A/N: Long ass journey. Sorry for the delay. I hope you had a great summer. I can't believe it's over, but then, jackets and boots. So, yay.
This is the start of a long process of getting these chapters in a good place—to get Bella's POV and what she went through. You've read about it in his POV, but there will be details you won't want to miss on how things happened in her side of the story.
Chap 25 was a sneak peek of 2 years in the future when she's taken THE test that broke the news to Jameson. This is the continuation of chap 26, when it's all leading up to chapter 25. I had to tell a bit of that timeline since, in my mind, it's too good not to tell. It's her crystal clear, realistic side of the story, while Edward's was very ... vertiginous, and resistant.
I'll let you know when we're back to present day (continuation of chap 25).
FRIYAY!
Chapter 27 - The Canoe Sways
BPOV - Continued
Go find him.
Words like a balm. Bella holds Jameson's hand, he grabbed on. She's holding on for dear life. Maybe she'd crumble here and now, on the dirt, over her mom.
Why does it always seem to rain on burial days? Bella thinks it mirrors her feelings. The tears never stopped the moment the hospital room grew silent. Bella sat there, Charlie too. His hands still on his wife, trying to hold on to the warmth still left in her after her last breath.
It felt like an eternity sitting there. Bella just envisioned her mother floating away through the clouds as she looked out the window. Is that how one goes? She wouldn't know. What she does know is she'd give anything to go where her mother went.
She thinks that as her shoes dig into soft ground. The red roses on the white casket move with the wind. She'd go where the wind leads; away from here.
She could just picture it, Edward holding her tight, condolences whispered in her ear. His calm soul is what would make her raging heart, beat steadily.
Go find him.
She would leave now if time and appropriateness allowed. She'd run to her dad's car, rev the engine, and swerve off.
She looks up at Jameson. He has a car. He can take her. She conjures up plans just then, and they make her feel alive.
…
The canoe sways.
Bella lets her tears be washed away by the rain. It comes down hard, just like the realization that what she saw wasn't at all what she'd hoped.
She's hoped for so long.
Jameson kissed her hair and assured her he'd be back. He was all eyes on her. They sat in her living room after the fit of screams and shouts. Charlie's eyes grew red with tears of his own. He's stressed, too. Hurt. But watching Bella break down after he told her their summer at the cabin had ended, was the last straw. He wasn't expecting Bella to react the way she did.
"Your mother is gone. She's not here anymore!" he shouted.
Bella screamed a tortured agony. The vase flew across the room, crashing into the fireplace. Her eyes sunken. Her skin pale and dry. Her clothes too large around her shoulders.
Charlie thought that was it, that was their breaking point. They've fought, but not like this. It took months, but at least they were letting it all out; the pain of losing a loved one.
"We have to try our best at letting go," Charlie said to end it. His arms at his knees, slouched over the sofa, tired. But what he didn't know was the desperation in his daughter on another subject altogether.
No one gets it. No one understands. And why would they? No one on earth is aware of her mission.
Bella cried for keeping things from him. She wanted so badly to explain this misunderstanding.
Now she sits in a canoe, and it sways as she cries. Just back there, when she stood in the living room, she thought she saw him. A movement in the woods. Bella looked out the window to stare at the expanse of the forest, to think about how wrong everything went; looking for him. The attempt, the fail to find that mysterious man she once knew.
She looked out there and saw something. A figure far away, just beyond the lake. A shoulder, a dark cloak, weaving through the trees.
Bella tore out of the cabin, down through the campsite, and toward the lake in a sprint. She pulled a canoe, and just as she jumped in, to row herself to the other side, the sky opened.
The rain suffocated her. She heaved through the pull and the push of water, the paddle dipping time and again.
How foolish of her.
A few campsite neighbors screamed and bellowed as they ran out of the woods to take cover. Their joys and laughter loud between the strikes of thunder as their large black raincoat waved in the strong wind above them. Their clothes barely dry as they hunched under the fabric.
Bella didn't see him, she saw them.
Her shoulders dropped, so did the paddle. The thunk, as it slipped into the water, was barely audible as the rain poured down.
How foolish of her.
How foolish.
Bella thinks now, as she cries, this is it, this is the breaking point. Nothing is worth the chance. She did everything she could.
Maybe she'll give up. Maybe she'll finally let go. A light in her dims, making her feel lifeless.
The canoe sways.
...