*CPOV*

I was standing in the crowded arrivals terminal of San Francisco International Airport when Edward's familiar silver Volvo pulled up to the curb in front of me with Bella behind the wheel.

She was alone which struck me as a little odd. My son-in-law never left her side when he could help it, though I wasn't about to complain about getting some alone time with Bella away from the Cullen circus.

"Have you gotten taller, kid?" I asked as I pulled Bella's strange cold, hard body against my chest in a tight hug. I turned my head to kiss her cheek like I'd done a thousand times before. But this time working hard not to flinch at the unnatural iciness of her skin which no longer came as a surprise.

There was definitely something different about her. She was standing a little taller with her head held high instead of trained at the ground like I remembered her. She seemed comfortable in her own skin, alien as it was.

I felt one side of my face pick up in a smile as I realized that she wasn't taller. She was happy. Glowing even. Happier than I could ever remember seeing her.

And then before I could stop her, with one petite hand she lifted my large, (and thanks to Sue) overpacked suitcase into the open trunk of the car like it weighed nothing.

I gaped at her in surprise. I knew what she was..and what she wasn't. But that didn't make it any less shocking to see her lift a bag one-handed that she wouldn't have been able to budge six months ago.

Bella closed the trunk with a pat of her hand and we both quickly ducked into the car before the airport rent-a-cop could blow his whistle at us again for parking in a loading zone.

From where she sat in the driver's seat, Bella looked over at me and smiled a little shyly, seeming to understand where my thoughts had gone.

"It was strange for me, too, at first. Being around vampires. Watching them lift cars up over their heads and bend steel with their bare hands. You get used to it," she chuckled and shrugged nonchalantly, returning her eyes to the road.

"Can you lift a car over your head?" I sputtered, eyes bulging wide.

"Well, I've never actually tried, but I'm sure I could. I'm still stronger than Emmett as of our most recent arm-wrestling match last week. But it's starting to taper off. It wasn't as easy as it used to be," she admitted.

"You're stronger than Emmett? The huge one?!" I demanded, my dumbstruck voice shooting through two octaves.

"Yup," Bella replied, popping the 'P.' "See, newborns...new vampires, I mean, are the strongest of our kind because our bodies are still full of our own human blood," she explained casually as I suppressed a shudder.

"It makes us stronger and gets used up slowly over time. And since Emmett only hunts animals, like the rest of us," she added quickly, "he's not as strong as he would be if he hunted...the traditional way," Bella finished lamely.

The traditional way, I snorted in disgust. What a quaint way of describing murder. I had to remind myself to take a breath, to remember that the Cullens respected human life and did what they could to preserve it.

Carlisle served and protected his community just as much if not more than I protected mine. That's what I'd gone blue in the face trying to convince Billy of, anyway, back before I'd known the truth about the Cullens. About my own daughter.

That they weren't human didn't make that any less true. Rationally, I understood that. But irrationally...I shook the thought away.

When Bella talked about hunting animals, it may have been willful denial, but it was just easier to let myself imagine my daughter armed with a rifle rather than running around the woods, teeth bared, like some kind of feral animal.

"So what's the deal with you driving the Volvo? That husband of yours seems like he gives out cars like Oprah. Didn't he think to get you one after your truck bought the farm?" I asked gruffly, desperate to change the subject to something more normal. Cars seemed safe enough.

Bella grimaced. I frowned. What had I said?

"Promise you won't get mad," she began, biting her bottom lip between her teeth. I groaned out loud as she uttered the words every parent of a teenager learns to dread.

"I will do no such thing," I said in a flat tone and crossed my arms stubbornly over my chest.

Bella glanced nervously at me out of the corner of her eye and then her bizarre (but also sort of beautiful) golden eyes darted back to the road. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

"Just spit it out, kid. I mean…and don't take this the wrong way, but what could you have possibly done that's worse than running off and becoming a vampire?"

