Chapter 29 Houses & homes
Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.
Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] for betaing.
Months pass
Now they were married and accepted officially into the tribe, there was a push to grant them some land, especially as Quil was part of the pack too. They were eventually granted a plot near Sam and Emily's place and close to the forest.
Selena's birth went well in early March. Quil never left her side during the labour.
The baby slept in a cot in their bedroom in the apartment. Bella didn't mind, but Quil reckoned he got no sleep because he would wake and check on her every time she made a noise. Half the time she ended up in bed with them, curled up on her father's bare chest with one of his big hands protectively held over her. How he could sleep with her there, rather than in the cot and how the baby could sleep with the snoring, Bella had no idea, but it seemed to work for them both. It was not a good solution though. Selena got fretful about sleeping at all if her father was not around. He was like her big, warm stuffed toy and it was hard to get her to go down for a nap without him.
They did some research on kit homes. They could order one from Canada and it would be an appropriate plan for their area too. Snow weighting for roof trusses was an issue in the Pacific Northwest. They decided a plan that would allow for the house to be expanded later was probably the best idea. They didn't need a garage. A basic rectangular floor plan, with the main plumbing all together would be the simplest and the cheapest. The kitchen, bathroom and laundry would be in the centre, sharing a wall so all the plumbing was together. The master bedroom at one end, to give them some distance from the kids and two smaller bedrooms at the other.
They could build on decks, bedrooms and studies if they needed them later. The wolf pack could construct it. Sam's construction business was going well. Even so the cheapest kit they could get was still going to set them back over $20,000.
Bella despaired. Her college fund was non existent.
Rowana, Charlie, Renee and Phil got together and gave them the money. Bella just cried. Quil could smell her tears when he came home and he panicked for a minute. Bella was sitting on the floor clutching Selena and sobbing so hard she couldn't speak. He thought something was wrong until she waved at the computer and he read the email saying the money had already been deposited into their bank account with a little extra for carpets, furniture and so on.
Renee just argued that no gorgeous grandchild of hers was going to freeze to death in some crappy house or worse, in a mobile home because she had been too stingy to give them the money. Bella suspected that her mother and Phil had paid way more than their share, but that was typical of her as well; generous to a fault.
They accepted Bella's argument that she and Quil would pay them back, even though everyone knew they could probably never afford to do so. Charlie just sagely said he had saved a fortune on the wedding. "Those dresses and reception places aren't cheap you know," he grunted at her when she hugged him. "Didn't even need to buy that much alcohol."
Rowana argued that she had not contributed that much, but she was pleased that they had asked her.
The house shipment arrived within weeks and the pack got busy setting up. They had already put in the plumbing.
The build went with the usual pack speed, but also with the usual amount of disagreements and arguments.
Paul and Sam were arguing about something one afternoon. They were both shouting and pointing at the plans spread out on a surface and weighted down with tools to stop them blowing away in the wind. Quil was trying to calm them both down.
Others were hammering and sawing and in all the chaos nobody heard Charlie drive up. They heard the vehicle but didn't recognise it as Charlie's.
By the time someone noticed, the damage was done. Seth had lifted a whole section of wall into place by himself as Jared bolted it in and Quil was holding an entire window section in one hand and waving the other around at Paul and Sam. Embry had called for a tool and Paul had thrown it at him, at an inhuman speed and without looking and Embry had caught it.
Charlie was just standing there with his hand on his chest and his jaw on the ground. "I knew it," he kept muttering. "I just knew it!"
In the end they had to call Sue and Billy to come and speak to him. They had to tell him everything. He knew the tribal legends; he had attended a bonfire or two, in his time. He was not happy that they had kept this massive secret from him for so long but he understood it was tribal business. He had been a friend to the tribe in the past and he and Sue were close; they would probably have had to tell him in the future anyway.
He gave Sue an especially hard glance. She rolled her eyes and asked him why he hadn't noticed anything weird about Leah and Seth before, or Quil for that matter. He thought back to the dinner at Sue's place when he had met Quil for the first time and had to agree that he had been wilfully blind.
He insisted on seeing someone phase and typically Seth said he would do it as he had kind of blown it. Seth, Quil and Charlie went to a spot in the forest, just inside the tree line and Seth phased into his, still gangly, sandy wolf. Charlie walked all around him and asked a lot of pertinent questions. Quil answered them for him; the others were still at the building site; they were happy to let Seth think it was all his fault.
It was only later back at their apartment, when Charlie got the idea that not only did vampires actually exist, but that his daughter had dated one for a while, that he got really angry. He went unbelievably red in the face; he spluttered and roared at her that she was darn lucky she had left home and got married because she would be grounded for life if she still lived with him.
She stood there and let him rail and then she stopped him in his tracks by pointing out that she would most likely be effectively dead and that he would never have seen her again. That was the deal. He sat silently, holding Selena in his arms for a long time on the couch after that. Bella brought him a beer to apologise.
"Deal?" he asked.
"That's what they had done before. For the other members of the family."
"Does your mother know?" he finally asked.
"No."
"I said… at the wedding… I always felt like I was losing you. I was right wasn't I?"
"Yes."
"You wanted him to do that to you?"
She knew what he meant. "Then… yes I did want to become one of them. Not now…" She brushed her sleeping baby's head. "I couldn't think of anything worse now," she admitted.
"Is that why he left?"
She sighed. "I think… he thought he was saving me… protecting me by leaving me."
"That 'accident' wasn't was it? In Arizona? When you fell down the stairs at the hotel?"
"No… it was a vampire attack. The Cullens saved me but Edward was not entirely happy after that and he made the decision to leave. The pack looks after me now. Another 'accident' like that won't happen again."
"I knew Jake grew too fast… that boy grew inches in a week… salmon diet my ass," he grizzled.
"What the?" asked Bella.
"Billy told me it was all the salmon they ate," he huffed. "I mean… I eat nearly as much salmon as he does…"
Bella just burst out laughing at that. In the end, her laughter was contagious and Charlie started to chuckle too. They were both guffawing when they woke the baby up. Quil had just come home and he groused at them for waking the baby until he heard about the salmon diet as well. He laughed so hard he could barely speak.
"A-and… you believed him?" he managed to get out between guffaws.
Charlie started quizzing Quil about the pack over dinner. Bella gave up and went to bed and the two men talked for hours about werewolf skills and capacities. It didn't take Charlie long to think of ways they could help him with tracking and police work.
Quil told him about Victoria and the newborn vampire battle. He didn't expressly have permission, but he decided Charlie ought to know. Charlie had been in Seattle; he had been called in on that case after all and he had seen the victims. He was not an ordinary citizen. Charlie asked about the accident in Arizona. Quil told him about James and how he had hunted Bella to Phoenix. He told Charlie to look at her arm properly the next time he saw her; she bore a vampire bite on her lower arm. It was cold to the touch. He thought Charlie could probably tell how cold it felt; it was frigid to Quil. He explained how Victoria's hatred had fuelled her obsession with Bella. Charlie kept shaking his head a lot. Quil also told him that it was Edward that had sucked out the vampire venom and stopped her becoming one of them. He would always thank him for that.
It was a huge amount of information to take in all at once. And worse, for a cop, was that most of those murder cases from Seattle would have to remain marked 'unsolved'. 'Killed by vampires' rather than death by exsanguination, would never appear on any police files.
Quil swore to him nothing would ever hurt Bella while he and the pack were around.
They shook on it. Charlie left with a newfound admiration for his son-in-law.
FF_2154210_ - 29/05/2011 01:59:00 AM
