(A/N) I'm so sorry. No excuse. (/A/N)


Aunt Julie kept me home from school the next day. She said she was taking a 'mental health day' and wanted me to hang out with her. So, I ended up sitting next to her, socked feet propped up on the table as she came up with a schematic for the side garden. She shot a disdainful glance at my feet on her pristine table and I lowered them slowly. She disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a cleaning rag and spray. She promptly sprayed down the section of wood my feet had been resting on and wiped it down then returned the supplies back to the kitchen. I stared after her. How had I never noticed? She was back at the table, swapping seed packets around to get a theoretical garden she liked, keeping everything exactly straight and lined up. I felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of affection for my aunt.

"You do it, too." I said.

She glanced at me from underneath her hair. "Do what?"

"You know…" I gestured toward the obsessively straight lines in her schematic, the way the seed packets lined up perfectly. The freshly cleaned spot where my (clean) socked feet had rested.

"Oh, yeah." She admitted sheepishly.

We were quiet for a few minutes, Aunt Julie consulting her garden bible about something or other before I spoke. "My dad didn't like it. He always told me to stop but I can't. Sometimes when he'd been drinking too much he'd go mess up my room and then not let me put it right. He said I had to learn or something." I frowned at this memory. It was easy to forget his less-than-stellar parenting moments. Times when I wasn't sure if it was him or the alcohol in charge.

Julie glanced up at me, a horrified look on her face. "Lydia, my love, that's terrible! Come here." Before I could move, she was hugging me again. I didn't hug her back but I couldn't stop talking, either.

"My mom wanted me to go see a specialist," I continued quietly into her shoulder. "He just lost it. He kept saying over and over that he wouldn't have a crazy person for a daughter so I never went."

She squeezed me tighter. "Well, he's not here to run your life anymore." She pulled back to look at me. "I am going to make you go for at least a little while, though. I need to help you look out for yourself."

"I guess," I said looking out over the neat living room. Julie steps back from me and looks back at her plant bible, then closes it with a sigh.

"Let's go to Port Angeles."


At 3:30, we headed home from our impromptu day trip to the only place approximating a real city this side of the Sound. I was politely inhaling some delicious candies we'd found in a tiny hole-in-the-wall shop nestled between a bookstore and some weird apothecary my aunt wanted to visit. There was a box neatly stacked with new books carefully tucked between my feet. Bags containing new clothes, plants, seeds, and whatever else had struck our fancy were in the back. I was thinking about the pretty little box I'd seen in the apothecary. It had gorgeous carvings in dark wood. I would've bought it immediately if it wasn't heart shaped. My lip curled at the injustice done to that beautiful wood. What a waste, to end up heart-shaped.

My aunt broke the companionable silence first. "Are you still going to go to La Push with your friends?"

Truthfully, I hadn't thought of it once in the last 24 hours. "I guess so."

"You should call up Kim. It'll be good to have a familiar face. One that's a little more, ah, collected?" My aunt said.

I pondered this. Kim was my uncle's brother's younger child and certainly the quieter of his two kids. Quiet, but I'm not sure I would at all describe her as collected. She'd always been a bit of a hot-head; prone to impulsive decisions and a great deal of what my father described as sass-mouthing, as she opened up. I liked her quite a bit but hadn't seen her in probably four years. "Yeah, sure. Is her number still the same? What about James?"

My aunt's hands clenched around the steering wheel. "If you can get him to break away from his friends," she practically spit the word, "I'm sure his parents would be grateful."

I stared at Julie. "Oh… kay? Am I gonna get an explanation here or what?"

"There's not much to say," she said rather curtly. "He made bad choices, got wrapped up in the wrong crowd. You should see him - he looks like he's taking steroids or something." She shook her head. "We all had such high hopes for him."

I gaped at her. James in a gang? James on steroids? The scrawny boy who spent all his time inside playing video games? The one who did his homework as soon as it was assigned and finished projects weeks before their due date? "No way," was all I could manage.

"Yeah. He disappears all night, comes home totally exhausted. He's missing school, too. He's already been suspended more times than I can count."

"That's just - wow. How is Kim doing?"

"Oh, just fine - but she's dating one of his little gang-mates." My aunt sniffed. "I thought she had better taste. I've told my husband a million times to try to talk some sense into them but he just doesn't seem concerned."

