Chapter 84 Chapter Notes
Charlie was already on the edge, but seeing Bella in the midst of her transformation is about to kill him.
The chapter title belongs to Linda Ronstadt, Smokey Robinson, Marv Tarplin and Warren Moore
Chapter 84 Tracks of My Tears Tuesday, December 26th 7:15 pm
Everyone in the house is silent and respectful as Charlie holds his daughter's body and cries. He sobs over her as if she had died. And that's exactly what's happening. The venom is killing her, and he is the devastated witness to her human demise.
Maya's thoughts reveal that she told him on the way over here that the vampires make venom to disable prey, and to convert a subject, they inject the venom with a bite, just like he suspected. Just like in the movies. I'm sure he found that bit of information comforting, now that he's finally let himself hear it.
Maya blots her own eyes, but of course, the rest of us remain tearless, though somber and wordless. Charlie cries for a long time, and when the tears have dried up, he still holds Bella as she jerks and cries. Sometimes she shrieks in agony, and at those times, Charlie holds her and looks as if he wishes he could just die himself and get the suffering over with.
Esme beckons Maya to the kitchen. "What can I get you to drink, Maya. Coke? Coffee? Tea?"
"I'll have a Coke." When Maya and Charlie had come over so he could speak to Alice, Maya had been surprised by the genteel surroundings. She had assumed that we lived like savages, and had been astounded that we had human food, inside of a working refrigerator.
She slumps onto the barstool and Esme stands on the opposite side. After she takes a few sips of her beverage, Maya looks up, twirling her can on the bar. "After Edward's phone call, Charlie lost it. Threw a plate through the kitchen window. I had to sit him down and tell him what I'd heard as a child."
"We thought that he already knew." Esme says this kindly, but Maya whips her head up.
"He didn't want to hear it. I had already told him about the Quileute and the Wolves, all the legends, but when I started to tell him about your family, he held a hand up. He told me he wanted to hear it from Bella. He didn't say anything to me about their conversation, so I thought she had told him, and he was just digesting it."
Esme pats her hand. "This has to have come as a great shock, but Edward is telling him the truth. He and Bella both had every intention of graduating. Bella told Charlie that she was undergoing her change after that."
"Yeah," she agrees, "it's just the whole thing has gotten him down. Charlie is a man of habit. He likes things he can understand, that he has some aspect of control over. This," she waves her arm around indicating the whole crazy mess, "is none of those things."
"I remember when Edward first realized he was in love with Bella Swan, the Chief's daughter." Esme smiles sadly. "He was both the happiest man in the world, and the most terrified." I see Maya's questioning expression in Esme's head, and she clarifies. "Edward is extremely practiced, but Bella's blood is very sweet, and that combined with the fact that he can't hear her makes her both alluring and mysterious."
I sit behind Charlie and watch him rock Bella while she writhes and cries. I had thought my Immortal body to be immune from human conditions such as stress, only to have reality slap me in the face when I'd succumbed to a weird trance that took weeks to escape from. I'd wanted to consider my month-long nap a one-off; surprise at my own frailty turned into rank shock when I'd heard that Alice had succumbed to the same enchantment.
When Bella begins to scream and tries to tear her hair out, Charlie tries to hold her, but he isn't strong enough to restrain her. I reach out to help him, but he bats my hand away. He won't look at me. I glance at Carlisle and he gives his head a shake. I'm to leave Charlie alone.
The scene is heartbreaking, as he tries to comfort his daughter from a condition that cannot be affected by any means. At all. He finally releases her and she rolls onto the quilt, lost in a misery that he will never know, but that my family and I will never forget.
Even though I had agreed to Bella's change in a few short months, I am overcome by the stress at being the instrument of this drama, playing out so tragically before us. I betrayed her. Again. Maybe the stress will just keep piling up, little by little, until I'm crushed by it. One day, maybe I will thankfully walk into the hypnotic grip of the trance and not come out, forever sleeping, while the world and its problems go on around me.
But of course that won't happen. Because I'm protected. My veins swim with human blood.
Bella's blood.
And my family? Certainly, this is affecting all of them, except Rosalie, who at this minute is thinking about rebraiding the beads into her hair. She wonders if she'll look shallow if she does this while we're all in mourning over the stupid girl who lies in her father's arms. The image of holding Rosalie down and ripping out all of that lovely blonde hair comes to me again, a comfort in this time of shrieks and fire.
Bella has calmed, and Charlie is now singing lullabies to her, something he didn't have much of a chance to do when she was little, as Renee left with her when she was just a year old. He's singing now, brushing a hand over her hair and stroking her cheek with a calloused finger.
After about an hour, Carlisle says, "Chief, if you'll join me here by the fire, I think I can clarify some points for you." Charlie holds his daughter closer for a moment, then in an act of resignation, shakes his head and passes her reluctantly to me. Maya leaves her barstool and helps him to his feet.
She crooks an arm through his and leads him to the chair beside the fireplace. Charlie plops down, hands hanging between his knees. Carlisle sits across from him and outlines the process from start to finish. How our bodies manufacture venom to disable our prey, how we can only assimilate blood as a nutrient, how the Cullens have all taken a vow to hunt animals and not people. To the fact that we are Immortal, that we will never sicken, be injured, or perish.
This last detail just blows Charlie away. His face completely drains of color. "Why didn't anybody tell me this stuff before tonight?" he says, horrified. "When Edward called, I had no idea what he was talking about. Maya told me on the way over here." He looks at Carlisle with a stunned expression, as if he can't believe this is happening to his daughter.
"We thought that you knew. Bella must have thought that Maya had told you the way it works." Carlisle thinks for a moment. "Bella said that you called her to the hospital two days after your surgery, correct?"
