A/N: Hello, all. This is a short chapter, and I apologize for that, but I thought you might rather have a short one than none at all.
Also, I don't usually respond to reviews because I just don't have a lot of time, but I AM trying to respond to last chapter's avalanche of reviews and PM's. You're all wonderful people, and your words are beautiful!
This is a belated birthday present for abadkitty, who is just about the sweetest person in the known world!
All standard disclaimers apply.
Wisp
"Well, this is it." Detective Singh waved his hand at a stack of cardboard boxes full of paper and an open laptop flashing a screensaver. "Everything we have on Jeremiah Tucker and his boys."
Edward slid into an uncomfortable plastic chair, settling Wisp on his lap. They'd showered, but the faint scent of chlorine still clung to her damp hair as they moved into the conference room at the Puyallup PD.
He was extremely grateful for the local force's willingness to work with them, and he tried to relax his frame as Wisp peered suspiciously around the room. Besides a long conference table and a cluster of chairs, the room was empty. Nonetheless, she stared under the table and into the closest cardboard box before settling back into his arms.
"Thanks, man," Emmett said, digging into a box and pulling out a manila file folder stuffed with crinkled papers. "We really appreciate it."
"Anything we can do—we want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do."
Yeah, Edward kind of doubted that. Tommy Singh might be pissed that so much had happened in his jurisdiction without anyone's knowledge, but that didn't mean he felt the same way Edward did about finding the truth.
"Just holler," Tommy added, "if you need anything." With a grin of good luck, he left the room.
"Ooookay then." Emmett flipped open the folder in his hand and Emily reached for another box as Edward slid the laptop toward him. There was a file folder on the desktop clearly labeled as everything that had come from the crazy preacher's computer. Reaching around Wisp, he opened the folder and stared at the contents.
The computer must have been ancient and the preacher clearly had little grasp of computing skills. He typed in 16-point font, littered with spelling and grammatical issues, with a rambling sort of prose that made very little sense. Edward let out a slow breath as he stared at a random opened file, then pushed the computer away again in favor of a box.
Wisp fidgeted in his lap, so as much as Edward didn't want to let her go right now, he put her down next to his chair and gave her the backpack full of her things. She pawed through it, pulling out the DVD player and thrusting it into Edward's hands.
He paused, considering. She obviously wanted to watch The Joy of Painting—nothing except Peter Pan could rival her devotion to Bob Ross. The problem with that was, she did not appreciate people talking during an episode. To her, Bob Ross was akin to a shaggy god, and interrupting him was sacriledge. Since they obviously would need to discuss whatever they found in the files, Wisp watching her beloved artist just wouldn't work.
"You can watch something," he said slowly, pulling out the DVD of Mickey Mouse cartoons she'd refused to watch yesterday, "but it has to be this, okay? We need to be able to talk, and I know you don't like anyone interrupting your painting show."
Wisp made no answer, instead staring expectantly at the device in his hand. With a mental shrug, Edward turned it on and slid the disc into place. He handed it back to Wisp, who propped the screen on her lap and stared at it with keen anticipation.
When the first cartoon began to auto-play, though, her face screwed up in a tight grimace. "No," she said, attempting to hand the DVD player to Edward. "Bob." She pointed to the screen. "Bob, Edward. Bob."
He took a slow breath, feeling Emily's eyes on them. This was a test of that boundary-thing she was trying to teach him. Wisp needed to know that no meant no, and also that he still loved her, and wouldn't ever hurt her. He needed reassurance that she would still love him, even when he set limits. "No," he said quietly, hearing the tiniest hitch in his voice. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, but you can't watch Bob right now. We need to talk, and talking disturbs you. You can watch Mickey if you want to."
"Bob," she insisted, lower lip quivering, liquid eyes widening. "Bob."
"Little Wisp-" He could feel his resolve cracking. Those soft brown eyes killed him, every time, and he had a sinking suspicion that Wisp knew it.
"Edward?" Emily's voice was soft, and she stepped around the table, dropping the file in her hand back into its box. "That's good—really good. It won't damage either of you to tell her no. Tell her one more time and then, if you don't mind, I'll take over?"
Edward swallowed. He didn't trust his voice, but he held Wisp's gaze and managed to shake his head, slow and deliberate—a gesture he knew she understood. No.
