Thank you so much IamTheAlleyCat for beta'ing and Ncsupnatfan for pre-reading.
Yes, it's Friday not Saturday yet. Yes, I felt we needed an early update - or maybe a double. Yes, I IamTheAlleyCat might kill me. But... I need something good today and reviews are good. Please feed the writer xxx
Chapter Twenty-Four
Edward
Carlisle pushed Bella's hair back from her face and kissed her temple. "We will be with you as soon as we can."
"I know," she said lightly. "Don't worry, Carlisle. It's only a few weeks."
"A month at the most," he promised.
"Exactly. It'll fly by."
But her eyes, he thought sadly. She can pretend all she likes, but her eyes give her away every time.
He hugged her one last time and then walked away to exchange goodbyes with Rosalie and Emmett, the former of which was feeling bitter about the emotional farewells being shared with Bella.
Bella went to Esme, and they embraced, Esme whispering words of love.
Selfishly, I was ready to leave now. I wanted to be on the road with Bella, getting away from Astoria and making our way toward our new life together.
I was sad the circumstances were what they were, but now it had happened, I thought it was better not to delay here. I had a vague, unformed, but undeniable feeling that something was going to go wrong otherwise.
It was decided that Carlisle and Esme were going to stay in Astoria long enough for Carlisle to work out his notice at the hospital and to allow them to find a replacement for him. Though he wanted to be with us all, his conscience would not allow him to abandon them when it was not strictly necessary.
My siblings' absence was easily explained as them returning to college a little early, and the cover story for me was that I was going to stay with our extended family during my mourning.
People wouldn't delve too deep into the story as it was such a sensitive subject given Bella's 'passing'. It was a sound plan that enabled as many of us as possible to stay together to help Bella through the transition into her new life, though she still seemed to be doing magnificently alone.
While we were gone, Tanya, Kate, and Irina were coming to Astoria to add some protection should the wolves not heed Bella's warning and try to take advantage of our depleted numbers.
Bella and Esme parted, and Bella was coming towards me when Alice suddenly sucked in a breath, and the rush of images swept through her mind and mine.
When the vision ended, I sighed. I should have known this was a possibility. I didn't understand why Alice looked so stricken though.
"What's wrong, Alice?" Bella asked.
"Charlie is coming," Alice said apologetically.
Bella froze, becoming a statue.
I smoothed my hand down her back. "It's okay, love. We have time to get away before he arrives. He won't be here until tomorrow."
Alice glared at me. That's not the problem, and you know it, Edward.
I frowned at her.
Why do you think he's coming if not to see you?
My eyes narrowed, a warning not to speak her belief aloud.
Bella turned slowly to face Carlisle and said, "You'll take care of him, won't you?"
"Of course," Carlisle said gently. "I will do whatever I can for him. Is there anything in particular you would like him to know?"
"Make sure he knows I was happy," she said in a constricted voice. "Tell him Edward made me happy, and I loved my life."
Carlisle nodded. "I will make sure he knows."
Alice looked sad as she said, "That's not going to work."
Bella looked stricken. "Why not?"
I glared at Alice, willing her to hold her tongue. Bella did not need to hear this. I did not care what Charlie came for. He was not my concern. Bella was. She needed me, whereas Charlie wanted me. He could want while I provided for his daughter.
"Charlie is coming to see us," Alice said. "Edward and I. He wants to speak to Carlisle, but the first thing he does is ask where we are. He's not happy that we're not here."
"He's not happy," I said pointedly. "He's not suspicious, he's not angry, he's unhappy, and since his daughter just died, I would say that's an emotion to be expected, wouldn't you?"
"It's not the same thing, and you know it," Alice insisted.
Bella froze against me again as she processed what she was hearing. I ran a hand through her hair and said, "It's okay, love. I am not leaving you."
"You have to," she said, looking up into my eyes. "You can't leave him here alone."
"He will not be alone. Carlisle and Esme will be here. Alice can stay if she likes."
Bella shook her head. "It's not the same. He needs you. He thinks you're feeling the same as he is. He needs to be able to talk to you."
"I am not leaving you alone," I said firmly.