I frowned. That didn't sound like my uncle. He and my aunt never had children and as a result were eternally overprotective of us nieces and nephews. He almost certainly would have spoken to Kim and James if he felt their actions warranted intervention.

"So," Aunt Julie continued, "perhaps we can get them to spend more time with you and less with their current crowd."

"Yeah, I'll see what I can do," I said, privately thinking that it was highly unlikely for Kim and James of all people to both be wrapped up in something involving the wrong crowd.

We sat in silence for the rest of the ride, until my aunt turned left instead of right at the only stoplight in town. I raised an eyebrow at her.

"I need to pick up some groceries." She said, craning her neck to peer around an overly-large truck as she pulled into a parking spot. There was a black Mercedes parked near the front of the store but the lot was otherwise deserted. "Do you wanna wait in the car?"

"Yeah, sure," I yawned, looking down and picking at the cloth gloves covering my hands. I heard the door shut and watched as she made her way into the store.

I settled back into the seat and frowned at the dark clouds, jabbing at the seat warmer control and cranking it up to high. I closed my eyes, eager for a warm bath and clean pajamas when I felt that sensation again, like I was being watched. I opened my eyes and sat up, looking through each of the windows, only to find no one out of the ordinary. In fact, there was no one at all. I tried to shake the feeling and relax into my warm seat, but a sudden, overwhelming sense of unbridled fear caused me to yank the keys out of the ignition and run into the store after my aunt. I ran, head-down and ducking between raindrops, to the grocery store doors where I promptly collided with what felt like a brick wall for the second time in two days.

Two bone-pale hands reached out to steady me and I followed them up muscular arms to a (gorgeous) face with light golden eyes framed by golden, wavy hair. He gave me a small, tight smile that appeared to pain him but didn't speak. I could feel dread hardening in my stomach like a stone. One of him. He nodded at me once, then slipped outside. He looked like he was looking for something.

Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the fear was gone, leaving me reeling from the unexpected emotional roller coaster. What the fuck?

"Hey, Lydia!" I whipped around, still dizzy from whatever it was that had just happened. A petite, dark-haired girl with short hair was waving at me exuberantly. A gentle looking woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties stood beside her. The soft smile on her kind face was betrayed by the concern in her golden eyes. How are all of their eyes that same weird color? What are the chances of that?

I raised my hand in greeting, too winded to speak for a moment.

"I'm Alice, I don't believe we've had the opportunity to meet yet. This is my adoptive mother, Esme. The guy who just left is Jasper, in case you were wondering."

I was wondering but I'm not sure how she knew that. The kind-faced woman - Esme - smiled again then asked, "I don't mean to pry, but what happened to your hands?"

I glanced down and flexed my hands in their cloth gloves. "Um," I realized I had yet to come up with a plausible lie. "I accidentally spilled some water I was boiling on them." I winced - the lie was weak even to my own ears.

I could tell they didn't quite believe me, the way Alice's eyes narrowed ever so slightly as they raked over the bandages and in the slight furrowing of Esme's brows. Still, it was only kindness when Esme spoke again.

"Oh, poor dear. I have plenty of aloe plants at home. I'll send some leaves with the kids tomorrow. You have classes with Emmett and Edward, I believe? They've mentioned you quite a bit."

I stared at her, unsure how to process this information. I wasn't sure what I found weirder, the "plenty of aloe plants" or her creepy pale adopted children talking about me to her. I winced when I realized I'd taken too long to respond.

"Oh, um, that -"

"Lydia! I thought you were waiting in the car?" Aunt Julie to the rescue. I could've kissed her, if that wasn't weird. Except, except… how would I explain the sudden, overwhelming terror that had driven me inside? Lie, it's what you do.

"Oh, I, um, wanted to grab some, uh, some Doritos?" I ended the statement in a question.

"Right… Aisle six." My aunt said slowly, regarding me like I had just turned into a giant, temperamental lizard. Her gaze shifted to Alice and Esme and something changed in her eyes, but I couldn't quite place it.

I turned to the two women and waved as I headed toward aisle six. "It was nice meeting you."

"It was good to finally meet you! See you at school tomorrow!" Alice called cheerfully back to me. I returned a smile that felt awkward and raced to aisle six and then got… Bugles?

I can't even maintain a lie for 26 seconds. It was a miracle I was still alive, truthfully.