Into the Woods

By: Everleigh Allen

Chapter 4

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls. –Edgar Allen Poe

~O~

Charlie was stalling.

He got up, got a beer, and sat back down before he tried to figure out where to start.

He played with his fingers, fidgeted, and then after Bella growled her frustration, he looked at his only child with pain.

With a sigh and his voice barely a whisper, he started, "I hope you don't judge us too harshly. Desperate people do desperate things sometimes."

"Okay."

"We were seventeen, almost eighteen... newly married, in love."

"Okay. You're making me nervous with all this cryptic-ness." Bella laughed, raking her hands through her hair.

"We were feeling the stress of high school, graduation, supporting a baby together since she was pregnant and soon to be living on our own. It's a lot for a kid your age." Bella nodded in agreement. "Anyway, one day, to get away from everyone- everything, we decided to take a walk through the forest just along the river, as we had a thousand times before. But she was pregnant and hormonal but she was not being herself that day. Anyway, she was tired and cranky and even though it was her idea for the walk, I was against going so far in her condition." He scoffed and shook his head, "like you can tell Renee what to do and expect her to listen. Anyway, we had been fighting that day over everything, over nothing. I honestly can't even remember the entirety of it.

"Renee always had a flare of the dramatics, you know? So, we stopped and sat at the bank for a while just sitting and talking. All the sudden, it was like a light switched turned off inside her. In hindsight, I should have known something was wrong when she wanted to walk along the river but she just shut down. I was young and dumb." Charlie wiped the moisture over his cheeks. "I misread the situation and figured she wanted to be left alone. I moved about 20 feet away, giving her space. It was bit later when she thought I wasn't paying attention that she stepped into the water as she often did. It was fine, it was just her feet and they were swollen. I was skipping stones and didn't notice that she was going in deeper and deeper until the water was at her hips. I yelled at her, but there was nothing there on her face. It was just blank. But then she took more steps in, as if in a trance and went deeper and deeper into the water, against my pleas. I started moving forward, running down the bank knee deep and tripping over the boulders but she was so far away and the water… it was freezing and swift after the rain."

Charlie's shoulders stooped. It was as if he was aging before his only child.

"I saw her head go under and was expecting her to pop back up. She didn't and I jumped into the water to try to swim to her but I couldn't find her. It moved too quickly."

Charlie took a few moments to breathe and let Bella digest what had been said so far. When he risked a look on her face, he wished he didn't.

She was sitting there with a horrified look on her face.

"It's like it happened yesterday and if I can't tell you how many times the scenario has muddled my brain. I still don't know if I believe it. But it did happen and I did see it. Charlie began again. Bella blinked, looking up at her father"

"What?"

Charlie sat shaking his head, lost in his memories.

"We weren't alone on the river that day."

Bella gasped in shock. Her hand cupped her mouth.

"There was a man."

"A man? In the middle of the forest?"

"Yes? No? I don't know. It was chaotic and I wasn't really thinking about where he came from or how far in we were in, but he didn't look like he was a hiker or anything. It was all so strange."

The microwaved beeped and Bella rose from her chair and went into the kitchen. She started preparing the meat to brown and made a simple marinade of salt, pepper, and lemon juice for their salad. Minutes later Bella went back into the living room and asked Charlie to continue.

"The man- he was, uh, maybe a couple hundred feet away? He was down the river and I watched him calmly walk into the water, like, straight into the water, as if it was such an easy thing to do with the current and the slippery rocks. At first, I thought I was watching an angel that appeared one moment and then dunked under the water the next. I watched him as he pulled Renee up and at first I was grateful and running toward them. He was able to find her and save her, something I couldn't do and he did, I guess, but then I noticed that he was talking to her. I was horrified when he suddenly grabbed her and picked her up by her throat. I started screaming at him. He just stood there with her suspended in midair, holding her up easily, and the other hand was at his side, balled in a fist and the river rushing all around them."

"Wow." Bella whispered. She was shocked and didn't know what to think.

"His mouth was moving but they were too far away for me to hear what was said. I mean, I was running through the forest and it was happening so fast. I heard wolves starting to howl in the distance, which seemed to make the man react..." Charlie's voice trailed off as if leaving a valuable piece of information out.

Bella was at the seat of her pants with the story. She was a rumbling bowl of emotions, but was locking them down until she had all of the information. "React?

"He reacted. Sneered, maybe hissed? I don't know, he looked around, but if he knew I was there he didn't acknowledge me. She was struggling- kicking him, not that it mattered because he didn't move with any of the hits. When that didn't work she started crying and pleading with him, even apologizing. I was impotent in helping her. I still don't think she forgives me for that." Charlie said sadly. "But when I got there- the man, he was gone! One minute he was there, the next he was gone and Renee was hunched over the river rocks grabbing at her throat on the shore line."

"What did he say to her?"

Charlie shook his head. "I don't know. She never told me. Still to this day I don't know one word about it. But we walked back to the car in silence, drove home in silence. When we got to her home that night she packed up her things without a word and against my pleas. Her mother called mine and said that our relationship was over. My mother called and told me the news. Renee was moving to New Orleans with family members and didn't wish to be contacted by me in the future."

"No," Bella gasped, but she knew it was the truth, even though it was becoming hard to breathe.

"Yeah," Charlie sneered. "I tried, Bella. I tried to get her to change her mind but she ignored my pleas. But then she did worse. On one of the calls, Renee said that if I fought her moving away she would say the marks on her throat were from me. I-" a tear fell down Charlie's face, "I was upset over everything. It was over in an instant and so suddenly because she said so and she was leaving with my heart and my… my baby." He gestured toward her.

"I'd be pissed."

