A/N: Well, hope I didn't scare too many of you away with the smut last chapter! In fact, some of you seemed to like it! : )
Thanks, as always, to all who reviewed. You are too kind.
As I gently caressed my wife's pale shoulder with my equally pale fingertips, it was tempting to simply stay in bed for the rest of the day. And night. And maybe a day or two – or three – after that. I knew our family would know where we were – and why – and certainly wouldn't mind filling in for us and caring for Renesmee.
But I also knew that Bella had had so little time with our daughter that she would regret not spending the day with her.
There was also the very pressing issue of Renesmee's accelerated growth to consider. While we still didn't know exactly what it meant, there was the very real and very terrifying possibility that it meant her life would be a short one.
Which meant we couldn't waste a moment with her.
I suppressed a shudder at the implications of that thought. My most natural tendency would be to brood over these implications, to wallow in grief and morbidity...but I was determined not to do that. I meant what I had said to Bella the previous night: I now had everything I had ever wanted. I was damn certainly going to enjoy it.
Sliding my fingers from Bella's shoulder and down her arm, I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then kissed the spot near her collar bone my fingers had just vacated. Having my face so close to her delicate neck made me want to ravage her all over again, for the umpteenth time in the past six or seven hours. "Renesmee..." I murmured instead, attempting to remind us both of where our priorities lay for the day.
Bella sighed softly. A moment later, I felt her whole body tense.
"It's all right, love," I assured her, having a good feeling I knew what she was suddenly worried about: the same thing that worried me every day since Renesmee's birth. "Get dressed, and we'll be back to the house in two seconds."
She leapt from the bed in one fluid motion but then froze, staring back at me uncertainly. Her head pivoted almost comically as she turned her face in the direction of the main house, then back at me, then back toward the house, then back at me once more. Again, I had a feeling what she was thinking about and couldn't help but smile.
"It's all about balance, love. You're so good at all of this, I don't imagine it will take too long to put everything in perspective."
"And we have all night, right?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow at me in the most adorable way.
I felt my smile widen. I loved the idea that our bodies were on the same page, so to speak. "Do you think I could bear to let you get dressed now if that weren't the case?"
She grinned back and headed for the closet, bravely flinging the door open without even a second's hesitation.
When she saw Alice's handiwork, however, she had no choice but to pause.
The closet really was bigger than our bedroom, and every available inch was stuffed with a garment bag or a shoe box, everything new, everything waiting to be tried on and adored.
Poor Alice. I doubted she would ever get that satisfaction from Bella.
"Which ones are mine?" Bella asked, eyes wide as she took in the scene before her.
I touched the rack to the left of the door, where Alice told me she had included a few things for me. The rest of my clothes were still back at the main house, of course. "To the best of my knowledge, everything but this rack here is yours."
"All of this?"
I merely shrugged, explaining with a single word, "Alice," just as she did. When Bella spoke my sister's name, however, it was more of a sound of consternation, bordering on irritation.
She reached for the nearest garment bag and yanked down the zipper to reveal a floor-length evening gown in a soft pink. It really was lovely and would probably look outstanding on Bella, but it was hardly appropriate for the middle of the day.
"Let me help," I suggested, and paused to sniff the air and see if I could locate the denim. It seemed to be at the back of the room, in one of the built-in dressers. Sniffing again, I opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of jeans.
"How did you do that?"
"Denim has its own scent just like anything else. Now...stretch cotton?" I stepped over to a shorter rack and dug out a long-sleeved white t-shirt.
"Thanks," Bella murmured when I tossed it to her.
We dressed quickly and headed for the forest, running easily toward to the main house. Although she hadn't voiced the challenge, I knew Bella was trying to race me again when she pulled her hand free of mine and increased her pace.
But I wasn't going to coddle her physically any more. I broke into a sprint, passed her, and arrived at the back door a good ten seconds before she did. I said nothing about my victory, but gave her a sly grin. She rolled her eyes and peered through the window.
Renesmee was already awake, sitting on the floor while Rose and Emmett watched, apparently amusing herself by mangling the silverware. She was surrounded by a small pile of twisted spoons. When she saw us through the glass she tossed the bent spoon in her hand to the floor, taking a chunk out of the hardwood. She pointed towards us and Bella bounded through the door joyfully, scooping our daughter up into her arms in an instant. The rest of the family was sitting on the couch, chuckling at the demise of the last spoon.
Renesmee and Bella grinned at each other, although I could see Bella's eyes scanning the child's small frame, looking for evidence of further growth. I could tell there were a few changes since last night, but nothing too remarkable or concerning. In fact, it seemed to me that the changes were less noticeable than yesterday's. I glanced at Carlisle questioningly.
Yes, he nodded once, acknowledging my unspoken query. He said nothing aloud, not wanting to alarm Bella. Her growth is slightly less pronounced than it was yesterday, or the day before. By a fraction of an inch, but it's something.
Renesmee patted Bella's cheek with her tiny palm impatiently. She was hungry. I turned back to the kitchen to find her cup.
"How long has she been up?" I heard Bella ask.
"Just a few minutes," Rose answered. "We would have called you soon. She's been asking for you—demanding might be a better description. Esme sacrificed her second-best silver service to keep the little monster entertained." There was a slight pause. "We didn't want to...er, bother you."
