A/N: Hellllllllo, my ducks! Hope you're having a fabulous week!

"It's not that it won't be great to have you here, Bells. It's been half your life since you've been back in the Pacific Northwest."

Bella looked at her father and pressed the cold can of beer he'd handed her to her palm. She wasn't going to drink it, of course, but the iciness helped. She raised an eyebrow. "Was that the end of the question?"

Charlie grimaced. "You know I don't like to pry, but it's been a few weeks and the story hasn't come out on its own. I just can't figure how you ended up here in Port Angeles." He fixed her with a serious look. "This isn't upward motion, is it?"

Heart pounding, Bella blew out a long, slow breath. It was insane how nervous she was. She was thirty-five years old, but the fact she was about to confess to her father that she'd gotten knocked up made her feel like she was all of sixteen. "That's a complicated story."

"Well, we unpacked the last of your boxes today." He looked around at her new place. "And I don't have anywhere else to be."

She smile weakly. "Is this why you sent Sue and Seth home without you? So you could interrogate me in private?"

Charlie quirked an eyebrow right back at her, mirroring the look she'd made not a minute before. "Why? Commit any crimes lately?"

"Ha. Well." She cleared her throat. "You see—"

She was interrupted by a knock at the door. The noise made her jump. She and her father exchanged a look. "You expecting someone?" Charlie asked.

"No." She furrowed her brow as she got to her feet.

"Check the peephole," Charlie called, pacing her, hand at his hip as though his gun rested there.

Bella had to stop herself from rolling her eyes, but she smiled fondly. Her occasionally overprotective father. She obliged him by looking out the peephole.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered, pulling away from the door as though it had burned her.

"Are you okay? What is it?" Her father came to stand beside her, a hand to her shoulder.

Bella rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as the person behind the door knocked again. "I'm fine. He's fine. Just… His whole fucking family has the worst sense of timing." She shook her head. Better to get this over with. She opened the door.

A very wet, very disheveled looking Edward stormed inside with a guitar case over one arm and a duffel bag over the other. He set both his burdens down and started to pace at the same time he started to vomit words. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I wasn't going to come here. I was going to get a hotel, but I went, and I figured out my parents had blocked my credit card. I have a bank account. Of course I have a bank account, but I don't have the card in my wallet. The banks are closed. I can get a new card tomorrow and some money, but—"

"Edward."

He spun toward her, his expression pleading. "They flipped. Again. I know none of this is what they want. The plan was to live with them while I got my AA at a community college." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I knew. They told me, when they took me back, they told me I had to walk the straight and narrow. After everything I did. All the things that could have happened to me. All the things that did happen to me. They said they'd help me if I played by their rules. And that was okay, you know? I was okay with that. I was okay with everything.

"But they keep talking like you and the baby don't exist. Dad talked about taking a trip for New Years. We used to do that. I said I wanted to be here. They didn't understand why I'd want to be in Washington. It was like they already forgot. I told them the baby would be born around New Years. I want to be here for that, if I can. Help a little. Just a little. But I would miss the vacation. And I would probably miss the beginning of school, so I said maybe I would take a couple of online classes only that semester. I'd still have the fall semester, and—"

"Hey." Charlie snapped. Loudly.

Both Edward and Bella jumped. Edward actually stumbled back two steps, obviously shocked to find someone else in the room. Bella might have felt sorry for him, except—

"What the hell baby are you talking about?" Charlie asked, shaking a finger at Edward. He looked to Bella, and she had to stop herself from taking a step back too. "What baby? And who the hell is this? He's what, twelve?"

"I'm not… I'm not twelve." Edward, who'd gone bright red, ducked his head, sounding every bit a petulant teenager.

"He's in his twenties. Now." Bella winced, and tried to remember she was also not a teenager. "It's a long story, Dad. But I'm pregnant. It's his, and it's complicated."

Silence descended. A very awkward, uncomfortable, horrible silence.

Then, Charlie grunted. He picked up the beer he'd given to Bella and shoved it at Edward. Bella winced again. "He's...not...legal."

Charlie looked back and forth between them. Bella struggled not to squirm. He glared hard at Edward who flinched. Charlie shook his head and sat down. "Special circumstances. Sit. Apparently, we have a lot to talk about."

~0~

Bella's sense of hospitality kicked in enough that she offered Edward a terry cloth robe while she set his clothes to dry. Then, they settled in for what promised to be a sordid tale.

Edward's parents didn't believe Bella was pregnant. And if she was, they didn't believe Edward was the father. They thought she was, for reasons that escaped her completely, manipulating him into changing his life. They'd argued, and Edward—poor, stumbling Edward who couldn't seem to find the right words—had babbled about his half-cocked plan.

Bella could see how confused and conflicted he was. She could relieve him of his duty all she wanted, but he kept going back to the how he didn't think it was fair she had to do it all alone, change all the diapers, get up every night.

He spoke a lot about duty. Fairness.

"They tried to tell me I didn't owe you anything."

"You really don't," Bella said.

Edward looked up. "I know that, but I can't stop thinking about it. I don't know. I just can't wrap my head around it. Doing my normal life like nothing is going on out here." He shrugged. "I don't know. It got bad. There was a lot of yelling, and they basically said it was you or them."

"You're telling me your parents are punishing you for thinking you want to be a stand-up guy?" Charlie asked.

Edward looked tired—way more tired than anyone his age had a right to look. "They think they're punishing me for being an idiot. Tough love."

"Uh huh. There's a piece missing here." Charlie folded his arms and stared Edward down.

Edward grimaced and looked at Bella. "Your dad had to be a cop?"

"Sorry," she said with a sympathetic smile.