I would not. She needed me with her. I needed her with me. I had come too close to losing her to allow us to be parted so soon.
"What are we, chopped liver?" Emmett said, his humor forced. "Charlie doesn't want to see us. Me, Rose, and Jazz can go with Bella. That'll be okay, right, Bella?"
"Yes," Bella said. "We'll be fine." The last was directed to me.
Jasper caught my eye. This is what we spoke about. You need to let us all help her. "You have to stay, Edward," he said aloud. "You have a responsibility to Charlie to be here."
I didn't want a responsibility to anyone but Bella, though. She was my world. Why did I have to leave her to help someone that hated me?
"Please," Bella said quietly, her hand coming up to cup my cheek. "Charlie needs this. I can't help him anymore. You have to do it for me." Knowing the fight was won, she turned to Alice. "You'll stay?"
"Of course," Alice replied.
How could I refuse Bella's plea now? This was what she needed from me, and I had always tried to give her what she needed. I had even left her because I believed she needed me to, even though it had broken me.
"Edward?" Bella asked softly.
"I will stay," I said, grudging clear in my tone. "If you're sure that is what you want."
"It is. I need Charlie taken care of as much as he can be. You can make him see we were happy."
"I will," I promised.
She reached on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. "Thank you," she whispered.
"Okay," Emmett said, clapping his hands together. "Bit of a change around. Do you want to come in the Jeep with me and Rose or with Jazz in the Volvo?"
Bella stole a glance at Rosalie and said, "I think I'll stick with Jasper."
Emmett nodded and raised a hand in farewell. "See you all when we see you, then." He climbed in behind the wheel of the Jeep and brought the engine to life. Rosalie got in the passenger side, and they roared away, spitting up dirt and grass.
"Are you ready, Bella?" Jasper asked.
Bella stared up at the house for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, and then nodded. She squeezed my hand and then released it and got in the car.
I'll take care of her, Edward, Jasper thought, then he kissed Alice once more and got into the car.
Another moment passed, and then they were following Emmett and Rosalie along the dirt track toward the highway.
I watched my love leave, and I felt an ache flare up in my heart. It was only for her that I could allow this parting now, when all my being yearned to stay close to her, to protect and comfort in this new world.
We were forewarned of Charlie's arrival a day later by Alice, though not by long. It seemed that the wolves spent much of their time in his company while he was in town, so, other than a few moments of conversation between him and the town's Police Chief, he was largely blank to Alice's sight.
He set off for our home alone, though, and we saw his approach, giving us enough time to brew a pot of coffee to make the house seem a little more human with the scent in the air, and for all to take our positions. Esme dumped a perfectly clean dinner service into sudsy water to clean, and I took to my bedroom while Alice and Carlisle sat alone in the lounge, talking together.
I heard the car approach and pull to a halt outside the house and then slow, heavy footsteps plodding across the porch to the door. There was a pause, a deeply drawn breath, and then a knock. I heard Carlisle's footsteps cross the room and then the door opening.
I watched through the medium of Alice's thoughts as Carlisle greeted him. "Hello, Charlie," he said gently.
We were unsure of how Charlie was going to react to any of us as Alice hadn't been able to see it. It was not something set in a path. Charlie didn't truly know how he felt about anything or anyone at the moment. It took the sighting of Carlisle for the vague memory of friendship to stir.
"Carlisle," he said dully. "Alice." His voice broke as he saw my sister rising to meet him.
She walked toward him, her perfect features twisted with sadness in response to his.
He was a wrecked man. His face was haggard, and his shoulders slumped. It was in his shadowed eyes, though, that the real changes were wrought. The light in them had been extinguished. They were empty.
There was no need for Carlisle or Alice to pretend to be grieving as Charlie's pain infected the room and them.
Esme came into the room, drying her sudsy hands on a cloth, and I realized how stupid our attempts at pretense had been. Charlie would no more notice if we made the room smell of coffee than he would if we were to balance the coffee cups on our heads. He wasn't seeing that or them. He was seeing his daughter's missing place among us.
