Chapter 36

~Bella~

Sheriff Pickens was tall and fat and half-bald. He was from somewhere else because his voice twanged wrong, and he'd been staring at me funny ever since he'd pulled up in the dirt behind the fire engine. I'd been a thorn in his side since he started here. The Swan girl with the crazy mom out there on the edge of the county line.

"Ms. Swan." He shook my hand too hard, and I flinched. In the corner of my vision, I saw Jacob's eyes narrow. I tucked my throbbing hand back into my lap and waited. I was sitting on the trunk of Jake's cruiser, wrapped in Edward's jacket. He was off somewhere helping to beat out trailing embers in the grass, my skeleton house smoldering its soul right up into the sky. I was sweating despite the early morning chill.

"You wanna tell me what happened here?" Pickens waved his hand toward the burning pile behind him, and I looked hard at him, thinking it was pretty self-explanatory.

"My house just burned down," I said flatly.

His eyebrow perked in irritation. "We can all see that, Ms. Swan. You're trying to tell me the house went up in flames? Poof. Just like that?" He flicked his fingers into the air like a spark bursting to life and then dying in his palm.

Jacob stepped forward, clearing his throat.

"I'd venture to say the thing should have burned down years ago, Marty. Been watching it fall over for decades now." He glanced apologetically at me, brief and slim, before looking back to his boss. "Wouldn't surprise me in the least."

"I second that." Jasper stepped up beside Jacob, the genetic bonds written all over their faces. Same nose. Same eyes. Same no nonsense, life-is-shit-just-get-over-it attitude. "Place was a shit hole." He didn't flash me the "I'm sorry" look his brother had because he wasn't sorry at all. Brutally honest Jasper, up against the empathy of his older brother.

I glared at him.

He shrugged. "Truth."

Pickens pointed a finger at Jacob with a scowl on his face. "You were supposed to get out here last week to find that gun, Black. I have half a mind to make you dig through that pile yourself, when this is all over." Jacob grimaced but Pickens didn't even notice, just carried on ranting. "You all want me to believe it was a pilot light? A fuse? Maybe someone knocked a candle over? Bullshit," he spat, eyeing us sardonically before turning on me. "Where were you? It certainly doesn't look like you jumped out your window, young lady. And don't tell me you made it out the front door—I know enough about fires to tell that's where it started."

I froze.

Everything in me turned to concrete, the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins and every rational thought running through my head. I scrambled for an answer, choking on my heartbeat. Just tell him you were in the fields. By the creek. With Sparrow. Tell him something. Anything. Tell him now.

"She was with me."

I heard him step close behind me, felt his hand on the base of my spine, and those words he spoke clanging through me. I knew a diving bell when I heard it. Jasper's eyes narrowed to slits, and Jake's eyebrows pulled up into his hair, and I held on tight to the feel of Edward touching me, lest my stupid, traitorous grin get the better of me.

The cops left at dawn. The firefighters after them. The volunteers who'd risen from bed to save me, and I felt a tinge of guilt as they shook my hand or outright hugged me. Neighbors who'd watched me grow up in this house. They left thinking about the poor Swan girl and her broken mom and her burnt-down house, when they were really leaving a living, breathing monster standing in the dirt of the driveway.

An impostor, probably.

A murderer, likely.

A mess.

Completely.

The house was still smoking, a pile of wreckage more like an airplane crash than a life. I sat in the dirt of the driveway watching the smoke, hugging the fawn close, and letting the sun rise even though I could hardly stand it. Edward was still beating out embers with a shovel, far off, and shuffling through the grass.

I rubbed my wet face against the fawn, resting my cheek in her neck, and that's when I saw it.

A deer.

Not just a deer. A doe. Tall and lean, big ears twitching, standing stark still in the shadows of the trees down by the creek bottom. Still as stone, watching me.

Watching us.

My heart clambered loudly before stalling out all together.

The doe had a fawn with her. It took two steps toward us, into the sunlight, sniffing the air, its spots fading just as fast as the creature beneath my cheek. My fawn picked up her head, scrambling out of my arms as though bidden by some song I couldn't hear. Her ears flapped nervously as she paced slow and steady toward the oncoming fawn, her mirror twin approaching her just as cautiously. They met nose to nose, a silent moment of sniffing, and then a squeal as my Little Thunder dashed after the fawn. They ran two wide circles, chasing each other before arcing back toward the doe in the shadows.

Both fawns skidded to a halt in front of her, and if animals could see ghosts, this doe was staring at one now. Her ears were shaking, her shoulders, and her legs as though she was too scared to move or breathe, lest the vision of her missing baby be replaced by the cruel winds of prairie reality. It took her a full minute to step forward, one slow sniff behind the ears of my baby.

I watched, breaking inside, as she whickered something soft and licked the fawn on the forehead, the baby skittering beneath her legs and twisting through her knees the same way she'd always done to me. I stood, a cloud of dust at my feet, and watched the doe turn toward the trees, her fawn bounding after her.

My fawn took an errant step to follow them but stopped, glancing back to me.

I might as well have ripped my chest open and held my bleeding, beating heart up in the air as I raised my hand and waved at her, tears streaming down my cheeks.

She shook her head once, twitched her ear, and was gone.

I dropped my face into my palms and sobbed. Dropped my knees to the dirt and wailed. Dropped my heart down a big, deep, dark pit, never to be redeemed, and wept. My heart was breaking. I was sure of it, crushed beneath the pile of smoldering rubble I'd just diminished my entire shitty life down to. Edward's arms came around me, and I slumped into him.

"She's gone."

"I know. I saw."

He held me until I'd caught my breath, propping me upright against him to wipe my cheeks and calm my hair. "You never even gave her a name," he said, smoothing a hand across my forehead.

"I did, just now. I've been calling her it for a while actually but never out loud. Only in my head"

"Care to share?"

"Wakiya. It means Little Thunder."

"Fitting." He laughed.

"Using it felt wrong." I sniffed, closing my eyes under his attention and letting him attempt to clean me up. "She wasn't meant to be mine."

"I think you needed her for a bit, but maybe you don't anymore."

"Maybe I do."

He shook his head. "This isn't helping," he muttered, thumb rough against my cheek. "I'm just making a mess here."

We were both covered in soot. In ash and grime and dust. I was covered in a fresh layer of agony, and his was starting to harden into a shell I could feel, touch, lean against. I wasn't sure what we needed more: new lives or a long bath.

"I know a place. At the creek."

His eyes lit, up, a flash behind them that was equally mischievous and bashful. "Let's go get cleaned up. Nothing feels right when you're dirty."

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB