town, so it's not surprising that people remember me and my dad. What happened to him was the biggest thing to happen here in generations. They're all so friendly. I forgot this part—or maybe I just wasn't aware of it as a kid. It's so different from how people are in New York. There, you can just float along in a bubble of anonymity. Everyone's so busy with their own shit that they have very little interest in you and yours. Here, everyone is bored and desperate for something new to happen. I'm fascinating to them and everyone wants to talk. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm not the most open person by nature anyway, and certainly not now, when there's almost nothing I can say about my life that isn't painful and awkward. I fumble my way through those conversations with people I used to know as best I can and escape quickly.
Alice's phone calls are the bright spots in my days. At first, she calls every day, sometimes twice. We make tentative plans for her to fly out in a few weeks and I circle it on my calendar. Her visit is the sun on my horizon right now.
After I'm in Forks for a week, her calls drop off to every other day, mostly because I never have anything new to say. It doesn't hit me right away that it's been four days since we talked. In fact, I don't realize it until my phone is ringing and I see her name on the screen. I push the back door open with my hip as I answer, settling in on my favorite perch on the back porch steps.
"Alice? Hi!"
I hear her exhale before she speaks, "Hi, sweetie. I'm sorry I haven't called. How are you?"
I know her voice so well, and I can hear that the brightness is gone. She sounds strained and tired.
"I'm okay. The same. But how are you? What's up?"
She sighs again and there's a long pause before she speaks. "A few days ago, Emmett called me."
"Emmett McCarty? From Spencer?"
"Yeah."
"Wow, I haven't heard from him since graduation. How is he?"
"He's good, but he didn't really call to chat." Alice pauses again before she launches into her explanation. "Last month, he was at some club in Milan and he ran into Rose."
"Rose?"
"Yeah. They hung out for a while and… well, he told me she was a mess when he found her."
I feel my stomach contract unpleasantly. All my fears about Rose over the years, my concern that she was in trouble, harden into a surety at Alice's words.
"He said she was totally fucked up on something, and she was with these strange guys… he said it was a really bad scene. He took her back to his hotel and I don't know how, but he managed to talk her into flying back home with him. So she's here now… in rehab."
"Oh, no. Poor Rose. Have you seen her?"
"Yeah, I went to see her as soon as he called me. She looks so bad, Iss. She's so skinny and she's got…"
Alice stops speaking abruptly and I hear her choke on her tears.
"Tell me, Alice."
"She has track marks all over her arms. God, she's such a mess." Alice's voice is watery and high. I close my eyes and press my fist against my forehead. When I open them again, I focus on the snow on the mountains in the distance.
"What can I do? I want to help."
"Nothing. There's nothing you can do out there. You've got enough on your hands. But…God, I feel like shit because I know you really need me, but I think I have to…."
"You need to stay there with her."
"Yeah. She doesn't really have any friends here anymore. Emmett's hanging around, but she doesn't want to see too much of him right now. I think she's really embarrassed. She'll talk to me, though, and she seems better when I go see her. She needs me, Iss."
I nod, trying to squash down the ache at not seeing Alice soon. I'd been hanging on to her visit like a lifeline. But maybe this is for the best. Maybe I need to let go of the lifeline and just sink or swim on my own. She's right; I'm doing okay out here right now, but Rose, poor Rose… she needs Alice so much more than I do.
"Of course she does. That's where you should be. You're such a good person, Alice. You know that, right?" It's true. She's so kind, giving all of herself to take care of other people. One day, I hope she finds someone who will take care of her. She deserves it.
Alice scoffs softly. "I just want her to be okay. I want all of us to be okay."
"I want that, too."
We talk for a few more minutes and she gives me Rose's number so I can call her once the dust settles a little bit. When she hangs up, it's just me, still all alone at the edge of the woods.
*0*0*
It's been three weeks since I got to Forks. Three and a half weeks since the nightmarish day that led to my flight. That is what I'm thinking about as I hang the new curtains I just found at the Salvation Army. They're not quite the right size for the windows, but they'll do. I like the color; cheery bright yellow.
Some days if feels like I've been here for a year already, and other days, I think I can still feel my hands shaking the way they did on the sidewalk in front of my old building that day when everything fell apart.
I'm up on a chair, fighting with the curtain rod, thinking about finding a job, thinking about going back to school, thinking about not thinking about Edward, when the phone rings. Not my cell phone on the coffee table—the landline. It's an old wall-mounted model in the kitchen and it hasn't rung once since I've been here. I don't even know the number for it.
I climb down off my chair and hurry for it, picking it up like it might bite me.
"Hello?"
"Isabella?"
I open my mouth to respond, but it's a few seconds before anything comes out. It's the last voice I ever expected to hear again.