She was trying not to laugh, but Emmett was not quite as delicate. He made no sound, but I could tell from his thoughts that his shoulders were shaking with mirth at our expense. Yeah, Edward, we definitely didn't want to do that. God only knows that after all this time, you've earned a few uninterrupted hours. I hope you used them wisely. You knew what to do, right?
I rolled my eyes and didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. He was like an overgrown twelve-year-old.
You're certainly relaxed, by Edward standards. Now it was Jasper chiming in. So I guess I can assume you found everything successfully...in the cottage, I mean, of course.
I chose to ignore that, too. Brothers.
"We'll get your room set up right away," Bella was saying to Renesmee. "You'll like the cottage. It's magic." More Emmett: Is that a wise idea? You'll have to put her to bed with earplugs, won't you?
I heard Bella thank Esme for the cottage, but before Esme could reply, Emmett had burst into a fit of laughter out loud. "So it's still standing? I would've thought you two had knocked it to rubble by now. What were you doing last night? Discussing the national debt?"
Bella chose not to give that a response either. Instead she changed the subject. "Where're the wolves today?"
"Jacob took off this morning pretty early," Rosalie told her. He hadn't told her why, which made her suspicious. He never left Renesmee's side voluntarily, and I got an image from her mind of his face before he left, his mouth pressed into a determined line, features set and tensed. "Seth followed him out."
"What was he so upset about?" I asked as I returned to the room with Renesmee's cup. I had intended to hand it to Bella, but saw her nose wrinkle slightly at the smell of the fresh blood. She held her breath and handed Renesmee to Rosalie wordlessly. Apparently she didn't completely trust her self-control yet.
"I don't know—or care," Rosalie grumbled as she settled Renesmee back in her arms and took the cup. Renesmee was mildly irritated that she was no longer in her mother's arms, but was more interested in the contents of her cup. "He was watching Nessie sleep, his mouth hanging open like the moron he is, and then he just jumped to his feet without any kind of trigger—that I noticed, anyway—and stormed out." She snorted haughtily. "I was glad to be rid of him. The more time he spends here, the less chance there is that we'll ever get the smell out."
"Rose," Esme chided gently.
Rosalie just tossed her hair. "I suppose it doesn't matter. We won't be here that much longer."
"I still say we should go straight to New Hampshire and get things set up," Emmett said. Apparently that had been the topic of conversation amongst the family last night. If Jacob had overheard it, no wonder he had been upset. "Bella's already registered at Dartmouth. Doesn't look like it will take her all that long to be able to handle school." He turned to Bella with a teasing smirk. "I'm sure you'll ace your classes...apparently there's nothing interesting for you to do at night besides study." You can help her with that, right, Edward? Since you don't have anything more interesting to do, either?
Part of me almost wanted to tell Emmett how interesting our evening had been last night so that he would shut up already, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Or embarrass Bella that way. She was nowhere near comfortable enough yet with how open our family generally was with each other. Between our enhanced senses and the gifts Alice, Jasper and I had, not much in the way of privacy was really possible.
I was about to say something else to silence him when I was suddenly interrupted by another mind nearby, someone headed toward our house...someone full of joy and contentment and satisfaction and...
No.
Surely not even he would be that stupid...that presumptuous...that reckless.
Unbidden, a growl ripped through my chest. At the same time, Alice leapt to her feet.
"What is he doing? What is that dog doing that has erased my schedule for the entire day? I can't see anything! No!" She looked at Bella frantically. "Look at you! You need me to show you how to use your closet."
She didn't know the half of it.
I clenched my hands into fists to restrain the urge to rip the front door off its hinges and intercept him in the street so that I could finally tear his idiotic head off. "He talked to Charlie. He thinks Charlie is following after him. Coming here. Today." My voice was a furious snarl.
The thoughts of our family erupted into a chaos of confusion and consternation.
But Alice voiced it best: "Shit!" she exclaimed, and raced out the back door. She was headed for the cottage and some supplies for Bella she had left there.
If Bella could have gotten any paler, she would have. "He told Charlie?" she gasped. "But—doesn't he understand? How could he do that? No!"
No, I thought bitterly, the bloody moron does not understand. Even though he always seems to think he knows better than anyone about what's best for them. My teeth ground together. The fool had no idea what he'd done, how he'd single-handedly endangered Charlie's life—in more ways than one. "Jacob's on his way in now," I growled.
Jacob stepped through the front door without knocking, shaking the rain from his hair and splattering water everywhere just like an actual golden retriever, his mood blood-boilingly buoyant. His grin was infuriatingly wide. Clueless. "Hey, guys."
Similarly uninvited, Leah and Seth slipped in the door behind him in human form. They both knew what Jacob had just done and neither of them agreed with him, but for very different reasons. Leah simply didn't want him to become more involved in our family, and sensed that this unilateral move of his was not going to be received well by us. Seth, the youngest but apparently the most sensible of the lot, hadn't felt it was Jacob's place to do what he had done, and knew that it put Charlie in danger.
Like the rest of us, Renesmee had frozen with the tension in the room. Her thoughts were confused, knowing something was wrong but unable to fathom what it could possibly have to do with her friend, Jacob. She was still when Bella took her from Rosalie and held her tightly. Bella seemed to need to place a barrier between herself and Jacob, to give her hands something to do so they wouldn't reach out and crush his skull.
