I don't own these characters. They are the sole property of Stephanie Meyers. I only borrow them. No humans are permanently harmed through my actions, though I do confess to harassing, annoying, torturing, and exasperating them – just because it's fun. I make no money from my little stories, sad day. I only play in the sandbox, I didn't build it.

Chapter 2: Hurricane Cassie

"The past is not a package one can lay away." ~Emily Dickinson

"Come with me," Cassie said, tugging at my hand once more. She did not seem to notice the cold, hard feel of my skin. Or perhaps it was simply nothing less than she expected. Bella would have warned her. Looking over her shoulder at me, she gave me an encouraging smile, one very much like she would have given to a reluctant child. "I don't bite you know," Cassie teased. "I'm only what…one-eighth wolf?"

Then she laughed at her own joke, which made no sense anyway. I had a horrible inkling that I would get used to that before too long, this feeling of confusion and of being off-balance. She was leading me toward her car. Obediently, I got into the passenger seat (it seemed easier than arguing) and Cassie started the car. It roared to life with a well-tuned purr and she turned to grin at me. "Sweet, huh?"

I studied her then, realizing that Cassie McBride was much more than Bella's great-granddaughter. She was her own person, quite separate and distinct from the Bella Swan I had known – and loved in vain – for so many years. Had Bella known that Cassie would find me in my darkest moment? Had she anticipated what I still was contemplating? How could she? As far as Bella knew, I had left her because I had lost interest. Surely, even Bella could not have so much compassion as that. And yet… I glanced at Cassie, seeing not just Bella in her face, but something else, something elusive.

An afternoon with a pretty young woman was not enough to sway me, but perhaps I could find some solace in her presence. After all, I had long since recognized that my choice would not only affect me, but my family as well. I knew quite well the pain it would inflict on those I loved. My family…the only thing in this world besides Bella who made existing at all even bearable.

Perhaps I could find some peace in learning about Bella's life and getting to know, even briefly, this young woman with the ready laugh and mischievous eyes. Then Cassie was peeling out, gravel spewing as the car gave a slight swerve. She glanced at me apologetically. "Sorry, I got my need for speed from my father's side. When he moved to the States, he raced cars for a living. He had a real natural talent for it. He was scary good, like some sort of Jedi for NASCAR or something. Figures, huh? Irony everywhere." Then she winked. "You probably remember what a Jedi is better than most. Even you guys would have seen Star Wars! You probably could repeat every word of dialogue for every movie you've ever seen. Nana Bells said you all had like this amazing memory. Not really fair when it comes to school. Although I don't know why you bothered. Who wants to repeat high school?"

"I'm sorry?" I was confused, having difficulty following her thought processes. She seemed to jump from one topic to another and because I could not read her mind, I was left to follow along as best I could – which was not very well, apparently.

"My father, he was a race car driver," Cassie said. "He died…in a car accident. Remember?" She snorted lightly, her lips pressed together as if she was trying to restrain a smile at my expense. I was still trying to work my way through the concepts of Star Wars and high school and NASCAR and… Oh hell, I gave up.

"Yes, right." I paused. "I'm sorry, by the way."

Cassie shrugged as she expertly negotiated a rather treacherous bend in the road. Her heart rate never fluctuated; her hands remained sure and steady on the wheel. "It was a long time ago," she said. "I miss him, but I'm sort of used to them not being here, so it's okay." She glanced at me from beneath long, dark lashes, her eyes flashing with the familiar glint of humor. "But it's sort of funny, don't you think? He died in a car accident? And not even on the track, obviously, since my mother was with him. That would just be testing the bounds of believable, if I said she had been in the car with him on the track, don't you think?" She snorted delicately.

I rather felt as if I was standing in the middle of a hurricane, trying desperately to track several different winds that insisted on buffeting me from every side. It simply could not be done, so I simply let the breezes blow and let them take me where they would.

Hurricane Cassie, I thought with wry amusement.

"Anyway, it was nothing more exciting or tragic than a drunk driver," Cassie was explaining and I tried yet again to keep up. "It wasn't even a big holiday or anything. Not New Year's Eve or a big party day. You sort of expect that sort of shit on New Year's Eve, you know? But no, this was just a Friday night and some guy wanted to blow his paycheck at a bar. And he did. And no one noticed that he'd had too much. Not that it's their fault, of course." Cassie looked at me with a frown. "You wouldn't blame someone else, would you? I just think everyone has to be held accountable for their own actions, and you really can't shoulder the burden for others. I mean, God! It's hard enough to keep track of my own shit, much less anyone else's." She blew out a breath and I wondered if the eye of the storm was approaching – a moment of calm and quiet.

But no.

"The drunk driver died too," Cassie continued. "I've never figured out if that made it better or worse. He wasn't a terrible person; at least I don't think he was. He did something stupid, which we all do. Except hopefully we don't kill someone when we do it. I didn't know him. That would be weird too, though, wouldn't it? He left a wife and a newborn baby, so they lost just as much as I did, maybe more. At least I remember my parents and his daughter won't remember him at all!" She threw me another glance, apparently not noticing or caring that I had remained silent. I had nothing to add, and no opportunity to do so in any case.

She bit her lower lip and I had to look away. "Sorry," she apologized softly. "I tend to talk too much all the time, but especially when I'm nervous."

I looked at her then and smirked. "You don't seem the least bit nervous to me," I told her. Perhaps this too, was a trait of the family. Bella had always been impossibly self-possessed. Nothing threw her, nothing seemed to frighten her.

