A/N for 2019/04/12: Several of you have asked if there's more to Josh than just a toddler working through their grief - yes, very much so.

Credits: This chapter was beta'd by the excellent eeyorefan12 and then fiddled with by me, so any errors are my own.

Your reactions, comments and questions delight me. Thank you for reading and responding.

Erin

Bella forgot everything—where she was, who she was with.

Not him, though. He was right in front of her—and she was back in the woods, the dark and the wet of the Pacific spring night enough to make the smell of the cedar fence like the logs she'd stumbled over all those years ago, when she'd tried to find him.

Then she did what she'd wanted to do for a very long time.

She punched Edward Cullen.

Or, she tried to.

He simply wasn't where she'd aimed her fist, leaving her roaring in frustration.

Then she froze and closed her eyes.

A ball of panic and bile rose in her throat. Were they back?—the hallucinations?

No, she told herself. No. And if they were, then that was normal. Jennifer had assured her of that after Matthew died. Seeing the dead.

Of course, it wouldn't make sense if Meredith was seeing them too.

She opened her eyes quickly. He was gone.

Had he been there at all?

Joshua and Meredith were staring at her.

"Hoo, hoo," Joshua said, throwing air punches. "Hoo, hoo!"

"Yeah," Bella whispered, watching him, stomach clenching with anxiety. "Let's get inside."

Either recovered from his near tantrum, or shaken by his mother's behaviour, Joshua complied, skipping ahead to the gate, trying to reach for the latch. It was high enough that he couldn't quite reach it, but would be able to soon. Matthew had been tall and Joshua was a small copy of him. Despite her hazy thoughts, she made a mental note to find a way to secure the fence, so Josh couldn't bolt again.

Inside, she sat the kids down at the table, warming milk in the microwave. She knew it was bad for their teeth so close to bedtime, but at this particular moment she didn't care. Her hands trembled, and she moved through the kitchen one careful plodding step at a time.

"You asked who that was," she said to Meredith. "Who did you mean, exactly?"

"The man," Meredith said. "The one who was there." She looked outside.

She thought carefully before she asked another question. "Where was he?"

Meredith's face squished together in confusion. "Well, he was by Joshua when he stopped him from running into the street."

Bella stared at her.

"Then he was by you."

Her heart dropped into her stomach.

No. It couldn't be.

She must've been imagining things, when she thought it was him.

Be logical, she chided herself. You are not losing your mind again. She reasoned that it was probably some stranger who looked like Edward and was no doubt freaked right the hell out by a crazy woman trying to punch him, right after he'd saved her son.

It was normal, she told herself, to see things. To imagine things, after experiencing a loss. That was all this was.

After putting the cups of warm milk in front of them, she rubbed her face. "Alright, finish up and let's get to bed, okay?"

She'd think more about this tomorrow when she had gotten some sleep.

If there was sleep, she corrected herself. Josh's sleeping habits had always been erratic, and they had become more so since Matt's death.

"I can be tired tomorrow and then just go to bed early," she mumbled to herself.

It took awhile to move the children towards their beds, and when they finally did settle into them, Bella found herself too wound up to be able to fall asleep herself.

She got up instead, walking quietly to the back deck. Matthew had insisted on adding it during the last round of renovations. It was an unnecessary expense in her mind, but he'd convinced her with kisses and promises of quiet dinners at the small table and chairs he had eventually set there.

Charlie had lifted his eyebrows when he'd seen it, warning Bella they would never use it. "No one ever does, with an upstairs deck."

Every time she did step outside now, she felt like she was thumbing her nose at him.

Right now, she just wished he was here. Or Matthew.

It'd been six weeks.

Charlie had come to stay for a few of them, returning reluctantly to Forks. Bella had insisted she'd be fine. It wasn't like he could come running north of the border to Vancouver every time she needed him.

She had doubted her father had believed her, but he'd gone anyway, reiterating his promise to return if she needed him.

Despite its relative newness, Vancouver was home now. The house and her employment made for strong ties. Breaking them would mean severing more bonds to her life with Matt, and it was far too soon for her to contemplate any sort of change. It felt like it was still too soon to do much more than breathe.

"Not much chance of that," she sighed.

Bella took another deep pull of night air. The rain had freshened the new fence's cedary scent. This mixed with the sweetness of cherry blossoms and the more fetid odours of the week's trash, awaiting tomorrow's collection.

"I am alive," she made herself say out loud, pulling forth the affirming lines she'd assembled so long ago. "I have friends and a family—" her voice broke over this last word. She made herself repeat it more firmly. "I am loved. I deserve to be loved. I do not need the ghosts of hope or hopeless ghosts."

She chuckled humorlessly at the ridiculous and dramatic last line. Sighing again, she muttered an admonishment to herself. "Be kind to yourself—even your more stupid, younger self."

Her small litany said, she turned and went back to her bed, where something like sleep finally claimed her.

DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.