"Charlie'll be here soon," Jacob announced, as casually as though he were telling us it was raining outside. "Just a heads-up. I assume Alice is getting you sunglasses or something?" He had seen her go sprinting across the back lawn.
My fury was making it difficult for me to maintain a coherent train of thought. He was so very lucky that I had so many decades of practice with my self-control.
"You assume way too much," Bella hissed at him. It was about time she noticed that. "What. Have. You. Done?"
Jacob's smile wavered a little, but he was still pleased with his morning's work. "Blondie and Emmett woke me up this morning going on and on about you all moving cross-country. Like I could let you leave. Charlie was the biggest issue there, right? Well, problem solved."
"Do you even realize what you've done? The danger you've put him in?"
He snorted. No, he had no appreciation for it whatsoever. "I didn't put him in danger. Except from you. But you've got some kind of supernatural self-control, right? Not as good as mind reading, if you ask me. Much less exciting."
I could restrain myself no longer.
I darted across the room until I was right in the idiot's face, snarling at him in my fury. I don't think I had ever wanted to kill him as much as I wanted to right at that moment, and that was saying a lot. "That's just a theory, mongrel," I hissed, and he leaned away, startled by my anger. Jeez, Cullen, calm down... "You think we should test it out on Charlie?" I continued, ignoring his mental entreaty. "Did you consider the physical pain you're putting Bella through, even if she can resist? Or the emotional pain if she doesn't? I suppose what happens to Bella no longer concerns you!"
The smile finally evaporated from his face. He seemed to be grasping the significance of what I'd said—and I hadn't even mentioned the danger posed by the Volturi yet.
"Bella will be in pain?" he asked stupidly, the only question he could think of to ask as his mind rolodexed through what he had done this morning.
"Like you've shoved a white-hot branding iron down her throat!" I shouted.
I rarely shout.
"I didn't know that," Jacob whispered.
"Then perhaps you should have asked first," I snapped.
"You would have stopped me."
"You should have been stopped—"
Bella interrupted the tongue-lashing I was about to dish out. "This isn't about me. This is about Charlie, Jacob. How could you put him in danger this way? Do you realize it's death or vampire life for him now, too?" Her voice trembled, but I was too furious to go to her and try to comfort her. Besides, she was right. If the Volturi felt Charlie Swan knew the secret...
Jacob's brow creased with his frown, but he wasn't worried about what Bella had said...because the way he saw it, he hadn't actually told Charlie anything. "Relax, Bella. I didn't tell him anything you weren't planning to tell him."
"But he's coming here!"
"Yeah, that's the idea. Wasn't the whole 'let him make the wrong assumptions' thing your plan? I think I provided a very nice red herring, if I do say so myself."
"Say it straight, Jacob. I don't have the patience for this," Bella said, her voice low.
"I didn't tell him anything about you, Bella. Not really. I told him about me. Well, show is probably a better verb."
I saw the entire scene as it had unfolded from Jacob's mind, but I certainly wasn't as convinced as he was that what followed would be harmless. And what he'd done...I was surprised Charlie hadn't had a heart attack on the spot. Charlie Swan's was not a mind easily open to the supernatural. "He phased in front of Charlie," I told her, impatient that he get to the point.
"You what?" she whispered incredulously.
"He's brave. Brave as you are. Didn't pass out or throw up or anything. I gotta say, I was impressed. You should've seen his face when I started taking my clothes off, though. Priceless," he chuckled.
I wanted to knock him through the wall. He had realized Charlie might have a negative reaction to what he planned to do, but still went ahead with it. For all he knew, Charlie could have had a heart attack on the spot.
Bella concluded the same thing. "You absolute moron! You could have given him a heart attack!"
"Charlie's fine. He's tough. If you'd give this just a minute, you'll see that I did you a favour here."
"You have half of that, Jacob," Bella growled. "You have thirty seconds to tell me every single word before I give Renesmee to Rosalie and rip your miserable head off. Seth won't be able to stop me this time."
Renesmee's ears perked up at the sound of her name. She still knew something was wrong, but was unable to figure out what it was. She knew Mommy was mad at Jacob but had no idea why.
"Jeez, Bells. You didn't used to be so melodramatic. Is that a vampire thing?" The snarky comment was directed at me, what he'd seen of my past behaviour. My fists clenched even tighter against the urge to rip him to shreds.
"Twenty-six seconds."
Jacob had the audacity to roll his eyes and flop down into a chair. Seth and Leah inched forward so that they stood just behind the chair, on either side of him, ready to phase on a moment's notice. Leah watched Bella through narrowed eyes, almost hoping for the chance to repay her for the anguish she felt Bella had caused Jacob. Seth merely looked nervous. He shot me a quick, apologetic glance. I tried to stop him, man...
Sucking in a breath, Jacob started to explain. "So I knocked on Charlie's door this morning and asked him to come for a walk with me. He was confused, but when I told him it was about you and that you were back in town, he followed me out to the woods. I told him you weren't sick anymore, and that things were a little weird, but good. He was about to take off to see you, but I told him I had to show him something first. And then I phased." He shrugged, making the encounter seem like it had been much more casual than it actually had. He was skimming over the confusion and hurt he'd seen on Charlie's face when he'd told Charlie his daughter was back in town but hadn't contacted him. The fact that he'd actually had to grab Charlie when Charlie had turned to dash for his car and make him stand still to watch him phase. The look of absolute shock—and terror—on Charlie's features when the young man in front of him suddenly turned into a horse-sized wolf. That Charlie had actually clutched at his chest and staggered on his feet at the sight.