Bella snorted, amused. "True," she agreed with a sideways cock of her head.

"Well, the thing is...Edward wanted to get me a car, but I wouldn't let him."

My neck snapped to the left as I turned to look at her with an uncomprehending expression on my face. "Bells, I know you don't like people buying you things, but he's your husband. It's his job to take care of you…" I started to say, more than a little concerned about her extreme reluctance to be cared for.

Was this my fault? Had she learned this stubborn independence from me? I didn't think so. If anything, I'd let Bella do too much for me when she lived at home. She certainly didn't get it from her mother, I thought scornfully.

"No, no. It's not like that. You didn't let me finish. I wouldn't let him buy me a Fer-a car, because I wanted a motorcycle instead," she explained, her body visibly tensing, bracing for my reaction. Had she been about to say a Ferrari? Fucking hell.

My eyes bulged as I processed this new information. I could feel my blood pressure racing as I worked to temper my reaction.

How many times had I warned her what I'd do if I ever got wind of her riding on the back of one of those deathtraps? How many times had I had to deliver the tragic news to someone's mother, someone's spouse that their loved one had been in an accident and would never be coming home?

"Before you say anything," Bella prefaced, eying me cautiously, "I would just like to remind you that I can't die."

I said nothing for a long beat. "Well, shit, kid, when you put it like that..." I huffed, the wind completely gone from my sails. What could I say?

You'd think your child becoming immortal would be the best gift a parent could hope for, and it was in some ways. But, boy, did it take the teeth out of parenting, I harrumphed.

What if she wanted to go shoot up heroin, next? Could vampires even do drugs? What reason could I spout for objecting to her doing anything dangerous? I squirmed uncomfortably in the passenger seat at the thought of being rendered obsolete as a parental authority.

The truth was these Cullens could live as if our laws (that I'd spent the better part of my life enforcing) didn't apply to them because they didn't. And it was a sobering thought.

*BPOV*

Stupid, stupid, stupid! I couldn't just let him lug his own suitcase, could I? I had to show off and freak him out like that, I scowled at myself. It was a good reminder that if I wanted Charlie to be comfortable around me, I'd need to do a better job of remembering my human act, at least until he'd had more time to adjust.

I pouted a little. It didn't seem fair that Seth and Leah, his new kids, were free to be as freaky as they wanted, flea meds, raw diet, and all, yet I couldn't lift a suitcase without starting an uncomfortable conversation.

Admittedly, Leah and Seth didn't have a choice in what they'd become, which, I supposed, probably afforded them more sympathy and tolerance.

Conversely, I'd chosen to be a monster. And I'd choose this life a million times over, so Charlie would just have to deal with it, I thought, stubbornly jutting out my chin.

That reminded me. "How's Seth and his new imprintee?" I asked with a forced grin, desperate to get this conversation back on track.

Charlie sighed heavily. "Seth's good, though his grades could be better. Sarah's great. She's a great kid and a good influence on Seth. She's probably the only reason he isn't flunking out like a bunch of the other wolves. Unlike the rest of the pack, he's excited to go to school every day to see her.

"...Kinda the way you always used to be in such a hurry to leave in the morning to go and see Edward," Charlie rolled his achingly familiar chocolate brown eyes at me, but his smile was teasing.

"If Seth and Sarah are so great, why do you sound like that?" I asked suspiciously.

Charlie sighed. "It's Sarah's mother, Abigail. They're Quileute so it's no secret to them what Seth is, but Abigail isn't thrilled about it. Says she doesn't want 'grandcubs,' he snorted and rolled his eyes again, this time more acerbically. "You can imagine how much that offended Sue. She's not the type to sit back and let someone insult her children."

"I'll bet," I replied, nodding in understanding as I merged onto the scenic Highway 1.

It was overcast today but the fog had lifted, allowing for breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean at the bottom of the sheer cliff face we were zooming around.