His thoughts, usually breaths of words and clouded images to me, were clearer with his concentration. He saw Alice, and with her, he saw Bella laughing. He saw Carlisle, and he saw some long since forgotten scene: Charlie driving to our Forks house to collect Bella during her convalesce, and Carlisle leading her out to the cruiser with an arm around her shoulders.
He was finding her in the spaces between them.
"Would you like to sit down?" Esme asked.
Charlie startled, noticing her for the first time. "What? Oh, yeah. Okay." He took a seat in the armchair.
"Charlie, I want to say how truly sorry I am for what happened," Carlisle said sincerely. "I, we all, cared for Bella very much, and she deserved better than what happened to her."
Charlie nodded vaguely and said, "Is Edward here?"
"Yes," Esme said. "He's in his room. He's understandably very upset."
"Can I see him?" Charlie asked.
"Of course," Carlisle said. "Alice, would you mind…"
Alice got nimbly to her feet and made her way swiftly across the room and up the stairs. I met her in the hall. "Ready?" she asked.
I hesitated. I had been prepared for an angry Charlie, wanting to come here to blame me for breaking his daughter's heart all those years ago. I had even been prepared for him to blame me somehow for her death as that also felt very much like my fault. But this broken man was maybe too much for me to face.
"Come on, Edward. He needs you. Bella needs you to do this. You told her you would."
And there went any hesitance I had left. I needed to do this for Bella.
I patted Alice's shoulder and passed her along the hall and down the stairs.
When I reached the living room, Charlie's eyes found me, and his face colored. For a moment, his thoughts were a rush of angry memories, much like I had seen in his mind the last time I had seen him. Bella crying. Bella screaming for me. Bella broken. I winced away from them, but they didn't last long. They quickly passed with a sigh of her name.
"Hello, Charlie," I said mildly.
He nodded. "Edward. Thank you for coming down. I know this is hard for you."
I sat down opposite him, beside Carlisle on the couch. "No harder than it is for you," I said.
He nodded and scrubbed a hand over his face. "It hurts, you know. It just hurts so damn much."
I swallowed hard.
Charlie was not a loquacious man, especially not in the face of emotion but anger. He was more open now than I had ever known him. It pained me that these were the circumstances that made him open up.
"I know," I said sadly.
"You would," he said, sniffing and wiping at his eyes. "You loved her, too."
"I always will."
"Yeah. Always." He looked around the room vaguely, not really seeing the furniture or colored walls his daughter had painted. He was trying to picture Bella in the room with us as she would have been. His eyes fell on the prom photo of us on the mantelpiece, and his eyes teared again. "Oh, my Bella," he whispered.
No one spoke for a long moment while Charlie got himself under control again, and then he said, "She looks happy."
"She was," Alice said quickly. "Very happy. We all were. Edward and Bella more than anyone."
"That's what people keep saying," Charlie said. "They say what a good person she was, what a good cop, but most of all they say she was happy. And in love." His eyes fixed on me. "They say how happy you made her, and how in love she was."
I nodded. "We both were."
Charlie pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes. "I know that should help, but it doesn't. I just want her alive, dammit!" His hands fisted in his lap. "I want my little girl back!"
I wished I could do more for him. His world had been torn apart, and while mine had been turned upside-down, I had the comfort of knowing Bella was alive in some form still. I would go to her soon, and we would be together forever. Charlie would never see his daughter again.
I was supremely thankful Bella wasn't there to hear this. She would be broken by what Charlie was saying.
"Is there anything we can do?" Alice asked sadly. "Anything at all?"
Charlie's clenched hands loosened, and he said. "Yes. You can tell me about her life here. Tell me what you did together and what she liked." He turned wet eyes on me and said. "Please, tell me everything about my little girl."
Three days after our visit from Charlie Swan, we left Tanya, Irina, and Kate at the house and made our way to the First Lutheran Church in town. As there was no body, there was no traditional service of burial or cremation for Bella, so Charlie and Renee had arranged a memorial service.
We would not have come had it not been at Charlie's personal request. He wanted as many of the people that had loved Bella to be there as possible.
He was aware of the animosity some of the La Push residents that would be present felt towards our family, but he said confidently that they would not make trouble. I was sure they would not attack us with so many witnesses, and I felt we owed this to Bella's family, so I had joined Carlisle and Alice in persuading Esme to take the risk and go.