But perhaps most infuriatingly of all, Jacob knew I was seeing this.
And he was banking on the fact that my desire to avoid upsetting Bella—especially now—would keep me from relaying any of this to her. The one thing he had mocked me for the most, my propensity to shelter her, and he was using it now for his own benefit.
Oh, I will remember this, Jacob Black. There will be repercussions.
"I want every word, you monster," Bella hissed through clenched teeth.
"Well, you said I only had thirty seconds..." he started, but backed away when he saw how furious her expression still remained. "Okay, okay. Lemme see...I phased back and got dressed, and then after he started breathing again, I said something like, 'Charlie, you don't live in the world you thought you lived in. The good news is, nothing has changed—except that now you know. Life'll go on the same way it always has. You can go right back to pretending that you don't believe any of this.'
"It took him a minute to get his head together, and then he wanted to know what was really going on with you, with the whole rare-disease thing. I told him that you had been sick, but you were fine now—it was just that you'd had to change a little bit in the process of getting better. He wanted to know what I meant by 'change,' and I told him that you looked a lot more like Esme now than you looked like Renee."
I hissed at the vision in his mind of Charlie's face when he'd said that: the pallor as all the blood drained out of his cheeks, the light sheen of sweat that had broken out over his forehead...and finally, the look of vague comprehension, still tinged with horror.
Jacob pressed on. "After a few minutes, he asked, real quietly, if you turned into an animal, too. And I said, 'She wishes she was that cool.'" He chuckled and Rosalie snorted her disgust.
"I started to tell him more about werewolves, but I didn't even get the whole word out—Charlie cut me off and said he'd 'rather not know the specifics.' Then he asked if you'd known what you were getting yourself into when you married Edward, and I said, 'Sure, she's known all about this for years, since she first came to Forks.' He didn't like that very much." He couldn't resist shooting me the briefest of smug glances as he remembered the words that had come out of Charlie's mouth, the things he had said about me. But I retained some satisfaction in the knowledge it was unlikely Charlie would have been any keener on his only daughter marrying a werewolf, either. "I let him rant till he got it out of his system. After he got calmed down, he just wanted two things. He wanted to see you, and I said it would be better if he gave me a head start to explain."
Bella sucked in a deep breath. "What was the other thing he wanted?"
Jacob smiled. "You'll like this. His main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this. If it's not absolutely essential for him to know something, then keep it to yourself. Need to know, only."
A small amount of relief flashed over Bella's features. "I can handle that part."
"Other than that, he'd just like to pretend things are normal."
Bella seemed to contemplate that for a moment. "What did you tell him about Renesmee?" I saw her shoulders relax and her tight grip on the baby in her arms loosen slightly.
"Oh yeah. So I told him that you and Edward had inherited a new little mouth to feed. She's your orphaned ward—like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson." He snorted a short laugh. "I didn't think you'd mind me lying. That's all part of the game, right?" He glanced in my direction, knowing that the family had already had a discussion about how we would explain Renesmee to any humans we encountered. While it would have been simplest of all to tell anyone who asked that she was Carlisle's and Esme's, even when Bella had still been unconscious the idea hadn't sat well with me. I wanted the world to know that she was somehow ours, even if it was obvious we were merely teenagers.
Jacob continued. "Charlie was way past being shocked at this point, but he did ask if you were adopting her. 'Like a daughter? Like I'm sort of a grandfather?' were his exact words. I told him yes. 'Congrats, Gramps,' and all of that. He even smiled a little."
I felt my own clenched fists relax infinitesimally at the image of a very real smile on Charlie's face, albeit an uncertain one.
"But she's changing so fast," Bella whispered.
"I told him that she was more special than all of us put together," Jacob said quietly. He stood up and walked over toward Bella, though his eyes were fixed on Renesmee. He waved Seth and Leah off when they moved to follow him. He was back to being quite confident that what he had done was for the best.
Renesmee reached out to Jacob, but Bella squeezed her more tightly against her chest.
"I told him, 'Trust me, you don't want to know about this. But if you can ignore all the strange parts, you're going to be amazed. She's the most wonderful person in the whole world.' And then I told him that if he could deal with that, you all would stick around for a while and he would have a chance to get to know her. But that if it was too much for him, you would leave. He said as long as no one forced too much information on him, he'd deal." He paused, waiting for Bella's reaction.
"I'm not going to say thank you," she said firmly. "You're still putting Charlie at a huge risk."
"I am sorry about it hurting you. I didn't know it was like that." I growled quietly, but he ignored me. "Bella, things are different with us now, but you'll always be my best friend, and I'll always love you. But I'll love you the right way now. There's finally a balance. We both have people we can't live without." He grinned at her. "Still friends?"
We both watched Bella's face. I was still profoundly irritated by his presumption, the risk he'd taken and the jeopardy that Charlie was still in, but I could tell that she had softened considerably. Leaving Charlie had been one of her greatest fears, and it was possible that Jacob had just handed her at least a temporary way around it.
Provided she didn't give in to the urge to drink her own father dry.
The corners of her lips turned up into a very small smile.