I could see Charlie white-knuckling what he called the "Oh, shit! handle" on the ceiling of the car and the way his cop's eyes honed in on the tread marks and dented guardrails on the side of the road telling sordid tales of previous collisions that had already occurred there.

Concerned about his rising blood pressure, I let the needle of the speedometer fall from 60 to a glacial 50 miles per hour.

"So where's Edward today?" Charlie finally asked, his easy smile betraying his less-than-devastated opinion on the matter. "He had more important things to do than pick up his father-in-law at the airport?" he snickered.

"Edward is at home because he thought we'd like a chance to catch up without the presence of his prying ears," I answered, giving only half of the whole truth.

The other reason he'd elected to let me go to the airport on my own was to discreetly prove that he trusted me to be alone with my father without being a danger to him. But I wasn't about to tell Charlie that, lest he start to worry that I posed some sort of a threat to his safety.

"How grand of him," Charlie quipped, laying the sarcasm on thick. "I don't know how you stand having him in your head all the time. I don't know how any normal married couple could survive that.

"I don't care how much you love someone," he lectured in a stern voice. "If you live with someone long enough, you're going to want to kill them eventually. That's why our thoughts are private. Otherwise, no one would be able to stand each other."

"Dad," I cut into his tirade before he appeared to be finished, paroxysms of laughter evident in my tone. "Edward can only hear my thoughts when I want him to."

His dark eyes narrowed with confusion. "Huh? How does that work?"

I went into the details of my shield and how it worked, also explaining how my silent human mind was one of the things that had attracted Edward's notice in the first place.

"Huh," he grunted, scratching his stubbled chin, deep in thought. "I guess I got some of the particulars mixed up after you came home and dumped the whole story on me. It was a lot to take in," Charlie admitted a touch defensively.

Then he added, "Well, that's a relief. I don't know how many nights I stayed up worrying about how easy it would be for someone like Edward to take advantage of a young girl when he can hear her thoughts and tell her exactly what she wants to hear." The relief was thick in his voice.

I looked over at him with pained eyes. I hated that he'd been stressing himself out over a misapprehension. I needed to put that fear to rest immediately.

"Well let me reassure you that it's never been like that. It drives him absolutely crazy not being able to hear me. If I had a nickel for every time Edward asked me what I was thinking-" I was about to finish the common idiom, but as I already was a rich woman and didn't want to appear gloating, I let the words die in my throat.

"I don't think you're allowed to use that expression anymore," Charlie ribbed, chuckling at my awkwardness.

"I guess not," I sheepishly replied. File that one under "Rich People Problems," I thought to myself just as Charlie's hands tightened into fists again when we flew around another blind curve.

*EPOV*

"Relax, brother. She'll be home with her father in just a few more minutes, see?" Alice reassured me in an exasperated tone, showing me a vision of the clock on the wall when Bella would return with Charlie.

"Thanks, Alice. I just don't want anything to go wrong," I said anxiously, worrying out loud. "Bella's been doing so well. A setback now, after everything she's been through...especially with Charlie visiting…"

In the next moment, Alice's eyes went blank and unseeing as she was struck by a new vision. I was gripped with an all-consuming feeling of terror that I didn't think I'd ever feel again once Bella had been turned. But there it was, the icy fist of panic clenched around my cold, dead heart.

Jasper blanched. "What is it? What's happening?" he demanded, panic rising in his own voice at the alarm he was reading off of me and Alice.

"Nobody panic," Alice blinked and was back in the room with us. "It's going to be alright, but they're going to need a ride," she gulped.

*BPOV*

I wasn't speeding when we took that blind curve around the mountainside. It had been nicknamed "Devil's Slide" for good reason. The on-coming SUV in the inside lane took the turn way too fast. Calculating the SUV's trajectory in 1/84th of a second, I could see instantly that there was no way the already damaged guardrail was going to survive the impact of both vehicles hurtling into it at the speed we were traveling.