She reached out for him, wide eyes wet and vulnerable, but Emily slid to her knees next to Wisp's small form and touched her arm, momentarily diverting her attention.
"Wisp." Emily's voice was clear and calm. "Edward said no. Let's do something else, okay? Come over here and draw with me." She pulled colored pencils and a pad of blank paper from the backpack and scooted away from the table, giving Edward a little breathing room.
Wisp watched, skepticism dripping from her frame, but Emily ignored it. She sprawled on her stomach on the industrial carpet, selected a light brown pencil from the big box, and began to draw. "Go on with your work, Edward," she said, not raising her head from the paper. "Don't worry; she'll do what she wants to do. It's fine."
Easier said than done. Edward struggled to keep his eyes off of Wisp's dubious little face as she turned toward him, eying him, attempting to judge just how serious he was about denying her. She looked back at Emily, then at him again. Edward couldn't tell if she realized he was watchingher from the corner of his eye. If she did, would it undermine Emily's attempt at distraction? He didn't know, but he couldn't help himself, either.
"I'm drawing a horse." Emily's voice was light, as if she spoke to the room at large. "A nice brown horse. I had a horse when I was little. I called him Dusty, because he was. No matter how much I groomed him, he was always dusty."
Wisp hitched herself slightly closer across the carpet, craning her neck to see the paper.
"He was just a little horse, no particular breed. Maybe even a pony. Just an ordinary little brown horse. But he was my best friend. Now that I'm back in Forks, where there's room, I'd like to have a horse again. They're very nice animals—quiet and calm. If you get a good one, of course. They're very loyal."
Wisp lowered herself slowly to her stomach, settling next to Emily on the floor. She fingered the box of pencils with a slow movement.
Only then did Emily acknowledge her. "I bet you've never seen a real horse," she said. "They're big, compared to your little cat. Bigger even than a dog like my Jake. I promised to introduce you to Jake, didn't I? We should do that soon."
Wisp did not respond, but she slowly pulled a pad of paper toward herself and selected a pencil from the box. Edward exhaled a long breath at her apparent willingness to engage with Emily, and tried to focus on the papers in front of him.
There was a lot of paper to go through. The old preacher was a disorganized packrat; there was no nice way to say it. Crumpled old grocery lists were filed next to bank statements from twenty years ago. Handwritten and printed documents sat side by side. Some papers were folded in half or fourths, others stained by coffee rings, grease, and time. Edward half expected the papers to smell like mold and rot, as the house had, but his nose detected nothing as he leafed through the files.
"Here are some social security cards—photocopies only." Emmett's words were soft, as if he was talking to himself. "All boys." He closed a manila folder and pushed it to the side. "Hey, Ed, didn't Tommy say some of the boys were still around, in juvvie or something?"
"I think so." Edward glanced up from a pile that seemed to be nothing but photocopied pages from some religious text. "Why? D'you think some of them might remember her or something?"
Emmett shrugged, reaching into a box for another folder. "It's worth a try."
"Anything is worth a try."
"I'll ask Tommy when he comes back, then."
For two solid hours, Emmett and Edward went through the boxes, one piece of paper at a time, while Emily and Wisp colored on the floor, mostly in silence. Cardboard cups of coffee were drained, Wisp given a snack of goldfish crackers and boxed juice. Disgusted at the lack of useful information in the boxes, Edward turned back to the computer. Clicking on a random Excel spreadsheet with an incomprehensible name, he squinted at the grid that loaded.
Names. Dates. Narrowing his eyes further, he enlarged the text and studied the spreadsheet carefully. There were no headers—not that he really expected this old preacher to be so organized—and he struggled to figure out what it all meant. The first column was a line of dates, the second column a list of first names, then a column of last names, then another column of first names, then another column of dates. The last two columns weren't always filled. He looked at the names—boys names, just as Emmett said of the social security photocopies. He scrolled down the list. Ryan. Aiden. Jordan. Michael. Jonathan. Connor. His eyes scanned the spreadsheet with the practiced speed of a scholar used to digging through raw data. Numbers, names, dates—his mind took it all in.
Until he realized the thirty-first row was missing.
He paused his scan, staring at the numbers on the very left side of the screen. They jumped from thirty to thirty-two without a pause, and since row numbering was something the computer program did automatically, it wasn't just some typo on the old preacher's part.