The capacity of this woman to forgive and accept never ceased to astound me. I shook my head imperceptibly when Jacob extended a hand to her in a conciliatory gesture and she accepted it, squeezing for a brief moment.
"If I don't kill Charlie tonight, I'll consider forgiving you for this."
"When you don't kill Charlie tonight, you'll owe me huge."
She rolled her eyes at him.
He reached his arms out toward Renesmee. "Can I?"
"I'm actually holding her so that my hands aren't free to kill you, Jacob. Maybe later."
He sighed but didn't ask again.
Alice suddenly burst back into the room from the direction of the kitchen and the back door, a frenzied expression creasing her features.
"You, you, and you," she snapped at each of the wolves. "If you must stay, get over in the corner and commit to being there for a while. I need to see. Bella, you'd better give him the baby, too. You'll need your arms free, anyway."
The calmness that had started to settle onto Bella's features evaporated with Alice's words and demeanour. Alice was in preparation mode, meaning that Bella's moment of actually coming face-to-face with her father was almost upon her. I heard her gasp with anxiety. "Take her," she murmured, handing Renesmee to Jacob. He noticed her nervous expression, too, and frowned with concern. He said nothing, however, as he and Seth retreated to a far corner of the room.
Leah didn't move at first. She looked frustrated and uncomfortable, and her thoughts were still tinged with a low level of rage directed at Bella. If I didn't have much larger concerns at the moment, I would have thrown her out.
"Am I allowed to leave?" she muttered darkly.
"Of course," Jacob told her.
"Stay east so you don't cross Charlie's path," Alice added. Leah gave no sign that she had heard her, but stomped directly to the back door and into the forest behind.
I took a deep breath. The situation was what it was now, and I needed to help Bella find her strength. I stepped to her side and stroked her cheek with my palm. "You can do this. I know you can. I'll help you; we all will." She looked at me doubtfully, panic filling her eyes. I didn't blame her a bit for it, but was reassured by Alice. Those dogs aren't making it easy for me to see, but it was clearer when I was in the forest away from the stench. I think it will be okay, Edward.
I generally didn't bet against Alice, and did my best to find words of comfort for my wife. "If I didn't believe you could handle it, we'd disappear today. This very minute. But you can. And you'll be happier if you can have Charlie in your life." That much was true. And while I couldn't be certain Bella could resist his human scent, there were enough of us here to protect him if things...went off the rails.
Bella nodded and tried to slow her breathing.
Alice handed her a small white box containing contact lenses. "These will irritate your eyes—they won't hurt, but they'll cloud your vision. It's annoying. They also won't match your old color, but it's still better than bright red, right?"
Bella examined the little box. "When did you—"
"Before you left on the honeymoon," Alice shrugged. "I was prepared for several possible futures." I hadn't caught it previously, but was slightly amused now to see that Alice had predicted there was a possibility I would change Bella by myself while we were on the island...perhaps out of frustration if we had been unable to touch each other after all. Not that I didn't have complete faith in you, brother, she added half-apologetically.
Bella merely nodded and set about getting the brown-coloured contact lenses into her eyes. She blinked against them furiously. "I see what you mean." She turned to me. "How do I look?"
I smiled. They were nowhere near her human colour, that warm, incomparable chocolate brown. But at least they weren't fiery red. "Gorgeous. Of course—"
"Yes, yes, she always looks gorgeous," Alice interrupted impatiently. Save your ogling for later, Edward. "It's better than red, but that's the highest commendation I can give. Muddy brown. Your brown was much prettier. Keep in mind that those won't last forever—the venom in your eyes will dissolve them in a few hours. So if Charlie stays longer than that, you'll have to excuse yourself to replace them. Which is a good idea anyway, because humans need bathroom breaks." She looked over at our adoptive mother. "Esme, give her a few pointers on acting human while I stock the powder room with contacts."
"How long do I have?"
"Charlie will be here in five minutes. Keep it simple."
Esme nodded and stepped forward to take Bella's hand. "The main thing is not to sit too still or move too fast."
"Sit down if he does," Emmett interjected, trying to help. "Humans don't like to just stand there."
"Let your eyes wander every thirty seconds or so," Jasper added. "Humans don't stare at one thing for too long."
"Cross your legs for about five minutes, then switch to crossing your ankles for the next five," Rosalie chimed in.
Bella looked from face to face as they spoke, nodding.
"And blink at least three times a minute." It occurred to Emmett that a human family wouldn't just be sitting around in a big group staring at each other on a Saturday. He darted off to find the television remote and turned it on to a college football game.
"Move your hands, too. Brush your hair back or pretend to scratch something," Jasper told her.
"I said Esme," Alice muttered when she returned to the room. "You'll overwhelm her."
"No, I think I got it all," Bella nodded again, her expression one of concentration. "Sit, look around, blink, fidget."
"Right." Esme smiled reassuringly and gave her a squeeze around the shoulders.
Jasper thought about what he usually did when there were humans around. "You'll be holding your breath as much as possible, but you need to move your shoulders a little to make it look like you're breathing." He often had a hard time with that one himself, and it made him look rather rigid and uncomfortable to the outside eye.
Bella took a deep breath and gave another nod. I hugged her from my place at her side. "You can do this," I murmured into her ear.