"Phil?"
I hear him clear his throat before he speaks again, "Ah, yes. It's me."
I ask the first question that comes to mind. "How did you find me?"
"I guessed. And Jim Jenks had this number in his files. He said you came by for the keys."
My cheeks flush slightly at the awkwardness of this. I'm annoyed that Jim just ratted me out, but not very surprised. Jim owes Phil a lot. I can't imagine why he's tracked me down, or what he could possibly want. My first impulse is to stay silent and wait to be told. But then I remember that there's no longer anything between us and he's calling me in my house. I can ask what I want and I don't have to defer to anyone about it.
"What do you want?" I still feel guilty the second the words leave my mouth. I sound cold and abrupt, and Phil, while not loving, has never been mean to me. I should at least be polite.
"I…" he starts and then pauses. I hear rustling in the background, like he's shifting in his chair. "I'm worried about you. I wanted to see how you are."
"Oh." That was not the answer I was expecting, and I don't know how to respond. Then it occurs to me that maybe this isn't Phil tracking me down; maybe it's my mother. Maybe she knew, rightly, that I wouldn't talk to her, so she's making him do it. "Listen, you can tell my mother…"
"Your mother and I have separated," he says quietly. "Just after you left. She's in the Hamptons for now."
His words leave me dumbfounded for a moment. Separated. Then my manners kick back in. "I'm sorry," I say instinctively.
"It was… time. Listen, Isabella, I ran into Ken Hale last week. You went to school with his daughter, Rosalie, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did. Did he tell you about her?"
"About the rehab? Yes. I wasn't sure if you'd heard."
"Alice told me."
"So you're in touch with Alice." He says it like a fact, not a question. "She wouldn't answer my calls."
I scowl a little at that, puzzled that Phil would have been calling Alice. I'd been imagining New York frozen just as I left it, or carrying on as it always was, just without me. Now I have the sense of things happening as a result of my departure. Phil's left Renee… Phil's been trying to find me… I wonder what else I've missed.
"I asked her not to," I finally say. The silence after that lasts long enough that I start to feel uncomfortable. I'm opening my mouth to speak again when Phil finally does. His voice is quiet, and softer than I've ever heard it.
"I'm sorry, Isabella."
My breath lets go in a surprised little huff. "What for?"
"I haven't been…" Phil sighs, too. "Talking to Ken, seeing how upset he is about Rosalie… it made me realize that it could have been you. Easily. I've been so careless, Isabella. I gave you my name, but I was never a real parent to you. I didn't even know what it meant to be one. I've failed you, and so has your mother."
I can't even speak after he says that. He sounds sad and defeated. Nothing at all like the bold captain of industry I've known for ten years. This man sounds fragile and human. Lost. When I don't respond, he keeps going.
"How unhappy must you have been that doing this… running away to the other side of the country seemed like your only option?"
He sounds so angry at himself that I feel the need to make it better. "It wasn't you, not really. You were always good to me. It was my mother. And a lot of other things. I needed… I still need… to find my own way. This is really for the best."
"I bought you a nice life. That's not the same as being good to you. I'm sorry, more sorry than I can say, that I missed the opportunity to be your father when you needed one."
My eyes burn and my throat hurts. Phil's voice hitches at the end and I can't believe it, but it sounds like he's getting emotional, too. This is Phil, who's floated through my life for years as a polite, intimidating stranger. Phil reaching out. Phil apologizing.
"It's okay," I manage around my tears. It's not, really. And okay is a completely insufficient word, but the platitude is the best I can manage right now. I hear Phil draw a deep breath, as if he's steeling himself, and when he speaks again, his voice is sharper, more himself.
"Are you alright out there? Do you have what you need?"
"I'm fine. I'm figuring things out."
"I understand that you're an adult now and the choices you're going to make… well, they're yours to make. But you should know, I'll always consider you my daughter, Isabella, no matter what you choose. And your trust fund…"
"I don't want it," I finally interrupt him. "It's not really mine. That's why I left it."
"I know. But it will stay where it is and it will stay in your name… should you ever need it."
"You don't have to…"
"Yes," he says, interrupting me this time, "Yes, I do."
I push down the impulse to say thank you, because that implies I'm accepting it and I'm not, so I just say nothing.
"So, do you think you'll be staying there in… uh, Forks for a while, then?" He pauses and drags out the word "Forks", like he's not sure if he's got it right.
"For now. I'm not sure where I'll end up, really."
"There are all of your things here in your room."
"They're not mine," I say in a rush.
I imagine I can hear a smile in his voice when he responds, "Of course they are. Can I… I'd like to send your things to you, if you want them."