To his credit, Edward came clean with Charlie about his brush with the law. "And besides me, they have my brother. I think he used up both of our chances to screw up with them. He always knew what he was doing. He'd tell them every time, and every time they believed him, they'd end up getting hurt. They had to watch him fu—" He glanced at Charlie. "Uh, mess up his life over and over. They're done with that, I guess."

Bella scoffed. "I could show them the ultrasound pictures, but I guess that still wouldn't prove I wasn't trying to manipulate you." She looked at him. "So, you didn't wait for them to cool down, didn't try again the next morning, you just left?"

"They didn't give me a choice. They kicked me out." He sighed. "I didn't know where else to go. All the friends I had were part of my old life."

"Jesus." Bella rubbed a hand over her face.

"It's just tonight. I'll get it together. I'll…I'll get a job. A place. I'll—"

"Calm down. There's steam coming out of your ears," Charlie said.

"This is ridiculous," Bella muttered. "I'm trying not to trap you, and they send you running right to me. It doesn't make sense."

Charlie chuckled. "Haven't you learned by now, kid?" He smiled at her fondly. "Life doesn't give a damn about your plans."

"Ha. I was having a decent amount of luck with my plans up to this point." Bella crossed her arms. "Seems like fate saved it all for the last three months."

"That's the way it rolls sometimes." Charlie made a face and looked to Edward. "I married Bella's mother because I thought it was the right thing to do. It brought us a fair amount of misery. I got pushed into a job I didn't really like, and Renee and I? We never should have made it past high school, but I did get a pretty great kid out of it."

"Thanks, Dad," Bella said with a small smile.

"And that's how I met Sue, too. There are a lot of things I wouldn't have had if my life went the way I had planned. Sometimes you make the decisions that you need to make, not the ones you want. That's why I let your mother take you when she decided she was moving to Phoenix."

He turned to Edward. "What feels right to you, kid? What would you prefer? Do you want to go back to Mom and Dad? Or would it feel better for you to be here, even if it's harder?"

"Dad—" Bella started.

"I wanted to end up here," Edward said quietly. "I mean. I don't know. It's all…" He waved his hands helplessly. "I don't know the right answer. But that's one of the things I said that really pissed them off. I was always supposed to transfer to a university after I got my AA, but I was wondering if I could transfer before that. I was just talking out loud. And I guess going to school out of state is even more expensive, so there's that." He took a deep breath, brow furrowed. "I don't have all the information I need. Before, it was simple. Keep my nose clean. Work. Finish school."

"Well, they do have schools in Washington," Charlie said, chiding gently. "But that's not a conversation that has to happen tonight." He looked at Edward and then nodded as though he'd decided something. "Here are your choices as far as I can see. You can go back home. Your parents will take you back, I'd bet, if you were ready to follow the path they chose. And it's not a bad path. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but you sound like you don't know what the hell you want with your life right now."

"No," Edward admitted to the floor.

"So, it might not be a bad thing to be handed a path you don't have to think about too much. There's nothing wrong with that. You're still getting things done; a life you can build on." Charlie rubbed his hands on his pants. "Or, you figure out how to stay here. You can still figure out college. I've helped my stepkids wade through all that." He smirked. "Bella had herself figured out, but that's what she does best. The point being, you can write your own path too. It'll be harder. But there's not a lot in this world that can't be undone."

"Like children?" Bella swallowed down a hard lump in her throat.

"Ah, yes. Those are among the not-undoable." He rolled his shoulders and got to his feet. "But no one has to make any decisions now. Sleep on it, at least. You can come home with me tonight, if you want, Edward."

Bella shook her head. "It's okay. He can stay here. He's my mess, after all." She winked at Edward so he would know she was teasing. "I'll clean him up." He smiled back with a bemused expression.

After they said their goodbyes to Charlie—who covertly handed Bella a can of pepper spray "Just in case"—they stood in the foyer, staring at each other for an awkward minute. His hair had that disheveled look again, wild as it dried.

"Well, as long as you're here, I have something to show you."

He raised an eyebrow and followed after her when she walked to the kitchen. "I meant to send it to you, but life got a little hectic. I had a scan, an ultrasound, before I left." She took the scan from where she'd hidden it, tucked away in a cookbook. "Here."

Wide-eyed and even more pale than when he'd faced Charlie, Edward took the scan from her hands. There were three images there, various angles of their alien unit.

"Oh. It's, uh… I mean… It's getting more baby-shaped."

Bella still thought it looked like an alien. "Humanoid, anyway," she said. "And I had genetic testing done. A blood test. You know, since I'm elderly."

"You're what?" Edward looked away from the images briefly.

"I'm over thirty-five. It means the likelihood the baby could have some kind of defect is increased. It's still not a huge chance, but it's a larger chance than if I was in my twenties."

"Is everything okay?"

"So far so good." She cleared her throat. "They looked at the chromosomes."

Edward looked up, obviously confused as to what the significance was. "Do you want to know the sex?" she asked gently.

He shrank back a pace, a strange look coming over his face. "Oh. Uh. Yes? I mean, do you know?"

She nodded slowly, studying him.

He swallowed hard. "Then, yeah. Yeah, of course."

"It's got two healthy X chromosomes."

Edward sat down hard in the chair, staring at the image again. "XX. Oh. A girl. Wow."

They were both silent for a few long beats. "That makes it more real," he finally said, his voice only a decibel above a whisper.

"Yeah." Bella had to swallow hard. "Yeah, it's...yeah."

Edward looked up at her. "So weird," he muttered.

She had to smile. It was nice, as usual with him, to have someone acknowledge it out loud. "Surreal," she agreed.

They smiled at each other again, and Bella realized he didn't feel like a stranger anymore, but a friend.

A/N: WELP. That happened!