"Two minutes," Alice announced. "Maybe you should start out already on the couch. You've been sick, after all. That way he won't have to see you move right at first." Alice pulled Bella to the sofa.
"Jacob, I need Renesmee," she said, and Jacob frowned. He didn't want Renesmee in the path of fire if Bella actually did lose it with Charlie around.
How irritating that he should think of these things now. Unbelievable idiot.
Alice shook her head in protest. "Bella, that doesn't help me see."
"But I need her. She keeps me calm." And would give her something to do with her hands.
"Fine," Alice groaned. "Hold her as still as you can and I'll try to see around her." Reluctantly, Jacob brought Renesmee to Bella, then retreated back to his corner when Alice glared at him.
I sat down next to Bella and wrapped my arms around both her and our child in her lap. I leaned forward and looked at Renesmee seriously. I hoped she would fully understand what I was about to tell her. "Renesmee, someone special is coming to see you and your mother. But he's not like us, or even like Jacob. We have to be very careful with him. You shouldn't tell him things the way you tell us."
She reached up and put a palm on my cheek. Not this?
"Exactly. And he's going to make you thirsty. But you mustn't bite him. He won't heal like Jacob." She had a fleeting vision of her teeth marks in Jacob's forearm, the crescent-shaped wound sealing over within a few seconds.
"Can she understand you?" Bella whispered.
I knew from Renesmee's thoughts that she understood enough. She may not know why this new person was different, but she knew already that there were differences between the rest of our family, herself and Jacob. That someone else would be different again wasn't a surprise to her. She also understood from my tone that what I was saying was very important. "She understands," I said. "You'll be careful, won't you, Renesmee? You'll help us?"
She touched my cheek again unnecessarily. She hadn't figured out yet that this wasn't needed with me. She showed me the same vision of her teeth marks in Jacob's forearm and looked at me questioningly. Okay?
"No, I don't care if you bite Jacob. That's fine."
Jacob chuckled, reminding me yet again of his presence.
It seemed to me that he'd done more than enough for one day. "Maybe you should leave, Jacob," I said flatly, glaring at him. This situation was hardly resolved. Even if Bella didn't actually harm Charlie, she'd be feeling the burn in her throat worse than she had yet. I knew what that pain was like. I wasn't even looking forward to the proximity of a human in the room, and I'd had years and years to get used to it.
"I told Charlie I'd be here," he protested. "He needs the moral support."
"Moral support," I snorted. "As far as Charlie knows, you're the most repulsive monster of us all."
"Repulsive?" he repeated. At least I don't drink blood, bloodsucker. At least I have body heat. And I don't feel like I'm carved out of marble. He laughed quietly to himself but didn't move from his spot in the corner.
We heard tires turn from the highway onto the long driveway that lead to the house. Bella's breathing quickened again, but otherwise she remained still. In a moment or two, she seemed to have her breathing back under control.
I wasn't sure what she had done to calm herself, but Jasper felt it, too. "Well done, Bella," he whispered.
I tightened my arm around her shoulders.
"You're sure?" she asked again quietly.
"Positive," I assured her. "You can do anything." I smiled and couldn't resist the urge to kiss away the anxious turn of her soft lips. The usual bolt of electricity coursed through me when our mouths touched, and she seemed to feel it, too: her breathing sped up again, but this time for an entirely different reason.
Jasper cleared his throat quietly. "Er, Edward, you might not want to distract her like that right now. She needs to be able to focus."
I pulled away sheepishly. "Oops."
Bella chuckled at the fact that I was stealing her line, her "oops" from the very first time we had ever kissed and she had nearly cracked my self-control with her unexpected show of eagerness. "Later," she whispered.
"Focus, Bella," Jasper insisted, and I wondered what he was sensing. I thought I had a good idea, but it was so much harder to tell when I couldn't measure her heart rate or watch her flush.
Nonetheless, I was filled with a sudden sense of pride that I could make her react that way. The only difficulty was that she made me react that way, too. Focus, Edward. Jasper didn't say it aloud, but the direction was more teasing than it had been for Bella.
Bella muttered something in response to Jasper that I was too distracted to hear, but he had to remind her again less than a second later. "Bella."
"Sorry, Jasper."
You must be more distracting—and talented—than I would have given you credit for, Edward, Emmett teased, laughing at his own joke.
We heard the car cruise closer and closer to the house, everyone in the room silent, waiting. When it pulled up out front and stopped, the engine idled for a few seconds before it cut off. There was another second or two of silence, then the door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps crossed the driveway and up the front steps. There was more silence, the sound of two deep breaths being taken outside the door, then knocking.
Charlie Swan's thoughts had never been entirely clear to me, partly, I assumed, because he was one half of whatever genetic combination had created the silent mind that was Bella's, and partly because he was such a quiet and reserved person anyway that I had to focus to find his mind in a crowd. Unless the thoughts were particularly forceful and clear, directed right at me—as they had been when I had returned with Bella from Italy, for example—I was restricted to picking up more of a sense of what he was thinking rather than individual words and images.
Right now—he was nervous. He had no idea what he was about to see, and while he was prepared to face it for the sake of his only child, he was still on edge.
Bella took a last deep breath of her own and Renesmee snuggled into her arms, hiding her face in her mother's long hair. After my warning, she was a little nervous about the stranger coming, too. I stroked her bronze ringlets with my free hand and she relaxed slightly under my touch.