As thoughts were flying through my head, the SUV hadn't even fully struck us yet. Charlie hadn't even had time to scream. There was no time for indecision and nowhere for the Volvo to go but down.

In mere hundredths of a second, to the gut-wrenching soundtrack of shattering glass and steel crunching all around us, I had us out of our seatbelts, kicked out the windshield, got a good grip on Charlie's arm, and catapulted ourselves out of the vehicle before the airbags could even deploy.

Charlie landed a few feet away with a sickening crunch, his soft body hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes, rolling a few times, and stopping perilously close to the edge. Only my supernatural ears could have picked out the sound over the Volvo crashing through the guard rail and going over the edge.

My eyes widened in horror as I could see that the SUV that had struck us was about to go over the edge, too. Before I had time to think it through, I was diving behind the SUV, my outstretched hand reaching under the bumper for something sturdy to hold onto.

Sparks flew as my crushing grip slowed then stopped the spinning rear axle. Once I had a grip on it, I yanked it to a stop just as the front tires went over the edge, spinning wildly.

It was only then that I let myself breathe. Only then did I smell the blood.

*CPOV*

I rolled away from the edge, trying very hard not to think about how close I'd just come to meeting my maker. I yelled out from the sharp pain in my ribs as I got to safety, but that was a bad idea. Yelling only made it hurt worse. Only broken ribs hurt that bad, I thought with a groan. Great, just great. Sue would never let me out of her sight after this.

As I lay there in the dirt trying to catch my breath, I saw what had to have been a hallucination of my daughter keeping the bastards that crashed into us from going over the edge with a single hand reached up under the tow hitch.

Bella's eyes met mine then. They were huge and round in her pale face. But I noticed right away that they weren't the golden color I had seen just moments ago. Now they were black as pitch.

The screaming started then. The people trapped inside the SUV were calling for help. My first responder training kicked in and I sprung into action. Well...hobbled.

I was able to get to an open window and holler for anybody uninjured to carefully climb to the rear of the SUV. One by one, I was able to help the passengers out of the SUV while ignoring the screaming pain in my ribs.

"Charlie! Charlie, are you alright?" I heard someone call over the loud ringing in my ears. I must've taken a worse knock to my head than I realized. I wiped away a trickle of blood from a gash over my right eye.

And then Edward was in front of me, his hands tightly gripping the tops of my arms. He looked like he wanted to hug me or maybe shake me. How long had he been calling my name?

"F-fine. I'm fine," I stuttered, dazed.

"Charlie, where's Bella?" he asked in a tremulous voice, his eyes anxiously looking over the edge where the Volvo was wheels up and being pulled under the surface by the tide.

"Bella? She was just right over-" I trailed off as I looked over to the empty spot on the ground where I'd last seen her. I looked around, could see the flashing lights of police cars and an ambulance that were now blocking the road in both directions, but Bella was nowhere in sight. Where the hell was my daughter?

*EPOV*

As soon as I saw the horrific collision in Alice's mind, I'd taken off on my Ducati knowing I'd get to Bella sooner than Carlilse, Alice & Jasper would be able to make their way through the mounting traffic in the Benz.

Relief flooded through me as I saw that Charlie had somehow survived. Hadn't just survived but was heroically aiding in the rescue of the other crash victims and looked to be in reasonably good condition, all things considered. So if Charlie was here and the Volvo was sinking to the bottom of the Pacific...where the hell was my wife?

*A/N Eeeeek,I have no idea where that chapter came from, but it came pouring out of me so I threw my hands up in the air and let the writing gods take the wheel. And they drove it over a cliff. 😂

I can't help it. I love it when Edward is all panic-struck and I never get to write him that way anymore now that Bella is a vamp. Rest in pieces, Volvo. Your death was integral to the plot. And Eddy-boi had too many cars anyway. Til next time, lovelies. And a very Happy Thanksgiving to you all!