When we arrived at the church, I needed to take a moment to pause and compose myself before I climbed out of the car into the overcast day. There were so many people. I knew many as Bella's friends as I had met them over the course of our time together, and others were familiar faces around town, such as the barista from the coffee shop and nurses from the hospital. Others were unfamiliar, russet skinned faces from the reservation and other cops I hadn't met. The cops were in dress uniform, honoring their fallen colleague.
"Are you okay, Edward?" Esme asked.
I nodded and climbed out of the car. The stench of the wolves was strong in the air, and I could feel their stares on us, but I paid them hardly any mind as I was preoccupied with the familiar faces of the couple walking towards me: Angela Weber and Ben Cheney. They wore similar expressions of grief, but Angela forced a sad smile for me. "Hello, Edward."
"Hello, Angela, Ben."
Angela placed her hand on my arm. "We're so sorry about Bella. She told us you were together again, and she seemed so happy. It awful that you had to lose her when you'd just found her again."
"Thank you," I said in response to her heartfelt words. "You were always a good friend to her."
"I tried to be." Her thoughts drifted back to a cafeteria scene in which she spoke to a sallow-faced and dark-eyed Bella that seemed not to hear a word she said.
A black car pulled up then, and Charlie and Renee got out with their respective partners. I had never met Bella's stepparents, Phil or Sue, but their identities were obvious as they were each supporting their partner.
Renee's eyes had the clouded look of sedatives, and I guessed she was under a doctor's care. Charlie was the same broken man that had visited our house before. The woman with him, his wife Sue, found my eyes in the crowd of people, and hers narrowed with hatred. She must know Bella's true fate. I wondered if she would truly prefer Bella to be truly dead and this to be a burial instead of just a memorial?
The cops formed an honor guard, and Charlie and Renee walked through it and into the church. People trailed in after them, the wolves at the head and my family bringing up the rear. We took seats at the back of the crowded church with Angela and Ben. Alice sat on the aisle as she had a job to do.
Before Charlie left, when eliciting a promise that we would attend, Charlie had a slightly more difficult request for Alice—that she give a reading.
It was a tough ask as we all knew, as did the werewolves, that Bella was not dead and all usual funeral readings would be inappropriate for the situation, and Alice didn't want to feel like a fraud. Luckily, the reading Charlie and Renee had chosen seemed perfect.
We listened to the pastor eulogize Bella and her life. Her former Chief gave a short speech about her time in service, his voice constrained, and then it was Alice's turn. She made her way along the aisle to the lectern. She introduced herself and then began the poem, her voice carrying to the four corners of the room clearly. "You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived…"
As I listened, I fixed Bella's face in my mind, Bella as she had been, creamy skin, brown eyes, and beating heart: the person she had wanted to be.
I felt a pang that it had been stolen from her by a cruel accident, but I reminded myself that what she had now was better than the alternative. I would make her new life as good as it could possibly be. I would ease her pain at everything she had lost by making her see what she could gain. I would somehow make it right.
"…You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back, or you can do what she would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on."
As Alice finished, there were more than a few people clearing throats and wiping eyes in the church. The pastor stood again and said words I wasn't listening to, and then people stood and made their way outside.
There was a patrol car parked where Charlie and Renee's car had been, and the door was open. On the driver's seat was a uniform hat and badge—Bella's.
As the last of the people trailed out of the church the radio crackled to life and the dispatcher's voice spoke.
"Base to Unit 15. Unit 15, respond." There was silence. None of the cops even seemed to breathe. "The Astoria PD is grateful to Officer Isabella Swan for her dedicated service. This is Officer Swan's End of Watch. Rest in Peace."
"Rest in peace." The words were echoed by the officers around us, and the radio fell silent.
I thought it was a fitting end to Bella's human life and human hopes. Her human life was over now. Her forever was just beginning.
So… The end of watch part of this chapter really moved me when I was researching it. It wasn't something I'd ever heard of before until I was researching funeral traditions for cops. Hope I managed to capture that for the rest of you.
Until next time…
Simaril xxx