Carlisle, who had remained largely quiet all morning, his thoughts a tumult of concern and advanced planning, figuring out a course of action for the family should everything suddenly fall apart, rearranged his features and stepped up to answer the door. "Hello, Charlie."
"Carlisle," Charlie's greeting was stilted. He was annoyed at the entire family, knowing now that we hadn't been honest with him when we'd had the welfare of his daughter in our hands. "Where's Bella?"
"Right here, Dad," she spoke up without hesitation.
Charlie seemed confused. He recognized the voice that had called out to him...yet didn't. It wasn't the same. He wondered what she'd changed into. A pixie? A unicorn? No...Jacob had said no animals.
His eyes scanned the room and found Bella's. They widened in shock, and his facial features twisted rapidly through a range of emotions. I could pick them up from his mind, but they were more than obvious from his expression: Shock. Disbelief. Pain. Loss. Fear. Anger. Suspicion. More pain.
But also some relief. At least she was alive. I was relieved myself to find that it hadn't occurred to him she...wasn't.
"Is that you, Bella?" he finally whispered.
"Yep. Hi, Dad."
Charlie took another deep breath.
"Hey, Charlie," Jacob said cheerfully from his spot on the floor in the corner. "How're things?"
Charlie just glared at him and shuddered. It was petty of me, but I was rather glad to see Charlie react to Jacob Black for once the way he usually reacted to me.
Charlie turned his gaze back to Bella, and slowly started across the room toward her. He stopped a few steps away, pausing to direct a glare my way this time. At least I was used to it. He seemed to sense that this was all my fault in some way, but had absolutely no clue as to how that could be. As Jacob had said, it was equally clear that he really didn't want to know, either.
His eyes turned again to Bella. "Bella?" he asked uncertainly. It was her, he knew it was her. She looked enough like her old self that it would be impossible not to recognize her, but the changes were equally obvious, even to a human eye.
Bella replied in a lower, quieter voice, perhaps sensing that it no longer had the same timbre it once had. "It's really me." When he just continued to stare at her, she spoke again. "I'm sorry, Dad."
"Are you okay?" he demanded, again darting a suspicious look my way.
"Really and truly great," she replied. "Healthy as a horse."
He stared some more. He was having a hard time coming up with any kind of explanation for what he was seeing. She wasn't an animal, that much had been true, but she wasn't the same Bella, either. His mind flickered to a few images of Jacob from the last year or so, one minute a gangly adolescent, the next minute so much taller and more muscular. At the time, Charlie had been able to chalk that up to some kind of spectacular growth spurt, but now he was second-guessing.
"Jake told me this was...necessary," Charlie finally said. "That you were dying."
Bella tensed and leaned further into the arm I still had around her shoulders. I knew she had run out of air from the last few words she'd spoken, and would need more to be able to speak again. I dug my fingertips into her shoulder, trying to keep a hold on her without being too obvious about it. She took a long moment to gather herself together, and I could feel the waves of calm emanating from Jasper as he did what he could to help them both.
"Jacob was telling you the truth," she eventually managed.
"That makes one of you," her father growled. He wished that someone had told him some part of this sooner, before so many weeks of such stress and grief.
He wondered what he was going to say to Bella's mother. Whether we would ever tell her, too.
It was hardly a moment for levity, but I couldn't help being amused when he concluded that Renee just might not have too much of a problem with it. She'd always been a little 'out there' herself, as he called it.
I heard Renesmee sniff the air from her spot under Bella's long tresses. The human scent in the room hit her, too, not as strongly as it hit the rest of us, but she was certainly curious. It made her thirsty, just as I had told her it would.
Bella's hold on the baby in her arms tightened, and Charlie looked down. "Oh," he managed to squawk, and all traces of irritation about being lied to drained from his face. Now he merely looked shocked again. "This is her. The orphan Jacob said you're adopting."
"My niece," I lied. I knew he would see the resemblance between her features and mine, especially her bronze-coloured hair. It was too unusual to leave unexplained.
"I thought you'd lost your family," Charlie said, the first words he had directed my way.
"I lost my parents. My older brother was adopted, like me. I never saw him after that. But the courts located me when he and his wife died in a car accident, leaving their only child without any other family." I was a little disgusted with myself as I listened to the words roll off my tongue. I was way too good a liar. It wasn't an admirable trait.
Renesmee leaned forward just enough to peek up at Charlie, then quickly hid her face again.
"She's...she's, well, she's a beauty," Charlie murmured, turning his attention back to her. He hadn't gotten a very clear look at her face, but he was admiring her long ringlets and chubby fists.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Kind of a big responsibility, though. You two are just getting started."
"What else could we do?" I reached out to stroke my daughter's cheek gently, hoping to reassure her. She was still nervous, confused about the tasty-smelling stranger she wasn't allowed to bite. I pressed my fingertip to her lips briefly to remind her of that. "Would you have refused her?"
"Hmph. Well." Charlie grunted and shook his head, not prepared to answer that question. He was full of questions about the implications of this new life with ours, whether it would interfere with Bella's plans for college, her future. "Jake says you call her Nessie?"
"No, we don't," Bella replied immediately, with a sharp edge to her voice. "Her name is Renesmee."