"Did I?" He looks around, trying to remember.
"This may be the problem, Charlie. The anesthesia has a hypnotic effect that can last a few days. You met with Bella. Edward dropped her off and waited in the hallway, but you may not remember it as your body was detoxifying from the drugs used to anesthetize you. You were recuperating from surgery to repair a debilitating, painful injury. It's only normal for the brain to take a while to get back to normal."
Charlie doesn't say another word, but sags in his chair, looking stricken. "Also, Charlie, I think you may be having an adverse reaction to the opiate pain medication. It heightens some patients' emotional reactions, and that may be why you're feeling so on edge."
"Yeah, that must be it," Charlie mutters. "Because none of this," he flings both hands out, "could heighten anybody's emotions or put them on edge."
Carlisle pats Charlie's good shoulder. "Bella is about seven hours into the process. In a couple of days, it will be over, and then she'll never feel pain again." Charlie looks absolutely stricken when Carlisle says, "Of course, I'm sure that you're aware that this is a big secret. It's a rule that humans can't know about our existence. I'm sure we can count on you to keep what you know to yourself. If word got out, it would not only endanger my family and Bella, but you and Maya as well."
Charlie nods and blindly staggers to his feet. As he passes me, sitting on the floor with Bella cradled in my lap, he brushes a hand over her hair, a wordless goodbye to her humanity. He stumbles toward the door and Maya rises from her perch on the sofa.
After taking a few steps, he turns slowly, his expression uncertain, wary. All through the evening, I've been positioned away from him or had my face lowered, but he just got a good look at my eyes.
My red eyes.
He blinks. "Your eyes were a warm gold color. Now they're red?"
Maya tries to hustle him out the door, but he doesn't move. "Why are your eyes red, Edward?" He looks around at the family, all with the same, warm topaz of the vegan vampire, then down at Bella. When our eyes meet again, he pushes me aside and lays Bella on the carpet. I don't resist. I'm done lying.
The venom is erasing all of Bella's imperfections, but slowly. She's only a few hours into a seventy-two-hour process, so the huge bite on her neck, which radiates from behind her ear all the way to the dip between her collar bones, hasn't yet healed.
Charlie doesn't say a word as he turns Bella's head and pulls down the turtleneck we'd dressed her in. When he sees the bite, he gasps and falls back, stunned. He runs his fingers over the raised, reddened flesh, and I see the revulsion in his eyes.
"What did you do to my daughter?" he says quietly.
Carlisle appears beside him to offer a hand up, but Charlie slaps it away. He tries to lift Bella, as if to carry her away, but he can't manage it. He sobs as he tries to find a way to hoist his daughter's body up into his arms. We all stand by, helpless, watching this sad tableau play out. Maya kneels beside him and murmurs, "Let her go, Chief. She's on her way to joining Edward's family, and there isn't any way to stop it. And let's remember that Bella is capable of choosing her own future. She and Edward thought this through. You know this."
Charlie lets go of Bella and collapses onto Maya, screaming, "He bit her! Look at her neck!"
"That's how it's done, Chief. I told you. The venom changes the prey into beings like the Cullens. C'mon. You gotta get past it! This was Bella's choice." They sit on the floor for a few more minutes until Charlie gets himself together.
When he's slightly calmed, Maya helps him to his feet. "Thank you all," she says to the room at large. She gives a quick glance to my eyes, knowing full well what they indicate. She knows I fed on Bella, but doesn't think that's a good thing for Charlie to know right now. It might just be the bit of info that pushes him right over the edge.
Maya leans down and briefly embraces Bella. "Take care of Charlie's daughter," she pleads, and I nod with a sad smile. We all watch as Maya opens the door and they walk out to the porch. And then Charlie stops dead.
On the railing, in a clear plastic bag, are the clothes that Bella was wearing when she fell. Her jeans and the orange shirt. Charlie grabs up the bag and shakes out the clothes onto the patio. He grabs up the orange tunic and holds it to his face, sobbing anew.
Alice and I rush out to the patio with Carlisle. Charlie looks at us in open-mouthed shock. "This is the shirt from my dream. Long orange shirt. Big white buttons. Why did you let her put this on?"
"You didn't tell us what color the shirt was, honey," Maya says gently. The aroma of Bella's blood on the shirt slams into me, knocking me back.
Charlie covers his face with his hands for a moment, then looks at each of us in turn. "I didn't? Edward, didn't I say it was orange? An orange tunic?" He's becoming desperate, clinging to the bloody shirt, tears streaming down his face.
"You didn't say that it was orange, Charlie." I turn away from him and the bloody shirt for a deep breath of fresh air.
Alice stares at the shirt. "I purchased it for myself last year, but it didn't suit me. After I took Bella school shopping in Olympia and saw how she was drawn to orange items, I decided to give it to her. Only, she pitched such a fit over how much stuff I'd bought that I decided to save it for Christmas." She looks at Charlie with a tortured expression. "I put it in my closet. With so much going on at the beginning of the school year, I never thought about it again."
Charlie bends over and places his hands on his thighs. Alice turns away, having seen the vomit that splatters the patio. Esme appears with a glass of water, but Charlie waves her away. He collapses onto Maya, and I think that they're both going down, but she's strong, and simply picks him up and carries him to the car.
After buckling him in, she says, "I'll get him off the opiates and find him a good counselor, Dr. Cullen. He'll be okay." She brushes hair out of her face and in a few minutes, we hear the car crawl down the road, taking Charlie away from the last glimpse of his human daughter. He cries until they're out of our range.
I realize with revulsion that he took the bloody orange shirt with him.
Carlisle and I go back inside. An orange tunic. Damn.
I just wish he'd said it out loud.