Charlie scoffed a laugh, "I was. I'm still pissed." They had a moment of amused agreement before he continued, "Renee had you later that month. She called and sent me pictures of you and the annulment papers. She refused any of my wishes to see you. I had to go to court and you know the rest of that."

Bella nodded. She did know the rest, since she lived it.

Renee's move to New Orleans started a long line of questionable, off the map places that she called "adventures" which usually also involved a man and they went from one home to another.

She had a front row seat for Renee's erratic behavior, drunken episodes, and the occasional abusive man.

Bella learned at seven how to make her own food, tired of waiting on Renee to feed her.

But it wasn't always so bad. The woman was flighty at best and neglectful at her worst.

Bella truly enjoyed the "break" from reality from her mom when she got to go and visit with her dad but those visits were few and far between.

"Did you ever see that man again?"

Charlie shook his head, "No, they were wet and that distorts things, so I learned. I didn't get a good glimpse of him, anyways since my eyes were on her. It happened so fast. Seconds and then it was over." He sighed, exasperated, "I guess he's one reason I became a cop. I was obsessed with the lack of details I got from the event. I trained myself to do better, be more observant."

Bella's mind was churning with all of this new information. She was upset that Renee went into the deeper part of the water when she was pregnant and putting herself and the baby at risk. Bella couldn't fathom ever doing such a thing.

But what was more that the man had her by the throat. Who, in their right mind, would save a pregnant woman from the water and hold her up by her neck?

That didn't make any sense.

There was something missing.

They sat in comfortable silence as they ate their dinner before Bella finally spoke. "Mom was completely underwater?"

Charlie looked at his daughter. "Yep."

Bella's eyes narrowed. "Completely under the water in a river? Not like a deep, heavy current river, but still-"

"Yeah. Where are you going with this?" He asked, using his fork to pull his food around the plate. Bella suspected he knew.

"It doesn't make sense that she'd stay under the water so long when she could stand there. She could swim. You said she dunked her head under the water so it couldn't be deeper than five feet five inches."

Charlie's mustache twitched as his eyes narrowed, looking at the grain of the wooden table. His chest hurt.

Literally hurt.

"Was she dirty?"

"What?"

"Her hands or body all dirty from sediment?"

Charlie made a huffing sound, his eyes lining with tears.

Bella just nodded her head. She knew that Renee had to have been holding onto one of the rocks under the water and she could've held her breath for at least thirty seconds if needed.

"It doesn't make sense that he could just happen into the water and grab her up and you couldn't. I think he knew something you didn't. I think the man threatened her." Bella said simply but quietly. "It's the only thing that actually makes sense in all of this."

The words churned in his mind and it all suddenly made sense.

"Why else would she have run?" Bella added with a scowl. "My whole childhood we spent running from place to place on a never ending quest of "insight" and "adventure" that now looks like a crock of you know what."

"I don't know. He had his hand on her throat that was a threat in itself, but she didn't have to run!"

"But you said he was talking to her before you got there! I bet he said something that scared her enough to book it out of there, never to return. You know what she's like. She's a spitfire. It really bothered her that I was coming here, but what is more is all the moving around… maybe she wasn't as flighty as I thought… maybe she was running."

Charlie paled, suddenly sick. His daughter was smarter than he gave her credit for. "Running from him?"

Bella nodded, liking her sudden direction. "Fight or flight and she ran. Why was she even going into the water in the first place? And pregnant?"

"I never knew why. She never said-"

"She was trying to commit suicide Dad, and she was taking me with her."

Charlie looked stricken, shaking his head back and forth as Bella wondered how he could be so dense, in so much denial.

"No."

Bella scoffed, raising her eyebrows. "Yes!" She said with dramatic sarcasm. "That is exactly what she was probably doing. She was trying to get a reaction out of you all the time. Sure she always had issues with depression- if not more than that- but she wasn't interested in self-help, like she said. She was trying to appease her guilt, while hiding out and running. So selfish, always thinking of herself."

"I never knew."

"Of course you didn't! She liked it that way! If you didn't know she was depressed or manic, you couldn't take her to court. She feared you getting custody and with me brought me up here she wouldn't come here to see me and you know that. It was all about control."

Charlie agreed.

Bella had put together all the missing pieces that Charlie couldn't put together. He wasn't a very good cop, after all.

He could feel is awe turn into boiling anger at his ex-wife.

"Hey, stop that self-deprecation crap," Bella put her hand over his shaking fist, "None of that! I am seeing things from the outside in, and I lived with the woman. I know her. It had nothing to do with me, or with you. It was all her, her wants, needs, and so on. There's nothing you or I can do about it, now. I am here, I am safe."

But Charlie was not appeased. It was then- that fact- that she was going to kill herself and their child was beyond him. She left him. She took his child. She divorced him. She kept his baby away from him for years. The baby she was going to kill by drowning herself. "That bitch!" He cried in an odd, seething voice she had seldom, if ever heard. "I hate her. I truly do!" The man's anger turned into sobs and it was all Bella could do but comfort her father by giving him a hug and rubbing his shoulder as she whispered pacifying words on deaf ears.

"We're just suspecting that's what happened, Dad. We can't know for sure unless we confront her."

Charlie nodded.

Bella kept quiet, allowing all of the emotions to fill the room, suffocating and consuming them.

It was then that her own words had seeped into Bella, churning and twisting into an angry vice, threatening to suffocate her.

She couldn't breathe, tears pricked her eyes, stinging and blinding.

What if it was true and Renee had tried to kill her?

A stranger had saved Renee that day and Bella, by default.

But then a thought, a simple thought changed her very feelings about everything. As if there was someone else there, putting it in her head.

What if it as it the other way around?

What if he was really saving the baby and saved Renee, by default?

.

A/N: Just go with me… Thank you for reading/ rereading.