I think about that for a minute. There's not much in my room back on East End Avenue that feels like mine anymore. Not the clothes or jewelry, not the knickknacks or the things on my desk. But when I think about my books, my art history library, the books I lovingly assembled while I was in college, I hesitate.
"I wouldn't mind having my art books," I finally say.
"Fine. I'll have Maria box them up tomorrow. What about your pictures? The Turner?"
I shake my head hard, "No, that's Alec's. You should return it to him."
At the mention of Alec's name, he falls silent.
"I'm sorry about Alec," I say after a minute.
"Why on earth are you sorry about that?"
"I know you wanted…"
"I want you to be happy. If Alec can't make you happy, then you did the right thing."
"How is he?"
Phil snorts softly, a slightly scornful sound and I flash back to that moment in Alec's office, with Irina leaning on the corner of his desk as he smiled at his papers. I bet Alec is fine.
"Alec is very… industrious. He'll do alright for himself."
That seems loaded, but Phil's not offering details and I don't really want to know, so I drop it.
"Isabella, I'd like… if you wouldn't mind… can I stay in touch with you? I'm not asking you to call me your father again. I know I've blown that chance. But I'd like to be your friend. Can I do that?"
Once again, Phil, the mighty Philip Dwyer, is moving me to tears. I swallow hard and answer him. "I'd like that."
*0*0*
Phil is true to his word: two days later, a dozen boxes of books are delivered to my doorstep. It makes me happier than I'd guessed it would, having my art books again. I miss spending hours lost in galleries and museums. I have a feeling that it'll be a while before I can do that again, but the books are a good substitute. I get lost in them, and I get back in touch with everything I love about art. Some of the paintings are so familiar to me that it's like seeing old friends. They're a piece of me from my old life that I never want to lose; the one part that I always knew was true.
That's when I know I'm going to go back to school. I don't know how soon, or how I'll pay for it, but I'm perfectly clear on this one thing. I want to spend my life in art.
I have a lot to think about: Rose, making her way back to the land of the living; my mother, cut off from the money that means more than anything to her; Phil, reaching out to finally build some kind of real relationship with me. It's plenty to keep my thoughts very busy. All day long, I turn it all over in my head. But it's different at night. Every night, after I climb into bed and turn off the light, I listen to the elm branches scrape against the window and I don't think about any of that.
At night, my mind circles endlessly around Edward.
I don't want to miss him. I don't want to want him. But I still do. I know I can't have him, but knowing is not the same as feeling, and I long for him. It has nothing to do with logic or reason. The events and the facts have no bearing on it. It's a wild, irrational thing, how much I still want him. But it's always been that way with him, so I'm not all that surprised that I can't shake him loose, even after what happened and who he's turned out to be.
I don't even really try to get rid of him. I don't want to hate him. I don't want his memory to turn into something bitter. After all, I'm resolved at this point. I may have left him, but he's never leaving me. He managed to impact me so strongly after just our brief encounter when I was a girl that I'm positive that what happened between us that day in his loft will stay with me all my life. I won't ever be able to erase him and what he's meant to me. He's always going to be there; I'm just going to have to learn to work around him. And if he's always going to be lurking in my psyche, I don't want it to be an ugly, hateful thing.
So I do my best to make peace with him. It will take a long time, I know that. I'm in no rush. He comes every night and stays in my mind as I fall asleep and I don't try and chase him away. I just let him linger and try to be okay with his presence there.
He hovers in my mind when I'm awake, too but I try to exercise more mental discipline during the day. I'm okay with him lingering in my imagination, but I don't want to become obsessed. I don't want to completely succumb to his destructive memory the way I did when I was eighteen. My thoughts flicker over him a hundred times a day, but I refocus myself quickly, always looking for distractions.
He's on the periphery of my mind so much that one evening, almost four weeks after I arrived in Forks, as I step out on my porch to retrieve my book from where I left it on the railing, for a moment, I forget to be surprised to find him standing in my front yard.
He's standing on the cobblestone path leading from the street to the front steps, maybe fifteen feet away, with a battered duffle bag slung over his shoulder. The fading twilight casts him in dramatic light and shadow. He's a mess. His flannel shirt is wrinkled and his faded jeans are dirty. His hair is a wreck and his face looks weathered and exhausted. There are deep purple smudges under his eyes.
As I stop just outside the door and we make eye contact, he startles slightly. I feel like he's been standing there awhile and I've caught him in the middle of thinking about something.
Once we're looking at each other, the shock takes hold.
Edward.
Here in Forks.
I don't know how long we stand there, just staring. Finally, he lets his duffle bag slide off his shoulder and it hits the ground by his feet. "Hi."
I blink. Hi? Hi?
When I finally open my mouth to reply, I have no idea what's going to come out.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
*0*0*
A/N: I exercised some creative license with my depictions of Forks.