Cassie heaved a sigh of relief. "Good, I mean, great." She sighed again. "It's just a little…weird. You're real, and you're here." Her eyes darted my way and then back to the road again. "And you really look exactly the same as you did seventy years ago."

"You knew what I was," I reminded her.

"Yes," she said carefully. "But it's a little different, seeing it for yourself. Seeing this guy who's still young and hot-" Strong white teeth worried a lower lip, but there was no fiery blush in the soft cheek. Just the slightest hint of color that human eyes would never notice stained her cheeks. "Well, what I mean is that you look just like you did in the pictures that Nana showed me. And I know it's been seventy years, and you just can't help but think that even a vampire has to age a little bit, you know!?"

"Sorry to disappoint," I murmured dryly.

"You know that's not what I mean," Cassie chided with a roll of her eyes. "It's just that, well, it's like right in my face right now – what you are and what that means." Nibbling again. "I knew it, I understood it, or at least I thought I did. But I have to tell you that it's a whole different ball game to actually see it in action, so to speak."

We pulled to a screeching stop in front of a very familiar house. It was painted red now and the shutters would a bright, blinding blue. She saw me eyeing the house and grinned as she jumped from the car. "I like bright colors, what can I say?" Then she was moving to the front door, entered a security code, and the door opened. She stopped at the threshold. "I don't have to invite you in or anything, do I? That's a myth, right?"

"Myth," I confirmed, moving past her to enter the house. Nothing here was familiar, even the walls were different, as the wall between the dining room and living room had been removed to make one large open space. Inside the colors were as vibrant as I expected after seeing the exterior. They should have clashed, but somehow they worked together and created something lovely. Even her color choices were a force to be reckoned with.

She waved her arms in welcome. "Welcome to the Manor McBride," Cassie announced grandly, dumping her purse on the table in the foyer and toeing off her shoes as she continued to walk. I wasn't sure how she accomplished that without falling on her face, but she did.

Cassie pointed me to a couch, assuming I would sit there. I did. I had no desire to incite the wrath of Hurricane Cassie. She practically danced over to a bookshelf and retrieved a disc with a small scanner. She slipped the disc in and Bella's face filled the small screen. It was an extreme close-up, probably taken within a few years of our departure from Forks. Cassie clicked impatiently. The next picture was from a different angle.

Bella, in a simple white wedding dress.

"Oops," Cassie said, reaching out to change the picture.

"No," I said, touching my hand to hers. "I want…" I took a deep breath. "I need to see."

She stared at me for a moment, her dark eyes wide and sad – and wise. "Okay," she agreed.

More pictures.

Bella standing beside Jake, a minister holding open a Bible as he stood before them. A tender kiss between the large figure of a man and tiny Bella, her white dress a stark contrast to Jacob's dark, russet flesh and midnight hair. Something inside of me broke loose on seeing it, that proof of the life they had created together. That –all of it - should have been mine, I thought.

Then pictures of Bella, her belly big and her eyes wide with wonder as her hands rested on the mountain with smug satisfaction. A baby boy, with his father's blunt features and Bella's fine, brown eyes. A small child, playing in a sprinkler, Bella laughing the background as she looked on her son's antics. Countless more, the boy growing up, getting taller and taller until he dwarfed his mother's frame, though he did not reach his father's lofty heights. A lifetime of memories, a life that had been lived and now was over.

And that was why I'd left – so that Bella could have that life, that child. All the human things I could never give her. Perhaps my sacrifice had not been in vain after all, though Bella's life had not been as perfect as I would have wished. As Cassie said, human lives are frail and fleeting, sadness as constant a thread as joy. My Bella had lived a perfectly human life, just as I had wished.

Cassie reached out and touched one of the pictures. Bella's son was a man, and this time he was the one kissing a woman in a white gown. Her face was slightly turned away from the camera and toward her husband. Charles Black's big hands cradled her face as they shared a tender nuptial kiss. "He was dead a year later," Cassie said softly.

"That soon?" I asked. Just another risk of living a perfectly human life, I thought.

Cassie nodded. "And my grandmother, well she wasn't good for much after that. She hadn't really planned on being a widow, and a mother, at the age of twenty-five, so Nana Bells and Papa Jake pretty much raised my mom. My grandmother dropped in and out of her life until my mom was twenty. Then my grandmother died and my mom found out when a lawyer told her about a small inheritance. That was the last of my grandmother."

"How terrible," I said.

She shrugged. "I'm sure she did the best she could. It couldn't have been easy and she didn't have any family of her own," Cassie replied and I was struck by how generous and warm her heart must be, surely a gift from my Bella. Yes, Bella would have been compassionate to the woman her son had loved. She would have raised her granddaughter and showered upon that child all of the love in her heart, love for her own child that had been taken from her, and the unique love one gives to a grandchild.

"So I guess the wolf line ended with Papa Jake," Cassie said off-handedly.

I stared at her. "Excuse me…uh…what?" Once more she had me floundering and adrift upon a sea of confusion. There it was again, the mention of wolves. Memories of one hundred forty years ago drifted through my mind. Surely she did not mean -

"The wolf line," Cassie explained with a roll of her eyes. Oh yes, she did mean - "Papa Jake's was the last generation to phase, and once they killed Victoria, even they stopped. And the wolves disappeared again."

Victoria. Wolves. Phasing. Quileute legends. Quileute facts.

It appeared that there was much I still did not know about the life Bella had lived once I left her. I resolved to find out, and I knew that Cassie would help me. She grinned back at me, perhaps sensing that she had taken me by surprise. No easy feat with a vampire.

But then again, she was hurricane Cassie – and even our kind were not immune to the forces of nature herself.