Pointing the cursor at the various menus at the top of the screen, Edward fiddled until he found an option to "unhide all cells." He clicked on the laptop's touchpad and, sure enough, row thirty-one appeared as if by magic.
And then, in the thirty-first row, clear as day, was the name Isabella.
Edward swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry, and his eyes strayed involuntarily to the girl on the floor with Emily before snapping back to the computer screen. Yes, he'd read that right. Isabella. The date before her name was just about fifteen years ago. "Emmett," he said, his voice odd in his own ears. "Emmett, look."
Emmett was there instantly, peering over his shoulder. "Fuck," he muttered. "Jackpot. Jackpot, motherfucker."
"Swan," Edward said, reading from the spreadsheet. "Isabella Swan. And look, Em, the third name. Ruth."
The date in the final column was a little more than seven years old.
"What does it mean?" Emmett continued, yanking out the chair next to Edward and throwing himself into it. "Is that her middle name? Isabella Ruth Swan?"
Edward exhaled slowly, looking again at the two women on the floor. "I...don't know." Emmett talked quietly enough that Wisp didn't seem to notice when he spoke the names. And what about the dates? The first was fifteen years ago—was it a birthdate? James had said Wisp was twenty, which meant a five-year discrepancy. His stomach twisted uncomfortably at the thought that Wisp could actually be quite a bit younger than they'd assumed. Carlisle had said from the beginning that pinpointing her age wasn't possible, not down to a definitive year, particularly since neglect and malnutrition had inhibited her growth and puberty. Looking at her, he honestly couldn't rule out the possibility that she was still a teenager. Not by sight. Oh, god, what if they'd been wrong? What if James lied, and this was just a kid after all? A kid who had been sharing his bed for months now? Feeling sick, Edward looked away from the girls and stared at the screen again.
"How's everything going in here?" Detective Singh knocked on the open door of the conference room, poking his head in. "Find anything?"
"Maybe," Emmett said. "C'mere. D'you know what these dates are?"
Tommy hovered over them, peering down at the laptop. "Oh, yeah, those. Those are the preacher's boys—the date he got 'em, the name they came in with. This column here is for if he changed their name—not legally, of course; he did everything under the table. The boys said he didn't approve of non-Biblical names. And that last date is when the kid left, if he ever left. You'll see that a lot of 'em didn't, toward the bottom of the list. Right around when the old man stopped keeping records and then died."
"But look—did you find this?" Emmett demanded, shoving his big finger under the name Isabella on the screen. "A girl. He had a girl, and I think it's Wisp."
Hearing her name, Wisp propped herself up on her elbows and lifted her head, turning to look at the cluster of men. Edward did his best to give her a reassuring smile, and saw the ghost of a return flit across her mouth before she settled back to the floor on her belly. Sweet thing.
"You're sure that's not a birthdate or anything?" he asked the detective.
Tommy shook his head. "Nah, the boys we talked to all said the same thing when we asked them. That's the date they came to the preacher, and the other's the date they left." He frowned at the computer screen. "This wasn't my case, remember, but I don't recall ever hearing a girl's name come up."
"Well, there she is, plain as day." Edward drummed his fingers on the tabletop. If James was telling the truth, and if this spreadsheet was accurate, Wisp had been just about five years old when, somehow, a delusional preacher had illegally acquired her. From whom and why were still unknown. She'd stayed with him, in the vicinity of Dr. Gerandy, until she was thirteen.
And then what?
What happened after that? Where did she go? Why, and with whom?
"We still don't have a lot of answers," Emmett said, mimicking Edward's train of thought, "but we're starting to see at least a skeleton of her past. This old preacher guy. The sick fuck of a doctor. Someone else, I guess, who taught her to act like a pet—maybe that dude she draws with the tattoos, maybe not. Tommy, I want to talk to however many of those boys you can round up."
The detective scratched the back of his neck. "Finding 'em isn't a problem, since a good handful are in lockup. But I'm not gonna be able to set up meetings this afternoon. They have to agree to meet, and have legal representation, and all that stuff."
"Wisp can't wait any longer; she needs to go home tonight." Edward glanced at her, noting that Emily was listening carefully to the conversation. "She's been incredibly good so far, but she needs to get back to her home and her routine."