Charlie looked at her with a frown. He wondered whether this was something else I was forcing her into. "How do you feel about this? Maybe Carlisle and Esme could—"
"She's mine," Bella interrupted. She almost snapped at him. "I want her."
His frowned deepened. "You gonna make me a grandpa so young?"
I mustered a smile. "Carlisle is a grandfather, too."
That made him think. He glanced over at Carlisle, young, blond, fresh from the pages of a fine menswear catalogue. He snorted and then laughed at the idea of Carlisle as a grandfather. "I guess that does sort of make me feel better." He turned his eyes back down to Renesmee. "She sure is something to look at."
Renesmee caught another full whiff of Charlie's scent, wafted her way by a slight draft in the room. She leaned forward again reflexively, this time far enough that she fully emerged from the protection of Bella's hair and looked him full in the face for the first time.
Charlie gasped sharply. It was her eyes—Bella's eyes, his eyes—chocolate brown, shaped exactly the same way, as though they'd been Xeroxed from her mother's face and reproduced on her own. What the...? He was so shocked, the words were loud and clear from his mind.
He started to hyperventilate as he forced his mind to compute the number of weeks since he'd last seen Bella, what she'd looked like in her form-fitting wedding gown and then the going-away outfit she had had on when we left the reception for our honeymoon. His lips were trembling as he counted. Impossible! Impossible! his mind screamed. His eyes were frozen open, unblinking as he stared from Bella's face to Renesmee's to mine and back again.
The resemblance to both of us was too much. He knew Renesmee was ours. He just couldn't make it make sense.
Jacob stood and came over to pat Charlie gently on the back. "Need to know, Charlie. It's okay. I promise," he whispered in Charlie's ear.
Charlie swallowed hard and nodded. He gave his head a quick shake and took a step toward me with his fists tightly clenched. He couldn't yell at Bella, not when he was seeing her for the first time after being so worried about her, but he didn't mind directing his anger at me. "I don't want to know everything, but I'm done with the lies!"
"I'm sorry," I told him, keeping my voice calm. I decided to answer him as honestly as I could, while respecting his wishes to be told only what he absolutely had to know. And what would hopefully insulate him from the wrath of the Volturi. He deserved that much. "But you need to know the public story more than you need to know the truth. If you're going to be part of this secret, the public story is the one that counts. It's to protect Bella and Renesmee as well as the rest of us." I looked at him evenly. "Can you go along with the lies for them?"
No one moved or breathed, waiting for his reaction.
I expected Charlie to be conflicted, at least for a few minutes, but his decision was instantaneous. He knew what his choices were: either he had to accept this without question, or we would have to leave. He huffed and then turned his anger to Bella. "You might've given me some warning, kid."
"Would it really have made this any easier?" she asked.
He frowned and then knelt on the floor in front of her. The scent of his blood, only a few shades less delectable to me than Bella's had been, was overpowering from this close. Renesmee really wanted to give him a bite, and I knew Bella would be struggling even more.
Renesmee smiled at him shyly and reached toward him with one little hand. Bella restrained her, so she reached up and placed her other palm on Bella's neck. She was thirsty and curious, but still had my warning in mind.
"Whoa," Charlie gasped once again, having noticed Renesmee's perfect set of baby teeth. "How old is she?"
"Um..." Bella looked at me with wide eyes, unsure what to say.
I already knew from discussions with Carlisle what the appropriate answer would be by human standards. "Three months. Or rather, she's the size of a three-month-old, more or less. She's younger in some ways," like chronologically, "more mature in others."
Renesmee's smile widened at the attention she was getting from the new stranger. She waved at him tentatively.
Charlie could only blink.
"Told you she was special, didn't I?" Jacob said, elbowing him. An image of the horse-sized wolf flashed through Charlie's mind and he cringed at Jacob's touch. "Oh, c'mon, Charlie," Jacob groaned. "I'm the same person I've always been. Just pretend this morning didn't happen."
Charlie pressed his lips together tightly. He nodded once. "Just what is your part in all this, Jake? How much does Billy know? Why are you here?" He looked at Jacob's face, but Jacob was fixated on Renesmee adoringly.
Ugh.
"Well, I could tell you all about it—Billy knows absolutely everything—but it involves a lot of stuff about werewo—"
"Ungh!" Charlie clapped his hands over his ears. The less he heard, he figured, the less he had to believe it, despite what he saw right in front of his own eyes. Bella had been right: he preferred blissful ignorance, even if it was self-imposed. "Never mind."
Jacob grinned. "Everything's going to be great, Charlie. Just try to not believe anything you see."
Charlie muttered something under his breath. It wasn't really intelligible, but from his thoughts I sensed that it was just a string of profanities.
"Woo!" Emmett called out suddenly from his spot by the TV. He had decided Charlie needed distracting. Grounding. Football was something he could wrap his head around easily. "Go Gators!"
Charlie had been startled by the sound of Emmett's voice, but he quickly recovered. He glanced at Emmett over his shoulder. "Florida winning?"
"Just scored the first touchdown," Emmett nodded. He waggled he eyebrows at Bella and me suggestively. "'Bout time somebody scored around here."
Bella tensed, embarrassed, but Charlie hadn't even noticed the innuendo. He took in yet another deep breath, stood up, and marched around Jacob to collapse into an armchair next to Emmett's. "Well," he sighed, relieved at the distraction. "I guess we should see if they can hold on to the lead."