Chapter 2: Found
Bella's POV
There was an emptiness inside of me that had been there for years. 13 years exactly. Since the day that I'd lost my beautiful baby girl. My heart clenched as an image of her passed through my brain. I could still remember her perfectly. Her beautiful face. Her bronze curly hair. Her chocolate brown eyes. My little nudger.
It was all my fault that she was gone. If I hadn't left her alone, if I'd only waited for Jacob to arrive before we went hunting, then she'd still be here today. Edward liked to blame himself. He blamed himself for not knowing what she was thinking about doing. But really how could any of us have known that she was going to run away the first chance she got?
We'd only only been gone for thirty minutes when we got a phone call from Jacob asking where Nessie was. At first he thought we changed our minds and decided to take her hunting with us. Shock quickly turned to horror when we realized that she was missing. We went home as fast as we could. Our Nessie was missing. It became immediately clear that nobody had taken her. There were no other scents in the house other then our own. She'd left on her own.
We tracked her scent ten miles away before it abruptly disappeared. We were stunned. We organized a massive search party with all the witnesses we'd already gathered. Jacob got the packs to search. We searched all of Washington but we never found her. We didn't understand it at all. A young hybrid like herself should've been easy to find. She was only a few months old. How far could have gotten?
We extended our search to nearby states and still we had no luck. Where was she? Was she okay? Had something happened to her? Had someone taken her and just managed to hide his or her scent somehow? I broke down in tears. My little girl was missing and nobody had any idea where she could have gone.
All these years later and the pain from losing her hasn't faded in the least. Edward never stopped blaming himself because he truly believed he should've been paying better attention to her thoughts before we'd left. I never stopped blaming myself for thinking it was a good idea to leave my half human daughter on her own even if it was only for a few minutes. Jacob never stopped blaming himself either. He blamed himself for not getting to the house sooner to stop her.
Oh Jacob. He'd taken her loss extremely hard. When we left Forks the pack thought it would be best for Jacob to stay close to them. None of them had ever experienced what it was like to lose an imprint. Yet they all felt the excruciating pain that Jacob was going through. The worry. The fear. The anxiety. They felt everything just as strongly as he did. They knew that Jacob would need the support of a pack. But even with the support of the other wolves he was still having a hard time. Even now. I kept in constant contact with Jacob. His friendship helped me deal with my pain and I think it helped him with his as well.
I took a deep breath. I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and Edward hugged me tightly. Even though he couldn't read my mind he always seemed to know when I was hurting. My pain was his pain just like his pain was my pain. "It's going to be okay Bella," he assured.
"It's been years Edward. Years,"
"I know. But we finally found her,"
"What if we never find her? What if-wait what did you say?" I said as his words finally registered in my brain.
"Bella," he started to say. "I just received a phone call from Carlisle. He just saw her. She's here in the very same city that we are in,"
"She's here?" my brain was very slow at processing information all of a sudden. It didn't make any sense. How can she be here? We'd been here two weeks already. Wouldn't we have crossed paths with her already if that was true? Well we did spend most of our time with the Denalis these past few weeks. We'd had to leave our New York home rather abruptly when two girls at our school started to get suspicious of us. We couldn't go to any of our other residences as not a lot of time had passed since we'd last lived in them. So we had to come stay with the Denalis while we searched for a new place to live and got settled in.
We'd only just finished moving into our own house this morning. Carlisle had to go to work afterwards. The rest of us had gone hunting. Edward and I were the first ones to return. It was a good thing we'd finally moved. The Denali clan had been acting very strange since we'd first arrived. Jasper said that they were extremely nervous about something. Edward said they'd been doing a very good job at keeping their thoughts hidden from him. It was all very strange but we didn't question it.
"Bella. Love. We found our daughter. She's here. Carlisle swears that it is her. Although she does not remember us,"
"What?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"He says that there is a lot of things that he needs to discuss with us that he can't talk about over the phone. He's coming home now. He sounded...I don't know,"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My daughter was here. She was right here. We'd finally found her at last. I didn't even realize what I was doing until I had my phone in my hands. Edward shook his head when he saw who I was calling.
"Bella?" came Jacob's voice on the other end.
"Jacob we found her,"
There was silence on the other end for thirty seconds. "What do you mean you found her?! You found Nessie?!"
"Yes Jacob we found her. She's alive," my voice was full of emotion. Happiness.
"Where are you? Wait you said you were moving to Chicago, right? Are you there now?"
"Yes. We're here in Chicago. Nessie is here,"
"You're not messing with me are you Bella?"
"Jacob Black why would I lie about something like this?!"
"I'm coming," he said. "The next flight out of Seattle leaves tonight. I'm booking the flight right now,"
Damn Jacob works fast. Very fast.
"See you later Jake," I smiled. I was about to see my best friend for the first time in a long time.
"See you Bells," he said before we hung up.
I had so many emotions going through my head right now. Happiness because we'd found Nessie. Sadness because my daughter apparently didn't remember us. Crap. I'd forgotten to mention that to Jake. Oh well.
Downstairs I heard Carlisle coming in. "He wants to talk to us right now," Edward said. "Something is going on. He's trying to hide it until he talks to us,"
I ran down the stairs as fast as I could. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the look on Carlisle's face. He didn't look the way a grandfather who'd just found his long lost granddaughter should look. The grave look on his face scared me.
"Carlisle what's going on?" Edward asked apparently as clueless to what was happening as I was.
"It's Nessie," he said. "She came to urgent care this morning because of a bad cough that she'd been having. That's how I found her. She was assigned to me,"
"Oh. Is she okay?"
"No," he said. "As soon as I smelled her I knew exactly what was wrong with her. The x rays I had done on her only confirmed what I'd already knew. She has stage IV lung cancer. She has several tumors in her lungs. There's nothing that can be done. She only has a few months left,"
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