Emmett nodded in understanding. "We'll set it up for later—maybe next week?"
Detective Singh agreed.
"C'mon, let's finish going through these boxes, and then get little Wispy back home."
As he continued clicking through files on the laptop, Edward listened with half an ear to Emily and Wisp on the floor.
"That's a very nice picture," Emily said, gazing at the drawing of Esme in the kitchen of Edward's little cabin—the only safe home, perhaps, that Wisp had ever known. "I wonder if you'd draw something else for me, now?" She slid a fresh sheet of paper in front of the girl. "Wisp, we're here trying to figure out what happened a long time ago to a little girl named Isabella. I think you know, but I understand that it's difficult for you to remember, and to talk. It's asking a lot, but would you draw her for me? Draw me Isabella, Wisp. Can you do it?"
The delicate scowl on Wisp's face, when Edward turned to look, wasn't one of defiance or upset. Rather, she looked...confused? She bit hard on her soft lower lip, and he ached to tug it free of her sharp teeth, as he'd done so many times before. The black pencil in her hand quivered, then dropped to the floor with a musical clink.
"Isabella." Emily tapped the paper. "Nothing else. Just Isabella, Wisp. I want to know how you see her, how you remember her."
Wisp sat for a long time, her eyes unfocused, gazing down at the blank paper, before she began to draw. She drew slowly, with frequent pauses between strokes of the pencil, selecting her colors with care. Throughout, her beautiful face didn't lose that scowl of concentration, of confusion, though Edward was quite sure she understood what Emily had asked of her. It was more like...more like she'd never expected to be asked such a thing.
When completed, the drawing wasn't like anything else she'd ever created.
Instead of picture-perfect realism, this drawing looked decidedly...cartoonish. It was skillfully rendered, but didn't look like Edward was used to Wisp's drawings looking. A tiny girl of indeterminate age—maybe somewhere between three and six—sat in the lower left-hand corner of the paper, drawn small, so small. Her knees were drawn to her chest, her dark eyes enormous and full of so much fear. Miniscule toes peeped out from beneath the hem of her dress. Long, dark hair spilled down her back. There was nothing else on the page, just a vast expanse of emptiness—of nothing. Nothing, and one little girl.
"Is that Isabella?" Emily asked, pointing without touching the page.
"Isabella," Wisp agreed in a near-whisper.
"She looks scared. Can you tell me about that? Why is Isabella scared, Wisp?"
Wisp shifted, sitting up and clutching her knees to her chest, much like the child in the picture. Her thumb found its way into her mouth. "Scared," she mimicked, and in that moment Edward couldn't for the life of him remember if this was a new word for her or not.
"Yes, I can see that. It's very sad for a little girl to be scared. Do you think you can tell me what she's scared of?"
Whether she understood the question or not, Wisp shook her head. Her thumb remained in her mouth and she rocked slightly, back and forth.
"Okay. That's okay. Maybe, though, we could try to help her not be so scared? What do you think we could do for Isabella? What would make her happy?"
"Pet?" The answer was hesitant, so small and unsure, but hopeful nonetheless.
"Yes, I think Pet would be a very good thing to help Isabella. Why don't you draw her, right there?" Emily pointed to a spot by the little girl's side.
Slowly Wisp withdrew her thumb and reached instead for the black pencil. She sketched in a cat, bigger than any housecat would be in comparison to a little girl. "Pet," she said solemnly.
"Yes, good. That's very good!" Emily smiled widely, and received a tiny smile from Wisp in return. "Anything else? What else can we give Isabella so she's not so scared?"
Sucking her lip back into her mouth, Wisp bent over the paper again. She drew Esme, and a teddy bear, and warm blankets, and the reading lamp in Edward's bedroom. She drew Peter Pan, and Rosalie, and ripples in a pool of water.
She did not draw Edward.
"No Edward?" Emily asked.
"Mine." Wisp's voice was firm. Apparently there was at least one thing she did not care to share, even with her younger self.
A/N: Once again, thank you all for your support and your kind words. Wisp is a labor of love, and I'm so glad you're with me on this ride. :)
Also, I'll be uploading the oneshot I co-wrote with mshavisham79 this evening as well, so you should check that out. It's funny smut for the Let's Do Anal contest (won second and third place!), so it's kinda WAY out of my comfort zone, but I had fun!
